Winter 2008 Issue 7

Jeff Singer is President and CEO of Health Care of the Homeless. This interview was recorded in his office in January 2008.

There is a common assumption in our society that homelessness is caused by personal irresponsibility, often attributed to mental illness or substance abuse. Do you agree with this view, or is homelessness produced by deeper structural and economic conditions?

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Reverend Annie Chambers lives in Baltimore and is currently the regional president of the Welfare Rights Union, She is also president of the National Homeless Union, Big Momma’s House for youth and families in public housing, and Scattered Site Rehab Housing.

How long have you been involved in the fight for welfare and housing rights?

About 40 years—I started in Welfare Rights in 1969.

How did you get involved in this struggle and where?

Power Inside is a multidisciplinary program that is committed to building self-sufficiency and preventing incarceration among women and families in Baltimore through direct client services, advocacy, leadership development and public education. In 2005 the program released a study titled The WINDOW Study, Release from Jail: Moment of Crisis or Window of Opportunity for Female Detainees in Baltimore City. The goal of The WINDOW Study was to document the lives of women detained at the Baltimore City Detention Center (BCDC) in order to inform gender-responsive policies and programs.

Mayor Sheila Dixon published The Journey Home: Baltimore City’s 10-year Plan to End Homelessness on January 17, 2008. It appeared a few months after Joan Jacobson of the Abell Foundation, a Baltimore-based non-profit grant-making organization, produced her The Dismantling of Baltimore’s Public Housing (Sept. 2007). Mayor Dixon signed her name on The Journey Home, but it is, in fact, the product of an 80-person working group that included representatives of non-governmental organizations in Baltimore.

Homelessness is an issue that should be a concern to everyone in Baltimore, yet many of our young people are still homeless and living on the streets. Baltimore City currently has over 7,000 youths in care, and of these, roughly half will spend at least one year in foster care, with 20 percent staying longer than three years. Adults who were in foster care are more likely to be homeless, incarcerated, and dependent on state services than the general population.

St. Vincent De Paul Catholic Church stands a few blocks from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, at the southern most point of interstate 83. Adjacent to the church is a small park, commonly referred to as Wino Park, Tent City, or Bum Park. The names are the result of a homeless population who have, over the years, claimed and reclaimed this space as a place of social activity and rest.

The national credit crisis, with its symptomatic rash of foreclosures, could be devastating to Baltimore. The crisis risks undoing modest and fragile gains made in homeownership in the city. Housing advocates argue that homeownership is key to the health of Baltimore: those who own their residences are more likely to keep them up and remain in the neighborhood, thereby stemming the tide of boarded-up housing.

In November 6, 1979 Baltimore citizens approved 72,000 to 67,000 a charter amendment to establish rent control in the city. Baltimore was then the eight largest city in the United States.
Two weeks later, a Maryland judge ruled as unconstitutional both the rent control law and the right to institute it by referendum. June 3, 1980, the Maryland State Supreme Court of Appeals by a 6-1 vote upheld the lower court decision. Though rent control was thrown out for good, the popular mobilization for Question K was a significant effort.

Joyce Lewis grew up in Northeast Baltimore, in a house on Argonne Drive; her parents had been among the first to desegregate the neighborhood. She lived there herself for some years, then spent time in Oakland, California, before returning to Baltimore, where she subsequently lost her family home and took to drugs. She is now rehabilitated and living in senior citizen housing. She has a daughter and two grandsons.

Hey girl, come ’ere.

Let me give you some luv instead of kickin yo ass.

See, whefa you know it or not

I’m a new creature in Christ.

Michael Gant grew up in Baltimore in the 50s and 60s. The break-up of his second marriage led to his addiction to cocaine, his arrest for theft, and his subsequent homelessness. More recently, the death by overdose of a close friend strengthened his wish to change his life. He has been clean for a year now, and has found a place to live off the streets.

The House at 409

The empty house at 409
This is the house all addicts find.
It’s the same address on every block,
It’s the one we find after we cop.