Homeless People

Several Harford County agencies, along with police and about 30 volunteers, will conduct a biennial count of the homeless Tuesday. The results will help in the creation of new programs and the improvement of existing services, as well as ensure federal funding for programs for the homeless, county officials say. Harford receives more than $400,000 annually from the federal government to house the homeless in the community. The county spends about $2 million on shelters and programs to prevent homelessness, officials said.

CLARIFICATION A headline on Page 1A of yesterday's editions of The Sun said that homeless people were "booted" from a city street. While homeless persons interviewed by The Sun said they were forced to leave, the Downtown Partnership insisted in the article and again yesterday that its workers were merely clearing trash from the area. The headline should not have adopted one party's point of view. Rowan Schuylar, who has lived on the streets of Baltimore for the past two months, awoke yesterday to a group of workers from the Downtown Partnership who demanded that she and other homeless people remove themselves and their belongings.

Clarise Darden is one of many homeless people who live at the park next to St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church in Baltimore. Darden, who lost her home and her family, says she hopes to get back on her feet soon. The mother of two, who used to have a home in Cedonia, has lived at the park for 13 months.

D.C.-area homeless population declines The homeless population in the D.C. area declined slightly over the past year - the first drop since 2004, an annual survey has found. Researchers found 11,762 people living in shelters or on the streets in Washington and its surrounding counties, according to a report released by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. That represents a 3 percent reduction from last year's tally of 12,126. The survey, released this week, found that an additional 4,696 formerly homeless people are living in permanent housing programs, up 37 percent since 2004.

For anyone trying to promote a thriving downtown commercial and residential district, homeless people present a dilemma. This week's effort by Baltimore's Downtown Partnership to remove trash and boxes accumulated by homeless people camped out near Guilford Avenue and the Jones Falls Expressway was regrettable. But the incident reinforces the fact that the homeless are still with us and underscores the critical need to deal with how and why they are on the streets. The partnership routinely picks up empty boxes and trash, frequently encountering and sometimes clashing with homeless people who populate busy downtown areas.

As temperatures dip below 40 degrees and forecasters predict snow this week, the homeless in Baltimore and elsewhere are frantically searching for places to stay warm and dry. A group of homeless people have set up encampments along Guilford Avenue and President Street. Highs this week are expected to be in the mid-40s, with lows in the mid-20s. A survey this year estimated that 3,000 homeless people live in Baltimore.

Whatever else he may be, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani is a great publicist for the arts.The world might never have noticed "Sensation," an exhibition of young British artists at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, had the mayor not denounced the show and tried to cut off its funding.Now Giuliani has threatened to arrest homeless people for sleeping on his streets, a bit of Christmas season Scroogery that could make a Washington photo show that might have passed unremarked suddenly seem relevant.

The Columbia-based Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center is seeking to expand the capacity of one of its homeless shelters, the Miles House in Ellicott City, from eight to 12 people."

Statistics from a Baltimore nonprofit aid agency suggest the number of homeless people sleeping on city streets increased sharply last year.Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) reports that 925 clients slept on sidewalks, in vacant buildings, under bridges or in the woods at least several times last year, compared with 673 in 1997, an increase of 37 percent."This is very troubling," says Jeff Singer, president and chief executive officer. There was also other bad news, such as increases in uninsured clients and clients diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus.

Amber Coffman,17, of Glen Burnie was one of five teen-agers recognized as an outstanding community activist at the 1999 Take Action Awards in New York City. Amber received the award for creating Happy Helpers, an organization that has fed, clothed and cared for thousands of homeless people in her area. As a grand-prize winner, she will receive a $20,000 college scholarship and the opportunity to distribute thousands of dollars of new merchandise to the local charity of her choice.Pub Date: 4/07/99

Too bad the city was just breaking ground on a new homeless shelter and not opening it on Monday - with temperatures climbing into the dangerous range for the first time this summer, it was a reminder of how important it is to make sure all of the city's residents have proper shelter. Just two years ago, when Mayor Sheila Dixon first announced her ambitious, 10-year initiative to end homelessness in Baltimore, the goal seemed hopelessly out of reach. Neighborhood groups were dead set against the idea of having homeless people sheltered even temporarily in their communities, and the economic downturn made paying for the project seem dicey at best.

