Written By Lisa Breslin
The bride and groom wore black. Jazz pianist Eric Byrd provided the wedding music, and the witnesses were a mixture of some 45 new friends and strangers. The “chapel” was the place where the couple had met and would probably spend many more nights: the Human Services Program’s cold weather shelter in Westminster.
The pair, Mike Fernekee, 22, and Nicole Clayton, 24, were both homeless. They never dreamed that at a time when their lives were so unsettled, they would find peace in each other and marry.
Unemployed and estranged from her family, Nicole had been homeless for three months. A strong Christian, she spent a lot of time writing and visiting with her priest. She tried living out of her truck, but checked into the cold weather shelter when the temperatures dipped to freezing.
Mike, who works many days on the corner of Route 140 and Center Street, holding sale signs for a local jeweler, had been following the check-in-at-6 p.m., check-out-by-7 a.m. routine at the same shelter since the end of November.
The couple had plenty of time to talk; she often wrote him letters. He fell in love with her because “she is a strong woman, independent, devoted and loyal,” and he loves “the way she looks when she is doing something she loves to do.”
Nicole said she loves Mike’s creative talents and the fact that “everything about him is beautiful.”
“It was immediately obvious that they are each other’s soul mates,” said Jay Hutchison, a resident of Safe Haven who helps manage the temporary housing shelter and who married the couple.
Although little about Mike and Nicole’s wedding was traditional, a glance about the wedding party confirmed what many had suspected for a long time: the look of the homeless in Carroll County is not very different from that of people who live in homes.
The faces of the homeless community in Carroll County are a kaleidoscope of young and old, weathered and fresh, married and single, mentally ill and stable, addicted and clean, troubled and carefree.
In the local homeless community, Leroy Sheeler is known as the “Godfather of Westminster.” Homeless since age 15, he obtained housing a few days before Christmas. He is now 66.
Charles Livingston, newly released from jail after serving time for a shoplifting charge, checked into the county Human Services Program’s cold weather shelter the week before Christmas.
Jim Carlson, who has been homeless for several months, finds peace in art. His work includes a brightly colored English garden painted around the pay phone at the local shelter. A focal point of the mural includes signs at crossroads identified as Scylla and Charybdis.
“Those are Greek words that are loosely translated as a rock and a hard place,” said Jim.
From July 2004, until February 2008, more than 1,028 people were designated as homeless in Carroll County, according to Rita Zimmerman, deputy director of the county’s Department of Citizens Services.
Every two years, for a snapshot of the local homeless population, representatives from a variety of agencies and outreach programs span the county during a 24-hour period and count all the homeless people they can find.
The “Point in Time” count for January 2007, was 127 people, according Zimmerman.
“With the rising number of foreclosures and evictions, the numbers will rise,” she said. “Carroll County is perceived as a wealthy county, but an alarming number of people live at or below poverty level. Many residents have no idea that 20 percent – as many as 11,000 households – are at or below poverty level. I see that poverty every day.”
Of the 1,028 homeless counted between July 2004 and February 2008 there were:
¥ 176 children, 365 women and 487 men;
¥ 283 disabled, 90 over the age of 55 and 47 veterans;
¥ 112 chronically homeless;
¥ 352 who used the cold weather shelter;
¥ 81 percent who did not return for a second season.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, nearly 8,000 homeless people lived in Maryland in 2007. Of those, 2,904 were in Baltimore City, 1,209 in Montgomery County, and 939 in Prince George’s County.
“We are the happiest dysfunctional family you will ever find,” said Dan Waddell, who currently lives in Safe Haven, a temporary housing shelter, with his wife, Kelly.
Reasons that land people on the street, or in any one of the six shelters in the county, range from domestic violence and evictions to mental health problems, loss of job or transportation, substance abuse, or low income. Some clients listed criminal activity or release from institutions as causes for homelessness. Many clients check “no reason” when polled by outreach agencies.
“The two headed monster” that many homeless battle, according to Waddell, is a combination of a mental health problems and addiction.
“I’m one of the Ôlucky’ ones who is in what is called Double Trouble and Recovery, or DTR,” he said. “Eventually, after years of being homeless, I was diagnosed as rapid-cycling bipolar. I can be happy at noon, hate the world by 2, cry by 4, and be happy by 6 p.m. It is tough, and it was a long time before I took the diagnosis seriously; even longer time to get the right treatment. And I had to learn not to use my mental illness as a crutch, or to get pity or make excuses for and with it.”
