Homeless Shelters

On any given day, 550 men, women and children are living in one of Baltimore County's homeless shelters, officials say. Counselors receive an average of 40 calls daily from those asking for beds. Hundreds are living on county streets, sleeping in doorways or on steam grates. Nearly 2,000 homeless children attended county schools last year. Kathy Martin, vice president of the Baltimore County Communities for the Homeless, a nonprofit that works with the county, delivered those and other dire statistics at three community meetings this week.

In his 72 years, Ernest Hawkes has slept in a wide variety of places – military barracks in Vietnam, apartments in Baltimore and New York, homeless shelters. On Saturday evening, Hawkes stretched out on a flattened cardboard box in front of Baltimore's City Hall, resting his head on a black duffel bag. He propped a handwritten sign against a tote bag: "Homeless but not helpless. " "I woke up one morning and I was totally homeless," said Hawkes, explaining that he was evicted from an apartment complex for seniors three years ago after he had a dispute with the management.

Bea Gaddy is now on track to get the zoning needed to run her West Baltimore homeless shelter. But that doesn't change a quirk in the city's zoning law -- one that imposes a more rigorous review on shelters than it does on atomic reactors.Last night, City Councilman Melvin L. Stukes introduced zoning legislation for Ms. Gaddy's shelter. This has been the process in Baltimore for more than 30 years, with homeless shelters subjected to a case-by-case legislative approval that few other establishments face.

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.

Baltimore's homeless shelters are operating at capacity and have been forced to turn away people even though this winter's coldest weather is still ahead, according to a survey released yesterday.The survey by Action for the Homeless found that every shelter serving women and children in Baltimore was filled and that most shelters reported turning people away in recent weeks.The Dec. 1 telephone survey did not collect specific data on the numbers of homeless being turned away from Baltimore's 30 shelters.

WESTMINSTER -- County officials succeeded in impressing state Housing Secretary Jacqueline Rogers with their proposal to build 15 transitional housing units near the Westminster airport."

The program that operates Carroll County homeless shelters is scheduled to move into new offices in late February, seven months after an eviction deadline set by its host.The staff of Human Services Programs Inc. will move into the basement of the county-owned former barrel house on Distillery Drive in Westminster, county Public Works Director Keith Kirschnick reported to the county commissioners Tuesday.Mr. Kirschnick said that renovations, done primarily by county workers, are expected to be completed by mid-February.

WESTMINSTER -- In two weeks, the people who run Carroll County's shelters for the homeless may be out of their offices with no place to go.Human Services Programs Inc. would have to stop admissions to the homeless shelters and be unable to continue emergency aid programs -- with the possible exception of monthly surplus food distribution -- if the staff is evicted.The county commissioners have no other office space to offer the private, non-profit agency that contracts with the county to operate aid programs.

Frank Selby hadn't been to a dentist in about six years.The 25-year-old father of four, a laid-off truck driver who moved his family into a Baltimore County shelter for the homeless two months ago, didn't have plans to schedule an appointment any time soon.But yesterday, Mr. Selby and 38 other people from two Baltimore County shelters had their teeth cleaned and examined, compliments of White Marsh dentist Charles Cieslik."It's been a long time since I've been to a dentist," said Mr. Selby, while sitting in the waiting room with three of his four children.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- At 6: 30 a.m., tiny voices begin to resonate inside the Presbyterian Night Shelter. Thirty-nine children have slept there overnight, and more than a dozen are getting ready for school.There is no smell of brewing coffee or sizzling bacon. Instead, the odor of sweat, stale cigarettes and dirty mop water lingers in the shelter hidden on a side street east of downtown Fort Worth.For reasons as varied as their appearance, more and more children and teen-agers are being raised in homeless shelters once occupied mostly by men on skid row. Educators in Fort Worth and nationwide are reaching into the shelters and pulling those children into classrooms.

Five men say they have been banned from the city's homeless shelter after a fight broke out Saturday evening, prompting concerns from legal advocates about the shelter's protocol for barring the homeless from the $8 million facility. The shelter's manager said that at least a dozen intoxicated men had attacked staffers Saturday night and police arrested two after witnessing them strike employees. "Anyone that physically assaults a client or staff member is permanently barred from our shelter," said shelter manager Linda Trotter.