For the first time in at least 40 years, there are no homeless people sleeping on the scrubby patch of dirt outside St. Vincent de Paul Church in downtown Baltimore. The vacancy could herald a new era in the long-tense relationship between city and church officials, who this week signed a contract laying out new requirements for cleanliness on a plot of land that features an uncomfortably visible homeless encampment of a dozen or more people, some in large tents and lean-tos. The agreement, reached after months of negotiations that involved the Baltimore Archdiocese and signed Wednesday, requires the church to beautify the park, a process it says will take $45,000 and six weeks.

With six months to go before moving into their new $15.5 million building on the Fallsway, Health Care for the Homeless officials gave Mayor Sheila Dixon a hard-hat tour Thursday. The three-story building with a partial green roof is walking distance from Our Daily Bread and the city's planned 148-bed emergency shelter and housing resource center. Dixon said having homeless services in one area "maximizes the support people need to get back on their feet." Jeff Singer, president and chief executive officer of Health Care for the Homeless, said the buildings' proximity to one another will "promote synergy" because the providers can walk people from one place to the next and save on transportation.

Baltimore's homeless population is on the rise, a study released Monday shows, bolstering Mayor Sheila Dixon's case for spending millions on year-round emergency shelters and the construction of a proposed permanent facility. The census, conducted Jan. 22, found 3,419 homeless people, including those who live in shelters as well as more than 1,000 street dwellers. The total was up 12 percent from two years ago, and nearly 28 percent since the census began in 2003. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires the biannual survey for federal funding.

Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's 10-year plan to end homelessness received a boost Monday evening when the City Council unanimously approved her proposal for a 275-bed shelter on Fallsway. Dixon stressed that the new facility is part of a broader goal. "Our whole thrust is, how can we eliminate poverty in this city?" Dixon said. City Councilman William H. Cole IV said the project "is giving homeless people in this city an opportunity they have never had before." The measure garnered support from City Councilman Bernard C. "Jack" Young, who had previously been an outspoken opponent of the facility.

Using the site of a proposed homeless shelter as a backdrop, Mayor Sheila Dixon announced yesterday that Baltimore will get $31 million in federal funds for homeless services, including $9.5 million in emergency funds under the economic stimulus package. Separately, the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Foundation said it has pledged $1.8 million of the estimated $8.2 million cost of the proposed shelter, which would be called the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Housing and Resource Center. The facility, to be on the site of a city building at 620 Fallsway, would be a "modern, clean and welcoming addition to this community," Dixon said during an afternoon news conference.

Many people in Baltimore want to do something to help the homeless residents of our city. But as we at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church have learned, some ways of helping end up doing more harm than good. Ten years ago, our church acquired the park that lies at the foot of the Jones Falls Expressway. In an agreement with the city, the Baltimore Archdiocese and the Maryland Historic Trust, we agreed to keep the park as a park. When it became private, we allowed homeless people to sleep there.

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.

More than 100 volunteers, including experts and students from two Baltimore universities, embark today on a census that will use survey techniques and global positioning technology to count and track the city's homeless population. Organizers said yesterday that they planned to start collecting information beginning at 1 a.m. today, visiting spots in a 50-block area in the central city where homeless people are known to sleep. A later shift of volunteers will visit soup kitchens, day shelters and other places in the city where homeless people congregate during daylight hours, officials said.

This year, a guard at the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore noticed that someone was sleeping in the covered entrance of the old Greyhound bus terminal on Howard Street, which the society owns. It turned out to be a homeless man, who insisted on remaining where he was rather than go to a shelter - even after guards erected a chain-link fence around the spot. Each night, the man simply shimmied under the steel mesh and returned to his bed. With temperatures lower this week, officials are hoping most of the homeless people living on the city's streets will prefer to take refuge inside the shelter on Guilford Avenue that opened in October.