Homeless shelters aren?t for everyone, even in the suburbs.
One 59-year-old man, known as Dave, opts for a tent over the shelters, which he complains are always full.
Dressed in a hooded black sweatshirt and dirty cargo pants, Dave, whose weathered face is framed by a tangled beard, stands on the side of Route 175 near Route 1 in Jessup, holding a cardboard sign that says: “homeless, hungry, anything helps, god bless.”
He?s not bothering anyone by holding a sign, he says, but he does want to set the record straight on the homeless.
“Don?t look down on the people out here,” he says. “We?re not all selling crack. We?re not stealing. We?re just trying to maintain.”
Shirley Mays, 57, a former homeless woman who now lives in transitional housing in Aberdeen in Harford County, has never gone to a shelter, fearing for her safety.
In her homeless days, she often slept on the porch of a doctor?s office, clearing out before the morning cleaning crew showed up.
“If you don?t know where to look, you?ll never see them,” she says of the people who are homeless.
Many residents don?t want to look.
In one of the most affluent counties in the United States, “it?s easy to think everyone is well off,” says the Rev. Mary Dennis, of Howard County?s Glen Mar United Methodist Church, which hosts a cold-weather shelter for two weeks in the winter. Last month, 171 homeless people were counted in the county.
Church member and Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center employee Debbie Meyer agrees.
County residents “want to pretend it?s not happening,” she says. “We need to get it out in the open and say we have a problem.”