Zimmerman is part of a county committee called Circle of Caring, a group comprised of representatives from nonprofit and government agencies and the faith, homeless and general communities, committed to creating and carrying out a 10-year plan to end homelessness by 2019.
Committee members have no illusions about this daunting goal. Initial steps include getting a true sense of the magnitude of the problem and raising public awareness.
Zimmerman has journeyed to city and town council meetings with alarming statistics and tentative solutions for the countywide problem.
A majority of the solutions considered to date are linked to housing and transportation issues. Circle of Caring’s vision, according to the most recent executive summary of the 10-year plan, calls for creation of “Housing First” units or single-room occupancy to reduce jail and shelter stays; permanent supportive housing for all in need; low income rental units with mixed-use zoning and transitional housing with case management services; an increase in rental assistance funding to prevent evictions, and limited use of shelters.
“This is not just a Ôshould have,’ Ôcould have’ plan,” said Zimmerman. “We are going to do it.”
“The rest of the world can care, love, and empathize, but you can’t really understand what being homeless is like until you are,” said Waddell. “It’s like being pregnant. Unless someone is really dealing with it, they can’t possibly know what it is like.”
For the homeless in Westminster, days often follow a pattern:
Check out of the Cold Weather Shelter, which is located near the senior center in Westminster, by 7 a.m.
Coffee at a local convenience store on one end of Main Street, if you can afford it – and cigarettes – and then a slow walk up the street toward the library.
If the weather is kind, you might spend time in front of the public library or walk down to the train tracks nearby. Or you might rest under the pine tree grove at the cemetery to chat with friends or soak in sun and privacy.
You’ll get a good lunch and spiritual feeding at one of the local soup kitchens. Reliably, local churches and nonprofit organizations offer lunch seven days a week, and on Thursdays Grace Lutheran Church serves dinner hosted by Ardentfolk on Carroll Street.
If you are plugged into local resources, the day also includes a stop at On Our Own wellness and recovery center where the past or currently homeless are trying to find a bridge back to the conventional world.
The homeless pattern might also include counseling at a nonprofit or faith-based organization. Some people get counseling at Granite House or visit with a case worker who works for the Human Services Program or the Carroll County Youth Services Bureau.
The daily routine for the homeless in the area is filled with loneliness and joy, resilience and kindness, familiar faces and few new ones.
There are countless stories of survival and tumultuous spirals back; back to addiction or the depths of mental illness.
Sometimes, if you are lucky and you have your mental and physical health, the daily pattern includes part or full-time employment.
You might hold the “Liquidation Sale, Everything Must Go” sign at the major intersections on Route 140, work for a local construction company or plug away for minimum wage in a restaurant kitchen.If you are not working, most of your money comes from disability checks.
At 7 p.m., you check in at the cold weather shelter, where you will probably get another meal donated by the local hospital. You shower, toss clothes in the laundry and eventually break down the tables that were used at dinner time. You pull out a green mat that is provided by the shelter and find a place on the floor next to 28 others who share similar life patterns.
“We are a community of people who have seen and done some amazing things. Some have coached teams to championships, or championed civil rights with people like Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King,” said Waddell. “People might look at some of us and think, ÔWho is this dirty bum?’ but that is because they just don’t know us.”
No Shortage of Will to Help, Just a Lessening of Way
The word on the street, from both providers and recipients, is that if you have to be homeless, there is no place like Carroll County when it comes to advocates and resources.
Assistance, as well as bridges back to a life off the streets, include six shelters, soup kitchens seven days a week, medical assistance, counseling, life skills training and recovery programs. Among them are Shepherd’s Staff, Ascension Church, St. Johns, Grace Lutheran, On Our Own, Granite House, the Carroll County Youth Services Bureau, Human Services Programs (HSP), Neighbors in Need, Laurie Galloway, Andre Futrell, Pastor Darrell Foster, Kathy Brown, Sharon Plump – just some of the people and places heralded as “guardian angels” or “little bits of heaven on earth” by members of the homeless community.
Advocates for the homeless draw high praise from the people they serve, mainly because the shelters open to their clients are well maintained, clean, and perhaps most important, respectful.
