New Ronald McDonald House heart lights up Baltimore’s skyline

The 26-foot heart above the new Ronald McDonald House scheduled to open this Spring was illuminated on Feb. 26, 2019. The new house will be located in the Jonestown neighborhood. (Ronald McDonald House Charities)

If you “heart” anything about the Ronald McDonald House Charities that provides housing for seriously ill or injured children — and who doesn’t? — you might find your own ticker giving an approving thump at the newest addition to Baltimore’s skyline.

A 26-foot tall red heart that sits above the $30 million, 60,000 square foot House being built in the Jonestown neighborhood officially was lit up Monday night, signalling that the new facility, which will accommodate up to 2,200 families annually, or double the amount that can squeeze into the current House, is one step nearer completion.

When it is completed later this Spring, the impressive new facility at 1 Aisquith St. will include such amenities as 54 guest rooms, a meditation space, a kitchen and dining room, a family business center with computers and printers and a kids-only “magic room.”

The current building at 635 W. Lexington Ave. is the only Ronald McDonald House in Maryland and has provided shelter for more than 35,000 families since it opened in 1982, the release said. But, it’s simply too small to keep up with the demand.

Charity administrators are eager to get off on the right foot with their new neighbors. The release said the organization will improve nearby McKim Park for the use of Jonestown residents by building a new basketball court and playground and by sprucing up the green space.

“After years of planning and fundraising, we are thrilled that construction is almost completed and our dream … will soon be a reality,” Sandy Pagnotti, president and CEO of the Maryland charity said in the release. “We will double our capacity to serve families in crisis who come to Baltimore in search of hope and care at our world class medical institutions.”

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Baltimore program turns vacant public housing apartments into homes for chronically homeless families

Diamond Christy moved into Douglass Homes with her two children in a pilot program that takes empty housing units, renovates them, and moves the most vulnerable families into them. (Kim Hairston, Baltimore Sun video)

Baltimore’s latest effort to get the most vulnerable families into permanent housing and off the streets, out of shelters and no longer couch surfing involves an obvious solution: pairing them up with vacant apartments in the city’s public housing complexes that have sat empty amid a shortage of federal dollars to fix them up.

The Housing Authority of Baltimore launched a new program with the Mayor’s Office of Human Services and Health Care for the Homeless to place up to 50 chronically homeless families into the units that have been in need of repair. To start, a dozen families will be selected to move into newly refurbished apartments by pooling $500,000 between the agencies.

“The Housing Plus Pilot program is designed to make an immediate impact on the huge issue of homelessness in our city,” said Janet Abrahams, executive director of Baltimore’s Housing Authority. “These homes represent our contribution to joining with the city in collectively addressing the crisis.”

Diamond Christy and her 1-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter were among the first families placed in a home. She got the keys to their new apartment in East Baltimore’s Douglass Homes late last year.

Christy, 23, grew up in Edgewood but lost a place to live when her grandmother’s home went into foreclosure and a relative’s home got too crowded. In September, she moved into a shelter in a church basement in Baltimore with her son and left her daughter with family so the girl could stay in her school.

“I didn’t have anywhere to go,” Christy said. “I found a shelter, and said I was going to make the best out of it. It was a big, old room full of beds and women and children. I was really determined to get out of there.”

Christy, who recently found a job in a hair salon with a goal of going to college to study business management, heard about the new housing program and applied after about three months in the shelter.

She said she was overwhelmed by her new place: fresh paint, clean floors, a kitchen with cherry cabinets and new appliances — and the chance to be reunited with her daughter.

“It felt good to be in a place of my own, safe and secure for my kids and myself,” Christy said. “I can go to sleep with peace of mind.”

Abrahams, who was hired about a year and a half ago, said she came up with the idea after a strategy session with her staff.

Together, the housing authority and the mayor’s office are splitting the cost of the program, drawing, in part, on community development block grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Abrahams said it is unclear how much the program will cost as it grows to serve 50 families, because it will depend on how much it costs to renovate the empty public housing units.

The maintenance backlog at the city’s public housing complexes runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars. At least 150 units are estimated to be empty, but an exact number wasn’t available Wednesday. The housing authority’s average vacancy rate is less than 4 percent across the 10 complexes it operates.

The families are being selected through a screening system used by city outreach workers and advocates to determine how vulnerable a homeless person or family is, including their risk of preventable death on the streets. The screening process identifies what services they need to live independently. Case managers from Health Care for the Homeless will work to make sure the families stay on their feet.

Under the program, the families will move into complexes including the 400-unit Douglass Homes, the 700-unit Latrobe Homes and the 1,400-unit Cherry Hill Homes. In public housing, families must pay 30 percent of their incomes toward rent.

The housing authority also provides 700 vouchers to house homeless people in Section 8 properties.

Kevin Lindamood, director of Health Care for the Homeless, said the program — leaning on a public-private partnership — is a creative solution in a tough climate for public housing authorities that have seen dramatic disinvestment from the federal government.

“It’s a shame to have public housing units that our community owns but aren’t habitable because there haven’t been resources to renovate them,” Lindamood said. “By creatively identifying resources, we can end homelessness for more families.”

Terry Hickey, director of the Mayor’s Office of Human Services, said the new program is among many efforts underway to serve the approximately 2,500 men, women and children who are homeless in Baltimore. The number is expected to be updated soon as the city awaits the results of a count of homeless people staying in shelters and on the streets on a single night in January.

