Nine-year-old Levi Bonds is in the third grade and dreams of being a basketball star. His friend, Nicholas Trotter, 10, has his eye set on NFL glory. Nicholas? younger brother, Christopher, 9, walks around with a pen and small notepad, asking questions like the police detective he hopes to be.
These boys spend their after-school hours like most of the other children in their Rosedale-area elementary school ? playing, watching DVDs, doing their homework and helping out with dinner. But they share a little secret ? something that sets them apart from most of their classmates.
They don?t have a home, or even a soft bed to sleep in.
At night, these children are provided mats and blankets and a spot on the floor, where they often struggle to sleep. Some nights, a few “guests” get a little rowdy. Some nights, the music is turned up too loud. Some nights, Nicholas is bothered by “the yelling, the fussing, the cussing.”
Around 5 a.m. the boys start their day. They are at the school bus stop at 8:40 sharp.
Yet Levi, Nicholas and Christopher aren?t alone. Nearly 2,000 suburban children in the Baltimore region are homeless, according to countywide statistics.
By day, they?re normal kids, going to school while many of their parents go off to work. But by night and on weekends, they?re kids stuck in a shelter, with no place to call home.
The struggle to make ends meet
Steven Burrell is only 6 months old, likely the youngest guest at the Eastern Family Resource Center in Rosedale.
His father, who shares the same name, wanders around the shelter with his tiny son strapped to his chest or nestled quietly in a stroller. On a recent January night, Burrell, 36, cradles the small boy in his arms, at times proudly holding him up like a like a trophy. It?s obvious the small wiggling child is now the center of his father?s universe.
It used to be drugs.
“He?s the one who stopped me from doing what I was doing,” Burrell says, beaming at his chubby son, who grins then yawns as his father speaks. For the past couple months, Burrell has spent his evenings volunteering at the shelter, hopeful he can secure steady work and get an apartment. He dreams of a better life.
Like most suburban homeless, Burrell doesn?t fit the stereotype of his urban counterpart ? someone who has fallen into absolute ruin through drugs and alcohol, someone who spends his days begging and his nights sleeping in cardboard tents. Burrell has accepted his new responsibility ? fatherhood.
Here in the suburbs, families are no strangers at shelters ? families that may include former neighbors and co-workers. Many hold down steady jobs, own cars and attend school. Too many times, it?s just a single event or tragedy that?s forced them out into the cold.
“You?re probably just one paycheck away from being where I am now,” says Marian Horton, 53, who lives in the Rosedale shelter with her 35-year-old son, Ben, and her grandsons, Nicholas and Christopher.
“Grandma” ? as Horton is known at the shelter ? has been at the Resource Center for more than a year. “Too long,” she says. Not even her part-time job as a security guard in Baltimore City or her son?s job as a retail manager have helped her family find independence.
Their corner in the shelter is covered by backpacks and dufflebags bursting at the seams. They are among more than 100 people crammed into four sleeping areas, sharing restrooms and showers. At Eastern, fathers and children can stay together in one room, mothers and children in another room. Single men stay at a different shelter. At the shelter, everyone is welcome. Little screening is done for guests, save for a county intake form and a check against the national sex-offender registry.
Each day after her grandsons leave for school, Horton showers, does the family?s laundry and then stores their belongings in a locker at the shelter, which is open 24 hours a day. Her days are spent looking for a place to live. Nicholas and Christopher arrive back to the shelter a little after 4 p.m. At 7, all the guests sit down for dinner. Lights out, no later than 10:30.
“Everyone falls on hard times,” says Horton, who works weekends. But it?s tough to find affordable housing. “When you make $6.50 an hour, you can?t do it,” she says, adding you still have to pay for food and clothing.
Stephon Batey, who is staying at the Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center (Howard?s only emergency shelter), knows this all too well.
Batey, 19, works as a restaurant host. But at $7.25 an hour, he is struggling to find a place he can afford in a county where the average one-bedroom apartment was $960 in 2005.
“I?m trying to get more hours [at work], but that could take some time,” he says.