But respect doesn’t mean that members of the homeless community are coddled. After all, their advocates include people like Jeanette Berger (Associate Director, HSP), Kathy Bitzer (Deputy Director of Shelter and Housing) and Steve Mood (Director, HSP) who, collectively, have worked with the needy for more than 66 years.
The countless hours spent at shelters or on the streets, reaching out to the homeless, have given Berger, Bitzer and Mood a distinct get-things-done-with-compassion-but-no-pity attitude.
“I don’t feel sorry for people, or say things like ÔOh, God, you’re homeless’ in a so-sorry tone,” said Berger. “With that approach, they won’t survive. I’m constantly telling clients that just because they have a disability, that doesn’t prevent them from living; from gaining some life skills that enable them to become self sufficient.”
Crucially, there is the “here’s-the-help-hold-the-pity” assistance, combined with the high volume of volunteer hours donated by current and past clients, that keep the outreach network stellar, said Berger and Mood.
Jay Hutchison and Chris Fico, for example, live in Safe Haven, a temporary shelter available to the homeless. Both men help check in clients and manage the adjacent cold weather shelter almost every day. They clean, cook, counsel, console and mentor folks they consider friends who just happen to be homeless.
“I have a passion to be here,” said Hutchison. “Passion and compassion. These people are not the dregs of society. They have great personalities, talents and intellects. They are just in a bad season right now. Many are one bad day, one paycheck away from being here. I help them realize that if they want to change, opportunity is here.”
Perhaps the best example of a volunteer-based success story is the county’s On Our Own drop-in center.
“This place is here to catch you before you fall too far,” said Dan Waddell, another Safe Haven resident and an On Our Own volunteer. “Through peer support, we offer a bridge to services for housing, paying bills and job training. We run a lot of interference.”
On Our Own, a statewide initiative, opened in 2001 in the basement of the Farm Museum with “folks sitting around on boxes and crates planning,” said Waddell.
On Our Own moved from the Farm Museum to a space above what is now Papa Joe’s Mexican Restaurant. It stayed there for five years, then moved to its current, client-remodeled location near Pizza Boli’s and the Laundromat off Main Street in Westminster.
Laurie Galloway is the paid director for Own Our Own, but the place is run primarily by homeless or once homeless volunteers like Dan and his wife, Kelly.
“There are many success stories, but there are still people struggling,” said Waddell. “We are here for them.”
Waddell, other advocates for the homeless, and even the homeless themselves note that shelter doors can be open and resources can be available, but the people who are on the street are not always willing to take advantage of offered help.
Advocates for the homeless also worry that despite the many resources available, it is getting tougher to provide assistance. The number of people and households needing assistance continues to climb, but federal, state and grant funding remains level.
“We are running 28 programs with limited funding sources and my challenge is how to mix and match resources and funding and find a way to make it work,” said Mood. The statistics tell the story:
Human Services Programs reports that an annual average of 1,689 households and 3,238 people utilized homeless prevention services from 2004 to 2007. Approximately 693 households were at or below 75 percent of poverty level; 1,171 individuals were over the age of 60; 245 were disabled and 572 were children under the age of 15.
“Being poor in a rich community is very difficult,” said Rita Zimmerman, deputy director of the county’s Department of Citizens Services. “In Westminster there were 838 Section-8 vouchers in Westminster and the county. The waiting list is over 1,300 families and the wait is three to five years. Fair market rent for a two bedroom place is $1,013, which requires an annual income of $40,520.”
According to the 2006 American Fact Finder (U.S. Census), 21 percent of Carroll County households earn less than $35,000 per year.
“I worry about how many more people we are going to see and how we will juggle resources to help them,” said Berger.
Rapper Bill, Home at Last
etween the ages of 19 and 32, “Rapper Bill” Kern lived on the streets of Westminster, panhandling for money at night and rapping lyrics about street life by day.
He also robbed and conned acquaintances to earn cash to support his drug and alcohol habits.
“I was drinking, drugging – doing the wrong things. Got into crack cocaine, benzoids and ecstasy; little about me was pretty,” he said.
As ugly as things got, Kern, now 34, also recalls an amazing camaraderie on the streets: “I made the choice to be there even though there were ways out. It was where I belonged. I met great people thereÉfor so long, homelessness was home – it called to me.”
