1. Progress or Regress?
Baltimore’s Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness Is Failing
By Rachel Christian
December 2011
The injustice of homelessness litters the
streets of Baltimore. On the way to dinner in
the Inner Harbor, some friends and I
encountered a woman with graying hair,
tattered clothes, and hungering eyes. She
explained that she needed just seven dollars
to pay the entrance fee into a place where
she could get a hot shower and wash her
clothes. So far, she had received two dollars.
I happened to have a single dollar, so I
offered it to her and wished her luck. As I
entered the restaurant, my friends questioned
if I had done the right thing. What if she
used the money for drugs? What if she had
tried to rob me? These were valid concerns.
She could have been manipulating me for
my money, but I could not ignore the pain in
her eyes. I had other concerns about our
encounter: What happened to this woman
that reduced her to begging for a few
dollars? Why do people have to live that
way? Where is the government? Baltimore
is not doing enough to combat
homelessness, a problem that is steadily
worsening in today’s bleak economy.
Our community has an ever-rising number
of homeless individuals, a fact made clear in
Morgan State University’s 2011 census
report on homelessness in Baltimore. The
report shows an increase of over a thousand
homeless individuals in the city in the past
four years alone (9). The rough economy
contributes to the recent rise. Today, people
are having a hard time finding and keeping
jobs. The job market is horrendous. More
and more companies are eliminating jobs to
cut costs instead of hiring new employees.
Laid-off workers desperately want to work
again. The Baltimore Sun published an
article earlier this year titled “A Grim Time
to be Older, Jobless: Rough Economy is
Pushing Some Unemployed Workers Over
50 into Homelessness.” It explained that
many laid-off workers, particularly middle
aged workers, are struggling to get hired.
Without the proper income, the unemployed
can become the homeless (1). Here in
Baltimore, the percentage of the homeless
population between the ages of 51-61 rose
from about 12% in 2009 to about 30% in
2011 (MD 23; MS 12 ). This statistic is
alarming; that age group is too young to
receive retirement but too old to start a new
career. With fewer companies willing to
hire, it is more difficult for this age group to
get a proper income. Now many of them are
suddenly finding themselves unable to pay
rent, forced to live on the streets of
Baltimore. These individuals don’t want to
be homeless; they do not have much of a
choice.
The poor economic state of the entire
country makes it hard to solve the issue of
homelessness. In 2008, the Obama
administration tried to set up a trust fund for
building more affordable housing, but the
economy caused Congress to postpone
funding it (Pugh 2). A 2009 article in the
Baltimore Sun correctly predicted that 2011
would be a “very tough budget year”
(Carson 2). According to Maryland
Nonprofits, the state budget is lower this
year than it was in 2007, a year before the
10-Year Plan was proposed (1). These
budget problems have pressured the state to
reduce its funding to programs like food
pantries and homeless shelters (Hennessey