Homelessness among children is a serious issue in today's society. Over 2 million children are suffering from lack of food and shelter. Children are commonly born into this situation and have no control over their living arrangements. Most of these children go through life living on the streets or in homeless shelters. Health care is very limited or even nonexistent for these children. Physical, psychological, and emotional damage is very frequent in homeless cases. Also, it is common for a child to leave their home because of abuse and violence.

Michael D. Ullman is simultaneously right and wrong in his views on a Baltimore homeless shelter ("Not a home, not a help," June 29). The practices he advocates would turn back the clock to the early 1980s, when homelessness was ignored by the public sector. As Dr. Ullman begins with a sports analogy, let's start with his homeruns: Permanent supportive housing is the true solution to homelessness. That's absolutely right. Shelters are costlier than permanent housing. But add those two ideas together and it doesn't add up to a moratorium against new shelters.

If Ravens coach John Harbaugh employed a defensive strategy that continually gave up 35 points a game, he would quickly abandon it or get fired, and forever realize that this approach is a failed one. Unfortunately, knowledge of the failure of social policy does not move as quickly. And so, Baltimore is opening a 275-bed, congregate-style, emergency shelter — a failed solution from the 1980s and 1990s and the type that most municipalities are looking to close. On a basic level, a shelter seems to solve an immediate problem for a person living on the street, or for a social worker with nowhere to refer a client needing a bed. On the macro level, however, evidence has mounted from city after city that an emergency shelter is both a very expensive operation in the long run (often more expensive than permanent housing)

An aging transportation building and garage in Baltimore has been restored into the $8 million Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Housing and Resource Center, adding to the growing complex of services for the homeless along the Fallsway. The 24-hour facility will provide temporary housing and services to the city's homeless population, which officials believe may exceed 4,000 on any given night. "This is the culmination of one of our goals in our 10-year plan to end homelessness," said Kate Briddell, director of the city's homeless services program.

— Hundreds of industrial buildings in Maryland owned by the federal government — from warehouses at the Antietam National Battlefield to a machine shop in Curtis Bay — would be sold or demolished under a White House initiative to dispose of excess government property. In an effort to save billions of dollars annually in upkeep and energy costs on the often-vacant buildings, the Obama administration proposed last year ditching 14,000 properties the government no longer needs.

As much of the region hid from yesterday's blinding blizzard, health care providers and those who serve the homeless kicked into high gear to help the helpless deal with the severe conditions.Homeless shelters were open and filling up. Emergency rooms weren't filling up -- yet -- but patients who came in were sicker than usual, brought in by ambulances that had trouble negotiating local roads. City and state officials called on residents to extend themselves to those in need."We are urging people to stay inside.

A man apparently froze to death while seeking refuge from the cold, and hundreds of homeless people in Baltimore have flocked to shelters throughout the city, authorities reported.John Lee Jr., 50, who had no fixed address, was found dead late Tuesday morning in a doorway of a house in the 3200 block of Brentwood Ave. in Northeast Baltimore. Mr. Lee, who had tried to shelter himself from the cold, is believed to have died of hypothermia, city police said.An autopsy is to be performed. If his death is the result of the cold, the fatality would be the first attributed to the low temperatures of the past week.

On any given day, 550 men, women and children are living in one of Baltimore County's homeless shelters, officials say. Counselors receive an average of 40 calls daily from those asking for beds. Hundreds are living on county streets, sleeping in doorways or on steam grates. Nearly 2,000 homeless children attended county schools last year. Kathy Martin, vice president of the Baltimore County Communities for the Homeless, a nonprofit that works with the county, delivered those and other dire statistics at three community meetings this week.

Elizabeth S. Lottich, who established a Federal Hill soup kitchen and the Christ Lutheran Place Shelter for homeless women and children, died June 3 from heart failure at Augsberg Lutheran Home. The former Catonsville and Uniontown resident was 88. Elizabeth Virginia Smith, the daughter of a Lutheran minister and a homemaker, was born and raised in Selinsgrove, Pa., where her father was president of Susquehanna University. After graduating in 1942 from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Va., she returned to her father's college where she worked as his personal secretary for two years.