‘Everyone Deserves a Place to Sleep at Night’

[Joanne98]

C. Fraser Smith
In the beginning, city officials asked these homeless activists if they could avoid calling attention to themselves: no high-visibility signs or big lettering at the front door of the old bank building they had rented. This was back in the day when critics of help for the homeless had a kind of reverse Field of Dreams view of things: If you don’t build a refuge, they said, maybe they won’t come.

If you don’t address the problem, in other words, maybe it’ll go away.

The lettering on the window outside the old Equitable Bank Building at 111 Park Ave. still doesn’t demand attention. But the problem didn’t go away. Street people had their ways of communicating. They got to know where they could go for help.

Nor did Jeff Singer and the handful of men and women who work with him go away. They have shown several generations of Baltimore leaders how the city might demonstrate care and compassion for men, women and children who sleep under expressway ramps and in churchyards.

They have done their work with such relentless avidity that official Baltimore, once anxious for them to disappear, has become a champion. The state has become a partner as well, allotting $3.7 million for the program over the years. Private citizens and various charitable organizations are raising $15.5 million for a new facility. Of this about $14 million is in hand, so the fundraising continues.

Thus on Thursday, city and state officials will be on hand to inaugurate a new Health Care for the Homeless center at the corner of Hillen Street and the Fallsway.

“It’s kind of amazing to us,” says Mr. Singer, a social worker and social change agent. “People told us we’d never be able to raise the money. We weren’t big enough. We didn’t have enough of a base. But we persisted.”

Mr. Singer’s persistence and profile have become legend. He’s been as quiet a champion as any member of the establishment could want. With his navy blue tam, his head and face haloed in white hair, he smiles as if the world will always come around to his way of thinking.

And so it has. Mayor Sheila Dixon recently announced a 10-year plan to end homelessness. She stood her ground against the naysayers with this observation: “Everyone deserves a place to sleep at night.”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/03/10778/

[Demeter]

1. K&R For Making a Difference and Leading the Way