Homeless Women

A small band of protesters, some on foot and others in wheelchairs, besieged a red brick building in the heart of residential Lansdowne yesterday. Singing, chanting and rapping on windows, the demonstrators complained that officials at the Hearth Inc. program for homeless women have virtually imprisoned a disabled tenant in her apartment.More than three hours later, the protesters had failed to get tenant Gail Riddic moved to an apartment with a ramp for her wheelchair.Still, they took satisfaction in presuming that the shelter's director had avoided them only by retreating to his basement office -- stuck there, they believed, just as Riddic has been stuck in her second-floor apartment.

Time and again yesterday, people who work with Baltimore's neediest residents underscored the need for broadening the scope of services to an increasing number of homeless women and children.Bureaucrats and advocates who gathered for a forum on homelessness at Sojourner-Douglass College in East Baltimore stressed the need for additional family shelters and services such as counseling and job training."Many of the jobs available today are beyond the level of people coming to us," said Jacki Coyle, assistant director of Our Daily Bread, a downtown soup kitchen run by Catholic Charities that serves 600 to 950 lunches a day.Coyle said that every month, her organization is seeing a 10 percent increase in women and children seeking assistance.

A dowager grande dame of Baltimore society named Margaret J. Bennett died rich in 1900 and among her many charities left $150,000 to start a refuge for "homeless, needy and deserving female persons."A healthy chunk of money at the turn of the century, her bequest would be more than $2.5 million in 1999 dollars. It paid for and then maintained for nearly 100 years the Margaret J. Bennett Home in an elegant Greek Revival townhouse at 14 E. Franklin St.The Bennett house -- next door to Tio Pepe's Spanish restaurant -- survives splendidly intact from when it was built 170 years ago in "the most fashionable part of the city."

The sisters flowed through two exhibit halls of the Baltimore Convention Center yesterday, having their hair styled and their nails polished, listening to gospel music, learning about health care and enjoying their sense of community.The fifth annual "For Sisters Only" in Baltimore, a celebration of African-American women, continues today from noon to 8 p.m. Bill Hopkinson, general sales manager for radio station WXYV-FM, which co-sponsors the program with radio station WCAO-AM, estimated that the two-day event will draw 25,000 to 30,000 people.

Baltimore will receive about half of the $13 million in federal funds for homeless services that the federal Housing and Urban Development department awarded to the state yesterday.The $6.5 million the city will receive from HUD is part of a larger national package of $865 million in assistance to homeless Americans, announced yesterday in Washington by Vice President Al Gore and Housing Secretary Andrew M. Cuomo. The sum is $1.3 million less than the $7.8 million the city received from HUD last year to fund programs for the homeless.

BEL AIR -- A facility for homeless women and children will be dedicated today at a 9 a.m. ceremony to be attended by Harford County Executive Eileen M. Rehrmann and Archbishop William Cardinal Keeler.Anna's House, managed by Catholic Charities, will provide transitional housing for homeless women and their children. The location is not being disclosed to protect residents' privacy.Pub Date: 10/17/96

In an old school in Baltimore, Antoinette Purnell found a haven, a place to start over again. Yet just as she began to have hope for the future, the very program that lifted her out of homelessness threatened to return her to the streets.For the past two weeks, Ms. Purnell and a dozen other women with young children have had to fight the Housing Assistance Corp., a nonprofit corporation that runs two highly touted transitional shelters.While still waiting for federal approval to rent apartments of their own, the women were told to pack their bags and leave their shelter by the end of the month.

From her tall perch on a scaffold, Adrianne Ferguson gives a man walking below a piece of her mind about the Million Man March in Washington. Marching is one thing, she says, but cooperation is another."

Howard County is seeking $485,000 in federal grants to hel pay for six projects, including a shelter for homeless women and children, and a halfway house for pregnant women.At the top of the list is a $140,000 request for renovating a county-owned building on Fels Lane in Ellicott City. The shelter would be operated by Grassroots, a nonprofit agency that runs a crisis hot line and homeless shelter in Columbia.Grassroots had planned to seek grant money to open a separate men's homeless shelter.

A Towson businessman has offered to convert a local building into a transitional shelter for homeless women and their children in Howard County.Willard Hackerman, president of the Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., met last week with County Executive Charles I. Ecker, housing officials and homeless advocates to present his proposal.Mr. Ecker announced the project Friday at an awards ceremony for county grant-in-aid recipients. He said he wanted to get the word out that the county is looking for a building to convert into a shelter.

