DIVERSE WOES LEAD TO HOMELESSNESS

Poverty, Substance Abuse To Blame In Cecil, Study Finds

ELKTON, Md. -- She calls homelessness her "familiar pain."

If it's easy to read that pain in the lines of 43-year-old Dru
Bleecher's face, it is as effortless to read joy in her eyes when she
talks with friends at the Wayfarer House near downtown.

"Don't call us homeless," Bleecher said, chain-smoking cigarettes in
a small shed behind the women's shelter. "It's like we're some kind
of species. We're people. You tend to forget that."

If the nearly 100,000 residents who live in Cecil County, Md., had
forgotten, some were reminded last week when Salisbury University's
Center for Social Program Development and Evaluation issued an
analysis of homelessness there.

The study was commissioned by Meeting Ground, an ecumenical
organization that runs two shelters in Elkton, including the Wayfarer
House, and a 20-acre homeless community in Earleville called
Clairvaux Farm, all on an annual $550,000 budget.

About 75 homeless people -- roughly 10 percent of the fluctuating
number of homeless in the county -- were interviewed at length about
their personal histories.

The study concluded that economic (unemployment, problems paying rent
and eviction) and personal (substance abuse and family conflict)
reasons contributed to most homelessness. Most of the people
interviewed for the study were from Cecil County, more than
two-thirds were unemployed, a significant number had a drug or
alcohol problem, and more than three-quarters had a mental or
emotional problem.

"As a percentage, it's no worse and no better than it's ever been,"
said Nicholas Ricciuti, director of the county's social services, of
the continuing homeless population. "What it really says to me is
that we're dealing with people with psycho-sociological issues."

The survey showed that the chronically homeless tended to have major
personal problems, while economic uncertainty threatened to push a
larger population of near-homeless -- those just getting by or living
with relatives -- toward homelessness.

The coming together of both personal and economic troubles, called
the "vulnerability index," fuels homelessness, said study supervisor
Marvin Tossey, head of the sociology department at Salisbury University.

"You get someone who has economic problems, he gets depressed,
drinks, he might lose his job, get more depressed and drinks more,"
Tossey said. "It gets to be a cycle. The answer to homelessness
becomes how to break the cycle."

Mentally Ill

The cycle includes those who are mentally ill.

Jeff Block, 37, is upfront about his condition. "I'm bipolar and am
on disability," he said. He collects $549 each month from Social Security.

"It's hard for me to focus on any one thing at a time," he said, and
the two medications he takes make him tired.

Even adding the identical amount of money collected by his similarly
disabled bride-to-be, 22-year-old Sarah Irwin, they cannot afford
rent and are on a two-year waiting list for Section 8 housing.

The couple moved from Claymont to Clairvaux Farm nearly five months
ago. They said they moved because Irwin's uncle, with whom they were
living, treated them "cruelly."

"We're more apt to end up here or on the street than any other
group," he said of the mentally ill. "But I'm not going to be swept
under the rug. I want my own business and a life with Sarah."

Block said his mental illness, while oppressive, does not control his
life. He has dreams of opening a bait and tackle shop that also sells
sub sandwiches.

"I know all the great fishing spots up and down Maryland and
Delaware," he said. And the sub shop? "Fishermen get hungry," he said.

"We're not all drunks and drug addicts," said Dawn Lewis, 41, who
grew up in Elkton and has been staying at the Wayfarer House since Aug. 28.

She receives disability payments from Social Security because of her
depression, brought on by her mother's death in 2003, and has saved $1,200.

"That's not much," she said, "but I feel safe where I am, and that's
important."

Before living at the women's shelter, she lived with her brother and
his family in a trailer, but it got too crowded.

She said she recently got a boyfriend, who lives in a small house
behind his aunt's.

"Maybe I can move in with him soon," she said.

She's also looking for work, and has applied for jobs at Wal-Mart and Kmart.

"I need a job someplace where I can either walk or take the bus," she said.

Lack Of Affordable Housing

"The homeless study confirmed the need for affordable housing in
Cecil County," said Carl Mazza, who for 24 years has directed Meeting
Ground. "It's not a problem with a simple solution."

A household needs an annual income of $30,840 -- less than half of
the county's median household income -- to afford a two-bedroom
apartment in Cecil County, according to the report. But for the 1,566
"extremely low-income renters" -- families that fall below 30 percent
of the region's median income -- only 845 rental units were
"affordable and available," the report found.