Hickey’s office also is looking to rewrite contracts with service providers to require they help transition people from emergency shelters to temporary or permanent housing more quickly. Some people have been living in city shelters for years when a stay should really be 90 days or less, Jerrianne Anthony, who leads homeless services for the city, told council members at a luncheon this week.

“We can’t get vulnerable people who are on our streets into our shelters if you have people who have been there for 5, 6, 7 years,” Anthony said. “It should not be a maze for them to access shelter. We have to make it easier for them. They are already in crisis. They are experiencing a lot of trauma.”

Many like 30-year-old Cardi Searcy did not know where they would sleep Wednesday.

Searcy said to avoid the snow, freezing rain and blustery cold, she has spent the last week staying in abandoned houses — worried she will be bitten by an animal, caught by authorities or worse — after fleeing a situation with a roommate that had become dangerous.

She said has been turned away from shelters because she does not want to give up her dog Queen, a 3-year-old pit bull mix that Searcy said has saved her from being attacked. She said she has a job lined up at a pizza shop but needs to sort out her housing situation first.

“I haven’t really been stable,” Searcy said. “I was stable at one point.

“My dog … she is all I got.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Ian Duncan contributed to this report.

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Maryland receives $53.3 million from HUD to help the homeless

Maryland has received $53.3 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help the homeless, the federal agency announced Friday.

“Local communities in Maryland are on the front lines, working day in and day out to reduce homelessness,” Joe DeFelice, HUD’s Mid-Atlantic regional administrator, said in a statement. “I’m pleased we can bolster their efforts by renewing support to 143 existing programs and funding 20 new, promising projects.”

The money, in the form of Continuum of Care Program grants, will support a range of interventions designed to help those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness with emergency shelter and transitional and permanent housing.

As death of woman who helped panhandler gets national attention, Baltimore homeless see decline in generosity

Among area groups to receive funding are Behavioral Health System Baltimore, $4.1 million; Project PLASE, whose four grants totaled close to $3.4 million; the AIRS Shelter Plus Care program, which was awarded more than $1.5 million; House of Ruth, whose two grants came to about $1.5 million, and Health Care for the Homeless, which received more than $1.1 million.

Last month, HUD announced nearly $2 billion in funding to thousands of homeless assistance programs across the country.

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‘Chili Bowl Sunday’ feeds hundreds of homeless in Baltimore

Chili Bowl Sunday founder, Asma Hanif, right, assists Charles Callahan, 67, by holding his bowl of chili as a volunteer offers water, at the annual event held near the Fallsway underpass. (Amy Davis / Baltimore Sun)

Smelling the chili in the air, the homeless along Fallsway in Baltimore quickly queued up.

Beyond 10 steaming aluminum trays of chili, volunteers loaded tables on the sidewalk with a bounty of cornbread, bagels, hot dogs, snack bags and other food for hundreds of people who stopped by the “Chili Bowl Sunday” this weekend. Attendees also were offered toiletries, clothes and medical services.

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The chili was meaty, hot and a little spicy, just the way Keith Alexander likes it — although “not as spicy as I used to like,” he said. “I’m getting older.”

The 54-year-old has been struggling to reclaim his house in Cedonia, on the northeast side of the city, since last summer. Sunday’s hot meal, provided by Inge Benevolent Ministries, put a smile on his face and God’s praise on his lips.

“God is so good,” Alexander said. “The simple things mean a lot. This is what life is supposed to be about. … To God be the glory.”

The food giveaway began in Atlanta about 25 years ago as a way for Asma Hanif to encourage her children to spend part of Super Bowl Sunday volunteering, she said.

It subsequently moved with them to Baltimore and expanded, said Hanif, executive director of Inge Benevolent Ministries, a shelter and center for victims of domestic violence in Northwest Baltimore.

“I thought [watching the game] was a colossal use of time,” Hanif said. “I wanted my children to go out and do something, and you can’t really mess up chili,” Hanif said.

While many people brought their own food donations, the event is a family affair for Hanif.

Her ministry is named after her father, J.T. Inge, who was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for serving as one of the first black Marines in the 1940s. Her daughter, Aliyah Inge-Hanif Wilson, 25, has participated in the chili giveaway since she was a child and has helped organize it since she was old enough.

“As a human, this is just what you’re supposed to do,” Wilson said. “We’re here in the community. We have to be part of the community.”

City Councilman Kristerfer Burnett and his mother, Elraine Burnett, were on chili duty in their fourth year participating in the event.

“We’re here making sure people get a good meal,” the councilman said, ladling it into Styrofoam bowls for those in line. “It’s what Baltimore’s all about.”

Akeda Pearson, a board member of Inge Benevolent Ministries, pointed out the volunteers enjoying the food with those they were serving.

“They eat chili, we eat chili,” she said. “We break bread together. Just because people are not experiencing their best life today doesn’t mean they don’t have someone to care for them.”

“This is a form of worship,” Pearson added. “No walls — we’re ministering to people.”

Aboard a pair of shuttle buses at the curb, Amerigroup offered free blood-pressure and HIV screenings, as well as winter clothing and other items.

“When you bring the services to them, you see a better turnout,” said Nykol Mariano, an Amerigroup community relations representative. “It’s a one-stop-shop for food, clothing and heath screenings.”

Stewart Jones, 56, was homeless until getting an apartment on Maryland Avenue a few months ago. He followed his nose from St. Vincent de Paul Church nearby and rolled his wheelchair to the chili giveaway, near the corner of Fallsway and Centre Street.

Jones had a mix of two kinds of chili in his bowl. His review was nothing short of five stars.

“It tastes like it should be in Atlanta at the Super Bowl,” he said. “This is football chili. It really is.”

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