One year ago, Renee Cooper was evicted from her home, a high school dropout who walked the streets at night with her family until police officers let them sleep on the station floor. Cooper, who returned to school and recently graduated from Annapolis High School, is looking for a job in child care. She has shown drive in her effort to turn around her life, say officials at Annapolis Area Ministries Inc., who have chosen her to be the first resident of Willow House, its new house for homeless women.

The recent decision by the Baltimore YWCA to close its downtown shelter for homeless women and children is more than unfortunate. If the shelter goes out of business by Oct. 1, as announced, about 10 percent of the city's temporary beds for families could be lost. There's no question that permanent housing is the ultimate solution for getting the homeless off the streets. But in the meantime, families must not be left without a place to go. On any given night, an estimated 3,000 people in Baltimore are homeless; about 35 percent consist of families, usually women and children.

MORE WOMEN are joining the ranks of the city's homeless, following a national trend that raises new challenges for homeless service agencies that traditionally have served the larger population of homeless men. Hobbled by drug and alcohol addictions, depression and, all too frequently, by past sexual abuse and domestic violence, these women risk further violence and sexual victimization on the streets. Not surprisingly, more homeless women are also dying on the streets. Twenty-six of the 80 homeless people who died here last year were women, many of them relatively young.

DEBRA TIERNEY was not the easiest client. She was often inebriated and incapable of meaningful conversation. She routinely missed appointments with mental health workers. She sneaked swigs of liquor during counseling sessions as other homeless women in her addiction therapy group poured their hearts out about their hard-knock lives. Social workers tried to help her nonetheless, hoping to eventually get her into long-term treatment and off the streets. It didn't work. Ms. Tierney was found frozen to death under the Jones Falls Expressway and counted among the 80 homeless people who died last year.

Breakfast was conventional -- made-to-order scrambled eggs, roasted potatoes and orange juice. The service, however, was not. For the third consecutive year, members of Beth El Congregation of Park Heights Avenue provided a Christmas week meal yesterday morning for about two dozen displaced women at a My Sister's Place drop-in center run by Catholic Charities. But the prospect of serving the city's homeless to celebrate a Christian holiday didn't seem to faze the members of the Jewish congregation.

Sister Augusta Reilly cared for hundreds of women desperate for better lives. Yesterday, she was reminded how much they care about her. Former residents of Marian House, a transitional residence for homeless women in Northeast Baltimore, flooded the well-kept grounds on Gorsuch Avenue to hug her, sing to her, give her gifts or simply see her warm smile one last time. Reilly, 66, is moving on to something new - what, she doesn't know - and is driving across North America to help make up her mind.

CLASSIC STATUES of women, reminiscent of ancient Greece, exude beauty, grace and strength. Ripples of water from a small fountain soothe ears often troubled by harsh noises. The scent from aromatic healing plants perfumes the air. A cloistered courtyard - an oasis of serenity - embraces the residents of Marian House, a transitional housing and self-development program for homeless women and their Waverly neighbors. Caryatids - four black marble sculptures of female figures - symbolically hold up the main portion of the new addition to Marian House.

Baltimore needs shelter for homeless women and children Kudos to Mayor Martin O'Malley for supporting plans for several daytime drop-in centers for homeless persons in the city ("Mayor plans day centers for homeless," Dec. 19). These sites can become real centers of caring, effectively linking public services and private charitable groups with the folks who need them the most. However, a much larger challenge remains: What happens to the homeless when these centers turn out the lights each evening and the staff and charity workers go home?

A dowager grande dame of Baltimore society named Margaret J. Bennett died rich in 1900 and among her many charities left $150,000 to start a refuge for "homeless, needy and deserving female persons."A healthy chunk of money at the turn of the century, her bequest would be more than $2.5 million in 1999 dollars. It paid for and then maintained for nearly 100 years the Margaret J. Bennett Home in an elegant Greek Revival townhouse at 14 E. Franklin St.The Bennett house -- next door to Tio Pepe's Spanish restaurant -- survives splendidly intact from when it was built 170 years ago in "the most fashionable part of the city."

A small band of protesters, some on foot and others in wheelchairs, besieged a red brick building in the heart of residential Lansdowne yesterday. Singing, chanting and rapping on windows, the demonstrators complained that officials at the Hearth Inc. program for homeless women have virtually imprisoned a disabled tenant in her apartment.More than three hours later, the protesters had failed to get tenant Gail Riddic moved to an apartment with a ramp for her wheelchair.Still, they took satisfaction in presuming that the shelter's director had avoided them only by retreating to his basement office -- stuck there, they believed, just as Riddic has been stuck in her second-floor apartment.