"It's no big secret that there's a tremendous lack of affordable
housing," said David Mahaney, director of housing and community
development for the county. "We're fortunate because our waiting list
[for Section 8 housing] is only two and a quarter years long. Some
jurisdictions in Delaware, the waiting list is closed; some in
Baltimore, it's six, seven years."

Dwight Hair, a long-time Elkton resident who manages 32 rental
apartments and homes throughout the area, said rents have been rising
steadily because of a steep increase in taxes and insurance. But it's
also easy for Hair to rent to people with higher incomes -- a third
of whom work in Delaware -- because housing is in such demand, he said.

"I rented one unit today for $725. Three years ago, I would have
rented that for $425," he said last week. "Supply and demand is the
big reason for the increases. I could have rented to 15 different
school teachers if I had the apartments to rent."

According to the report, most homeless people have been homeless for
a long time. Many of the chronically homeless can be found living in
what locals call "Acme Acres," in the woods behind the Acme Market
near the corner of U.S. 40 and Md. 213.

Even when rain chases the residents away temporarily, evidence of the
lives there remains: flattened cardboard Busch and Natural Ice beer
cartons, discarded shoes, water bottles and empty bags of potato chips.

Substance Abuse

For at least 10 years, James Gray, 53, has been living there. Dressed
in camouflage jacket and pants, eating a meal at the weekly Friday
community kitchen, Gray said the dozen or so men who regularly sleep
out in the woods are a family.

"Cops [mess] with us all the time," Gray said. "They think I don't
have a house and a car, so I ain't human."

Gray was a carpenter, but his wife kicked him out because of his
drinking. He still drinks beer steadily. "Give me a 30-pack, and I'll
tell you plenty of stories," he said.

Mahaney said many people who apply for Section 8 housing have drug
and alcohol problems.

"It's amazing the number of people who come in buzzed on cocaine," he
said. "It's almost comical to watch, even with two little kids in
tow, they come to apply and they're high. I don't believe the general
population understands how severe and deep illegal drug and substance
abuse problems are in the real world."

Gray's story, and drug and alcohol problems in general, are the
stereotypical understanding of homelessness. But they do not
represent the majority of homeless people in Cecil County, Mazza said.

A Family Issue

"The face of homelessness is quite diverse, and includes many
children and families," he said. "And there, the issues of mental
illness and substance abuse do not play as much a role."

That diversity includes Vickie Conover, 37, who has lived at the
Wayfarer House for two years. She comes from a broken family, and her
mother does not speak to her because her two children are
interracial. The children now are in foster care, and she visits them monthly.

She said she has asthma, diabetes and a learning disability, but said
she has saved enough to be ready to go into Section 8 housing in
about six months.

"I want to get out on my own," she said.

Steve McGuire, 45, a house painter, has been staying at Clairvaux
Farm for two months. He ended up homeless after he fell 22 feet while
working, crushing a heel and breaking his back.

He needs a cane to get around, and he aches each time he moves.

Until it broke down, he was living out of his car in Chestertown,
Md., where he's lived most of his life. Before that, he lived with a
girlfriend, but "You lose your money, you lose your girlfriend," he said.

He's paying bills that have accumulated over the years, and trying to
save enough money to get a place of his own. He loves living at the
farm and doing chores, which Meeting Ground requires of its residents.

"It beats living on the street," McGuire said. "This is where God
wants me to be right now, to get back on my feet."

Gilbert Wheatley, 76, a former Navy pilot, recently moved into
Clairvaux because, he said, his wife kicked him out of the house.

"This place has been a blessing for me," said Wheatley, who lost his
legs during the Korean War. He considers the farm a place "for a
little R&R," and said his two children know what happened.

"But what are they going to do?" he said. "I'm not destitute."

Although Mazza's group commissioned the study and praised its
conclusions, he said it sorely lacked a comprehensive look at
homeless children, who make up about a third of the total homeless population.

At Clairvaux Farm, which now holds about 35 people, more than a dozen
residents are children.

"Homelessness is predominantly a family issue," he said.

Those families include Donna, 38, and her two children, who recently
found refuge at the Wayfarer House.

"I have never been a drunk or a drug addict," said Donna, who did not
want to give her last name. "It was my husband who did drugs."

She's waiting for Section 8 housing, but is very happy to have found
the women's home.

"Most homeless people I know are like us," she said. "We just can't get by."