Homeless People

Reducing access to life-saving Code Blue shelter services gives us the chills ("City revises emergency cold weather criteria," Dec. 8). Each year, too many of our homeless neighbors experience frostbite, amputations and even death because they lack adequate shelter. The National Coalition for the Homeless reports that 700 homeless people in the U.S. die every year from hypothermia. These are entirely preventable deaths. In Baltimore, we commemorate some of these deaths on Homeless Persons Memorial Day, Dec. 21, the longest night of the year.

Harford County was recently awarded nearly $867,000 in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care, or CoC, Program to help homeless people find shelter and other services. The funding increased about 6 percent from the previous year and last year's funding and will account for the increased fair market rents, the county government said in a news release. "We are very pleased with HUD's decision to increase CoC funding in Harford County, allowing us to give more to the nonprofits who serve our most vulnerable citizens," stated Harford County Executive David Craig.

For a few hours after school, Ryan Johnson is just like most 16-year-olds. He lounges on the couch with his favorite Xbox game or checks his Facebook page. But then reality sets in. He decamps from his cousins' house for the Howard County cold-weather shelter. Dinner is a meal with his father and 20 other homeless people. He goes to bed early, on a green plastic mat next to strangers, who also have no other place to go in one of the state's wealthiest counties. "It has been really hard," said Ryan, a junior at Wilde Lake High School in Columbia.

While several homeless people gathered on benches on the plaza outside City Hall on Palm Sunday, a crowd of 60 churchgoers from congregations around Baltimore stood at the front door to pray for them - and for other needs facing the community - at the 10th annual Blessing of the City. "Thank you for letting us pray for the homeless today," said Kealiel Collins, 11, a parishioner of Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Lafayette Square, to God and the crowd. "Give the homeless their place in the world.

Two homeless people banned from the Mall in Columbia for a year in early February may now return after a meeting with mall and county officials sought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland. Mall officials did not do anything wrong, according to Greg Harris, a spokesman for mall manager Katie Essing, but he confirmed that Essing generally apologized to Stephan Rabai and Patricia R. "Anne" Francis for any stigma they suffered due to the banning. The shopping center's management also agreed to several policy changes.

More than one-third of Baltimore's homeless may be eligible for Social Security benefits, but only 4 percent are receiving aid, in part because of an impersonal review system that frustrates the most dogged applicants.The chain of paperwork takes a minimum of three months if an applicant is approved on the first try. Sixty percent of all applicants have to appeal initial rulings against them, drawing the wait out to more than six months.Factor in the special problems of the homeless, about one-third of whom are mentally ill, and the difficulty in matching people to services becomes even greater, homeless advocates and Social Security workers agree.

Fire investigators are trying to find out whether homeless people might have sparked a four-alarm fire that destroyed a large warehouse south of Camden Yards early yesterday. The blaze was reported at 1:30 a.m. by motorists on Interstate 695 who saw flames shooting from the building on the corner of Haines and Warner streets, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a spokesman for the Baltimore Fire Department. He said the "big, orange ball of fire, with a thick plume of smoke," was also visible from Interstates 95 and 395. More than 100 firefighters and support personnel were summoned to the fire, which tore through the building's roof and collapsed all but two exterior brick walls.

The main hallway in Baltimore County's emergency shelter is a place where the hungry wait in line for food. A couple curse at each other. Children run around. Babies cry. And when it is time for sleep, blue gym mats are placed on the floors, and dozens of people lie side by side, leaving barely enough room to walk. The shelter, in a brick building near Franklin Square Hospital Center, wasn't always so crowded. But the number of people who have stayed there in the past year has increased drastically - as the number in Baltimore County seeking help with food, heating bills and other needs also has surged, according to county officials and advocates for the needy.

As Timothy Shands lighted a candle yesterday at the ninth annual Homeless Person's Memorial Day vigil, he thought of the possibility that he, too, could have died on Baltimore's streets."

SHE SAYS HERS is the yellow house with the green shutters. The one on her Northeast Baltimore block with the deck out front and the basketball goal near the drive. If you press Debbie Simpson, she'll use a house number to describe where she lives. But it's not a telling detail to her. What matters are the particulars, the things she couldn't imagine when she was crack-addicted and living "pillar to post" in West Baltimore. "Home," says the 36-year-old Simpson, sitting in her living room.

Halfway through Baltimore's long-term plan to end homelessness, advocates complain that the strategy is in disarray and worry that the number of men, women and children without permanent homes has grown - despite millions of dollars being pumped into local services. The 10-year Journey Home strategy, the advocates say, has fallen short of its objective, floundering without a direct line of leadership or accountability and frustrating the social services community that is pushing for solutions to a primary cause of homelessness: the lack of affordable housing.

