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.

Tucked behind trees off a street in Glen Burnie are about a dozen mostly makeshift tents and a small trailer, forming a small community of homeless people who have been there off and on for several years. Now, Anne Arundel County has ordered the homeless to leave the site by April 3 — the second time in about a year there's been a push to clear the site. County agencies and nonprofit organizations — the Department of Social Services and the nonprofit Arundel House of Hope among them — are trying to connect the homeless people there with shelters and other services.

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.

A group of 50 to 60 people gathered in downtown Aberdeen Thursday evening to remember two homeless people who died last Friday after they were found unresponsive in a tent at an encampment in the woods on the city's east side. Standing near the corner of Franklin and Parke streets near the library, city hall and festival park, the group included members of the clergy, advocates for the homeless and mental health, families and friends of the two dead people and other homeless people.

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.

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.

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."

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."

Dear Editor: I wanted to express my sincere sympathy to the families and friends of Tameka and George, who died due to exposure and/or carbon monoxide poisoning while sleeping in a tent in Aberdeen. The fact that this could happen in an affluent area such as Harford County may seem mind-boggling; but, in reality, the sad truth is that the homeless population is growing everywhere. I was very happy to see in Mr. Vought's editorial he addressed these two tragic deaths. And he's right; indeed some homeless people do not want assistance.

Baltimore and Harford counties are conducting their annual surveys of the homeless population this week, gathering information about how many people lack a permanent place to stay and why. The one-day census is also intended to help service agencies learn where there are gaps in assistance programs. The federal government requires a count, known as a point-in-time census, during the last 10 days of January from all local governments at least every other year. Most conduct the survey annually.

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.

Brigades of parishioners at St. Joseph's Monastery in Southwest Baltimore have cataloged their roles in the mission on a spreadsheet. Each team is tasked with convincing different neighbors that the only offer for the congregation's empty school building — from a group that helps homeless people get back onto their feet — will benefit the community at large. "We're trying to do away with any misperceptions and lack of knowledge," said Mary Slicher, executive director of Project PLASE (People Lacking Ample Shelter and Employment)

I was gratified to read that Terry Reed, the panhandler sensitively portrayed by Dan Rodricks , has a roof over his head every night ("Terry Reed, that man on President Street," Dec. 21). Yet I was disturbed by the growing number of deaths among homeless people, despite Baltimore's 10-year plan to end homelessness. People become homeless for many reasons - loss of jobs, relationships and minds - but no matter what the reason, we too often avert our eyes. I'm reminded of a 2007 Sun feature about a now-defunct homeless encampment beneath the Jones Falls Expressway.

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.

NEW MARKET -- If Carl Freundel wanted only to entertain, his drama students could easily sell out Linganore High School's auditorium with a light-hearted musical, such as "Guys and Dolls."But Mr. Freundel, a drama teacher at the Frederick County school who also is a playwright, seeks to challenge his students. And his audience. He wants people to think, to see something with social relevance.So the school production this fall was "Hunger," a play with music and dance that was written by Mr. Freundel.

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.

The expansion of Beans and Bread shouldn't just worry "some neighbors," it should worry all neighbors ("Soup kitchen's plans worry some neighbors," Nov. 28). The motives of St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore may be genuine, yet the facts on the ground tell a different story. When the soup kitchen Our Daily Bread, expanded, it was a horror. Right across from the main library, the clients didn't eat and leave; they crossed the street to harass library patrons. They also abused the public restrooms and created other serious problems.

He has frequent lapses of memory, the result of a brain aneurysm he suffered as a teen in 1972. He struggled for years to keep jobs at BWI, at a discount store and in an industrial park. And finally, after his mother died in a Baltimore County nursing home, Fred Schaefle of Glen Burnie lost the condo in which he'd been living and ended up in a tent. "There's so much you don't appreciate until you don't have it," says the rangy, bearded 58-year-old with a shake of the head. "For example, indoor plumbing or a place to warm your food.