Affordable housing is a regionwide problem for many of the suburban homeless. To live in the Baltimore region, a family of four would need to bring in at least $36,000 to afford a $900-a-month apartment, accordingto a Baltimore City task force report on inclusionary housing.
But in the suburbs the homeless more often tend to be families and those with short-term crises, says Martha Burt of the Urban Institute. Because of the astronomical rise in housing costs across the region, many low-income suburban families share homes. When conflict arises for one family, the other is often forced out.
“Rising housing costs are fundamental to this,” says Dr. Dennis Culhane, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania?s School of Social Policy and Practice. “If there was sufficient housing at an affordable price, people would simply move into it, but families have to craft all kinds of solutions to get by.”
And it hasn?t gone unnoticed. Officials around the area have been struggling with the affordable-housing issue.
In Howard County, a recent task force has found the problem “reaching crisis proportions,” calling for major policy changes ? from a dedicated housing fund to higher density residential developments.
In Baltimore County, low-income housing advocates have criticized the county?s redevelopment strategy of buying up and razing blighted low-income housing developments. The developments haven?t been replaced, significantly reducing the low-income housing stock.
But housing is just part of the problem. Another issue for many suburban homeless is transportation.
Many of the housing developments that may be affordable are not always accessible to mass transportation. For example, in Harford County, a half-dozen bus routes transport riders, but many routes end before evening rush hour or make just a few stops.
This makes it nearly impossible to get to and from jobs in a county where many of the homeless are working poor, says Stacy Fair, a case manager with Alliance Inc. in Harford.
Serve someone
For many of those working to prevent sections of suburbs from turning into wastelands of homelessness, the solution rests in two words: more services.
“That?s what?s needed, but actually getting it done is another matter,” says Michael Dear, a professor at the University of Southern California who has been researching homelessness for more than 20 years.
The fact is, many suburban residents don?t want homeless services in their neighborhoods, he adds, and they tend to fight any efforts for shelters or outreach centers. “If everyone did their fair share providing for homeless people in their own communities, then an awful lot of the issues we see would disappear,” he says.
Elizabeth Meadows, community development coordinator with Harford?s Department of Community Services, suggests tackling the issue before it becomes a problem. “The No. 1 step in preventing homelessness is to avoid it,” she says.
And in Carroll County, officials are partnering with the nonprofit Human Services Programs of Carroll County Inc. to do just that. The county, like others in the area, provides a rental-allowance program, which subsidizes residents? rent for up to one year.
There are 20 families being assisted, and there?s a waiting list of at least a year, says Jolene Sullivan, director of the Department of Citizens Services. But that?s 20 families who are not homeless, compared with the roughly 120 individuals in Carroll County on the streets.
Despite some preventative programs, efforts by local governments are missing the mark, some experts say, adding that opening more emergency shelters might offer a short-term solution, but expanding the shelter network fails to remedy the chronic problem.
“The shelter becomes an institution,” says Culhane. “Once you open them you never close them, even though we know there are other approaches that are more effective and can help more families.”
Nevertheless, Carroll County officials are adding 1,920 square feet to the Safe Haven shelter, which provides transitional housing for those with mental illnesses. The addition, which is expected to be completed by next winter, will provide cold-weather shelter in the winter and a multipurpose area during the rest of the year that focuses on job and educational training, Sullivan says.
Similarly, construction began in October for a new facility for the Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center. The building will provide 55 rooms, up from 32, and several additional rooms for counseling. The expansion was prompted by the rising number of people being turned away. In 2005, more than 2,000 people were denied shelter, Grassroots officials said.
Still, for those families who live in the shelters, the stay is not meant to be permanent. There?s always hope for a better tomorrow.
That?s what Grandma Horton is counting on.
“I call this our transitional place,” she says.
And Grandma is not alone. The children believe it too.
On this cold evening in January Levi pats his friend Nicholas on the shoulder: “He?s getting a house,” Levi says with a smile. “He?ll be out of here soon.”