“It was very painful. I was watching my son drown and I couldn’t save him,” said Kern’s mother, Janice Piper. “I went through several emotions – ÔIt’s all my fault’, ÔHow did I mess up parenting so much?’”
“He kept telling me, ÔThese are my choices. It’s not your fault,’” Piper added. “But I felt like it was my fault.”
William Kern’s in-and-out-of-jail, in-and-out-of-shelters and addictions lifestyle mirrors hundreds of homeless lives in Carroll County. His fallout with family and friends parallels fallouts in hundreds of other families as well.
But Kern’s crawl out of addictions and into permanent housing is a journey made by relatively few.
During the bad years, Kern suspects that people called him a “a crack head,” “untrustworthy,” even “a rip-off artist,” he said. “Because I was.”
When he traces his path to homelessness, he recalls a father who was seldom home and didn’t believe in his dreams. His mother was patient, but often not home, because she worked hard to support them. He is aware now of mental health issues – depression and being bipolar – that went undiagnosed for years.
He started getting high on pot when he was 13 years old. He drank his first alcohol, a vodka and orange juice cocktail, when he was 10, at a reception for his aunt and uncle who renewed their wedding vows.
His mother remembers William as an industrious, respectful child with an academic record that was far from stellar. She believes that in addition to the tough relationship he had with his father, two other factors pushed him toward a homeless life: poor mentors and an insensitive teacher who told him he would amount to little.
“Billy spent a lot of time with a family in the neighborhood and I liked that because I thought he was enjoying time with a family unit and he needed a good father figure,” Piper said. “I just didn’t know about the pot. I wish I had.”
Piper has remarried and lives in Pennsylvania where her family includes a teenager. She said that she “asks a lot more questions about friends and where time is spent” than she did when she was raising William.
The years that Kern was homeless, she was marginally aware of his lifestyle. But sometimes she would drive up and down the streets just to see him or ask people if he was okay, or even still alive.
Kern lived near the train tracks, under bridges, in shelters and with family or friends. He slept in the dugout at Westminster City Park or in vacant homes, always moving to avoid trespassing or loitering charges. More often than not, he said he was “happy.”
“For many years I didn’t think life could get any better,” Kern said. “There was a sense of freedom, no responsibility for bills, just worry about where to get the next meal.”
“My biggest worry, really, was how to get the next drink or the next drug,” he added. “I took money from people; I conned people.”
“When you are wrapped up in addiction, it controls your decisions,” Piper said. “Billy sunk down into addictions and that became such a lifestyle that he didn’t know anything different. It was easier to do nothing, to deny the need for change.”
“I begged, I pleaded, I prayed,” Piper said “But I had to come to the realization that he chose his life. There was nothing I could do but accept him for who he was.”
Finally, Kern said, he got “tired of being tired and living a wretched existence in and out of jail.” He enrolled himself in a recovery program when he was in jail in 2006 and ultimately completed a program through the county drug rehab program, Junction, later that year.
He credits that program, his spirituality, and his “intelligent, nice, caring, understanding and pretty” case worker, Sharon Plump, as the influences that pulled him off the streets.
Kern lives in a $900 a month rental apartment on Main Street in Westminster near a young daughter he dotes on. He has lived there since July with his girlfriend, Nicole, who works at the local mall. She is also involved in Kern’s recovery.
Kern collects monthly disability checks for $637 and receives assistance for his electricity bills. He spends a lot of his spare time helping friends, working odd jobs, and, when the weather is warm, talking to friends on the porch.
With continued counseling by Bill Ebeling (Carroll County Youth Services Bureau), his medication, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) meetings and close monitoring by his case worker, Kern hopes that his life will never spiral back.
He plans to get a degree in counseling or find a way to open and run housing for people who are trying to transition away from the streets.
His future includes the birth of another daughter. Nicole is expecting a baby in March.
Kern hopes people will describe him now as “trustworthy, loyal, a good man.”
“Now I can say I’m proud that he was there and now he is not,” Piper said. “I’ve talked to a lot of people, well-to-do and not so well off, and I know that this can happen to anyone. It doesn’t just take poverty or dysfunction; it is not always the parents’ fault. It can just happen.”