2. 1). Without steady financial support from
the government, these programs suffer.
The 2011 Census Report on Homelessness
reported that Baltimore “government
regulations often criminalize this
impoverished group” (23). It makes people
uncomfortable to see men sleeping on park
benches, but else can they sleep? If they
have no family to live with, the homeless
turn to either the shelters or the streets (MS
21). Because there are not nearly enough
shelter beds to match the homeless
population, many people are forced to sleep
outdoors. With a count of at least 4088
individuals experiencing homelessness this
year and only 2544 shelter beds, of course
people have to sleep on the streets (MS 9;
MD 12). This November, some 200 college
students from the Baltimore area gathered
for a ‘sleep-out’ in front of city hall in honor
of National Hunger and Homelessness
Awareness Week; this peaceful effort to
understand the plight of the homeless was
treated like a dangerous uprising by the
city’s police who threatened to arrest the
students (Shen 1). Rather than breaking up
the event, police, government officials, and
lawmakers should have been the ones
sleeping out. In order to fix the problem,
they need a better understanding of what it is
like to be homeless. The need to realize that
people who lose their homes must to find
somewhere to live.
The government is not ignoring the problem
of homelessness. In 2008, Maryland
announced the 10-Year Plan to End
Homelessness which Mayor Rawlings-Blake
summarized as having four main goals:
“affordable housing, comprehensive health
care, sufficient incomes, and preventative
and emergency services” (1). While the city
has made some headway on these goals,
Baltimore is no closer to being rid of
homelessness today than it was three years
ago; in fact, due to the unfortunate economic
hardship, homelessness in the city has
worsened significantly. As part of the Ten-
Year plan, a 275-bed shelter was opened, a
comparably insignificant addition when
there over a thousand people being literally
left in the cold; yet it was called by
Baltimore journalist Mary Gail Hare the
“culmination of one of our goals” in the
plan. She wrote an article about how the
shelter was built “near other service
providers” like Our Daily Bread
Employment Center and Meal Program (1).
But the state prison is also nearby. I have
served at Our Daily Bread and seen the
surrounding area. While the program itself is
truly a wonderful service provider, it is a
shame that it is located in a rundown area
next to a prison. It sends a degrading
message that criminalizes the instead of
uplifting them.
Mayor Rawlings-Blake wrote a rather
optimistic but misleading report entitled
“The Journey Home” in 2010 to assess the
progress of the 10-year plan. It noted only
eight “key accomplishments,” one of which
was the 275-bed shelter. The report was only
about 2 pages compared to the 88 page long
Plan to End Homelessness. The progress
seems insignificant. The four main goals of
the plan were “affordable housing,
comprehensive health care, sufficient
incomes, and preventative and emergency
services,” but none of the eight “key
accomplishments” even addressed the issues
of affordable housing or sufficient income,
crucial components to solving homelessness
in the long term. Health care was the biggest
success with the opening of the new Health
Care for the Homeless clinic. While the
center saves lives and keeps people healthy,
it cannot change the fact that people do not
have a home. The remaining seven
accomplishments thus far deal only with
“emergency services” like the new shelter.

3. These are only temporary solutions, not long
term ones. Homelessness is not going down
but up, and the economy and the insufficient
short-term priorities of Baltimore’s
government are at fault.
At this rate, Baltimore will not reach its goal
in ten years. The Plan to End Homelessness
is failing because its efforts have not done
nearly enough to properly tackle such a
massive problem. Homelessness cannot be
solved with the kind of short term fixes that
have been the focus for the past three years.
The real solution is to fix the economy,
particularly the job market. More jobs need
to be created. If people cannot afford to pay
rent, they will certainly continue to remain
without homes. Also, it is crucial that
lawmakers and law-enforcers see the
homeless as victims rather than criminals.
One cannot understand how to fix a problem
without first understanding the essence of
the problem.

4. Works Cited
“A Grim Time to be Older, Jobless: Rough Economy is Pushing Some Unemployed Workers
Over 50 into Homelessness.” The Baltimore Sun. 23 Jan 2011.
Carson, Larry. “Homeless Advocates Speak Up Amid Budgetary Gloom.” The Baltimore Sun.
29 Nov 2009: .3.
Governor's Interagency Council on Homelessness. 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness. 2005.
Print.
Hare, Mary Gail. “275-Bed Shelter Advances City’s War on Homelessness: Fallsway Building
Will Be Near Other Service Providers.” The Baltimore Sun. 24 June 2011: .3.
Hennessey. Kathleen. “Programs in Limbo Amid Federal Budget Battles.” The Baltimore Sun.
29 Dec 2010: .7.
Maryland Nonprofits. Legislative Report. 16 April 2010.
Maryland Department of Human Resources. Office of Grants Management. Annual Report on
Homeless Services, Fiscal Year 2009. Baltimore, 2009. Print.
Morgan State University School of Architecture and Planning. Counting Matters: Baltimore City
Homeless Point-In-Time Census Report (2011). Report submitted to the Mayor’s Office
of Human Services. 2011.
Pugh, Tony. “Lowest-Income Renters Priced Out: Report Finds Supply of Affordable Units is
Dwindling; Millions are Paying More Than Half Their Income.” The Baltimore Sun.
04 Feb 2011: .11.
Rawlings-Blake, Stephanie. The Journey Home. March 2010.
Shen, Fern. "Group's “sleep-out” in Solidarity with Homeless Shut down by Baltimore Police."
Baltimore Brew. 19 Nov. 2011. Web. 3 Dec. 2011.
<http://www.baltimorebrew.com/2011/11/19/group-conducting-sleep-out-in-solidarity-
with-homeless-ejected-by-baltimore-police/>.