Homeless Families

Barbara Parker, a homeless woman from East Baltimore, walked into Dudley Beauty School with her hair hidden under a purple scarf. But when the 38-year-old left the school yesterday, she had curls and felt good about herself."

Westminster officials are seeking a $382,870 grant to rebuild a dilapidated section of a shelter for homeless families. The grant also would be used to expand its capacity.The 12-year-old shelter serves intact families -- usually both parents and their children, said Karen K. Blandford, the city's housing and community development administrator.But the building at 23 W. Green St. is not so intact, she said."The entire rear of the building is structurally unsound," Blandford told the Westminster Common Council Monday night.

A 10-year-old homeless shelter in Lansdowne, which doubles as a classroom for poor families seeking basic life skills, is struggling to raise funding to remain open this spring -- even though local politicians have offered last-minute help.Brenda Pendergrass, executive director of Hearth House on Laverne Avenue, said she needs to raise at least $5,000 in private donations or the shelter may close until the next fiscal year begins July 1 and it receives new funding.Some relief came recently from First District County Councilman Stephen G. Sam Moxley, a Catonsville Democrat, who pledged to help obtain a $10,000 federal Community Development Block Grant for the shelter for homeless women and children.

WASHINGTON - On any given night, as many as 15,000 Washington-area residents are homeless, and that number is slowly growing, chiefly because more families are becoming homeless, government officials and advocacy groups say.Steve Cleghorn, deputy director of the nonprofit Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, said there are more homeless families because there are more single-parent families.Nationally, single-parent households climbed from 12.3 million in to 15.4 million in 1995, U.S. Census Bureau figures show.

A few children whose drug-addicted homeless mothers have begun treatment and can't be proper parents can now live temporarily at Dayspring Children's Place, designed to give them skilled and loving care in an East Baltimore rowhouse.The small two-story home on North Glover Street is the first of its kind in the city, according to the coordinating Young Women's Christian Association. Six children up to 10 years old will live there with trained staffers for about two months. Their mothers can visit but live elsewhere until their treatment allows more normal child-caring and transitional family housing.

A mortgage banker, a lawyer and the founder of homes and shelters for abused children and homeless families were honored by the Baltimore Urban League last night at the group's annual Equal Opportunity Dinner.The civil rights group presented its Whitney M. Young Award to:* Alexander Avella Jr., president of Amerifirst Mortgage Corp. since 1969, for his commitment to local and national housing initiatives. He has been active with Neighborhood Housing Services of New York and with real estate and mortgage banking groups.

Second Chances, a program that provides household goods to homeless families, is teaming with the Westminster maintenance department to increase its stock of furniture.It may seem an unlikely alliance, but those involv at Second Chances after their weekly pickups of discarded furniture. There, Second Chances coordinator Lynne Balant will sort through the items to determine what the charity can salvage for low-income families. City workers will take the rest to Northern Landfill."It's one of those things that's so obvious it takes a pair of fresh eyes to see it," said Karen K. Blandford, Westminster housing and community development administrator.

Clothing, diapers, food and a rent-free house are among the donations that have been offered to Viola Jones, a homeless woman whose daily odyssey through city streets with her three children was detailed recently in The Sun.Yesterday, the donations were still coming in: dishes, blankets, toys -- and three baby strollers."

It's the last night for "the Night Thing": "The Arsenio Hall Show" closes shop, with enough momentum and special guests to make it one of the evening's two highlights. The other: an "Edith Ann" cartoon on ABC.* "Edith Ann: Homeless Go Home." (8:30-9 p.m., WJZ, Channel 13) -- Jane Wagner, Lily Tomlin's writer and creative partner, has taken one of Tomlin's broadest characters from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and fleshed her out beautifully, in animated form. Tomlin's muddy Edith Ann voice is as telling as ever, and the jokes and story lines in "Homeless Go Home" are as wry and clever as the title itself.

Once again, Carroll's Human Services Program, the non-profi organization that operates the county's homeless shelters, is struggling to raise what it needs to keep open its shelter for families. Last year, the organization received a $30,000 anonymous donation that covered the cost of running the shelter for the fiscal year that ends next month. This year, HSP hasn't been so fortunate.It has been unable to obtain a state emergency assistance grant because Maryland's housing department is giving money this year only to those agencies that received money last year, which leaves HSP out. So, the program is again asking the community bTC to make donations to support the family shelter.