What! I can't believe it. The Sun reports that Secretary of State John Kerry promises to give Egypt $190 million to help the government pay its bills ("Egypt deal with IMF of paramount importance: Kerry," Mar. 2). Last week I heard it was $60 million. That was bad enough. They shouldn't get anything since Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has formed an alliance with Hamas who is supported by al-Qaida and Iran. We can't buy their loyalty when a majority of them advocate that Sharia law is their goal, not democracy.

Homeless advocates and a city councilwoman sharply criticized Monday a Rawlings-Blake administration plan to remove an encampment of about a dozen homeless people this week from under the Interstate 83 overpass in central Baltimore. But administration officials defended the move as a safety measure, designed to protect homeless men and women from a camp they say is overrun by drugs, alcohol and violence. "I'm concerned about the safety of the individuals in the encampment," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Monday.

Whitney Swander woke before dawn three days this week to talk with people who have been sleeping on the city's streets. That's how she met Ron — a man who has moved across the country since becoming homeless and, lately, has spent his days drinking coffee in a McDonald's in southern Baltimore. "He wants a way into a more stable life," she said, pausing. "I keep thinking about Ron. " The Mayor's Office of Human Services-Homeless Services Program and the Baltimore Home for Good Campaign announced Friday morning an initiative to find housing for the 75 most vulnerable homeless people in the city.

Providers of homeless services, community volunteers, police and the Harford County Government will come together Thursday, Jan. 24, in a coordinated effort to conduct a one-day count of homeless people living in Harford County. Like many communities, Harford County has many who are living in places not meant for human habitation — outside and unsheltered — or who are relying daily on some form of emergency housing. Conducting a count of the homeless in the community will not only help determine how many are homeless, but also will help service providers understand the underlying issues that have contributed to those becoming homeless.

A year ago, if you'd asked David Moore to generalize about homeless people, he'd have said most were probably addicted to drugs or alcohol, lacking in ambition and unworthy of the general public's trust. Then he became homeless himself. "I'll be honest with you, I wasn't prepared for that to happen," said Moore, a 46-year-old Arnold native who lost his job and his apartment last fall, only to end up living in his car. He might have lost his hope as well, he said, had he not heard about Winter Relief, a program sponsored by the Arundel House of Hope in Glen Burnie that offers a select group of more than 90 homeless people a warm place to sleep every night through the winter months.

Until two months ago, Tammye Brooks had a job and a roof over her head in Brooklyn Park. But the 52-year-old woman lost them both and, desperate, moved to Baltimore, where she lives in a downtown shelter. Brooks, a longtime Anne Arundel County resident, now counts herself among the city's homeless population. She's also one of hundreds - potentially thousands - of people who were expected to be counted and surveyed yesterday during Baltimore's biennial effort to tally its number of homeless people.

Calling it illegal and discriminatory, witnesses lambasted and condemned last night a Baltimore City Housing Authority plan to abruptly end a tenant selection process that gives preference to the poorest of the poor.Speaking at a 90-minute hearing at Dunbar High School, speakers warned that elimination of a so-called federal preference system could also have dire consequences, increasing the number of homeless people in the city -- even leading to deaths.Brandishing a brick from a demolished city public housing project and a bag of ashes, Brendan Walsh of Viva House, a homeless shelter, called the proposal "an outrage" that pits "the poor against the working poor."

Bonnie Lane stands in front of Baltimore's City Hall, arms crossed, lips pursed, on a mission. Her stance is memorialized in a photo and article on the pages of Word on the Street, the fledgling newspaper she helped launch nearly a year ago. The "street paper" — one of 23 in the United States — is produced by homeless people, their advocates, and those who were once homeless, such as Lane. "You need to give people hope," Lane, 39, said. "Once they lose hope, they're not motivated to make things better for themselves.

Sherri Ingram-Hudgins steps into the homeless resource center on U.S. 1 in Jessup on the cold, rainy afternoon after Christmas, just about two years to the day since she began her effort to help people living on the margins. The place has been open more than an hour and is already crowded with people stopping in to do laundry or use a computer, get a meal, maybe pick up donated clothing or canned goods. She walks into the meeting room she's been using for gatherings of a nonprofit organization she founded in the spring as a kind of experiment — giving small, direct cash grants to help people get a job, or a place to live, or perhaps to aid them in achieving better health or emotional well-being.