Winter shelter for homeless gets cold shoulder in Dundalk

DUNDALK, Md. - Tucked behind the Dundalk United Methodist Church, an empty parsonage will soon be filled with people in desperate need of shelter, and many people in the neighborhood are desperate to keep them out.

"Pedophiles, drug addicts, pretty much everything... pretty scared," said Megan Jackson who has three daughters and doesn’t like the idea of 16 homeless men moving in right across the street. "As you can see their rooms are right by the daycare center. They can look through my daughter's window."

Homeless advocates say those concerns are unwarranted.

Karla Schaefer runs the program called Streets of Hope that calls upon various churches to provide winter shelter.

"We know what the criminal histories are. We screen every man. If they have a felony, they're not allowed in. If they're a sex offender, they're not allowed in,” said Schaefer, “We are very careful, because we not only have to protect the neighborhood, we have to protect our staff and we have to protect our volunteers."

But neighbors are skeptical.

The church’s Food for the Spirit Soup Kitchen has already given them a taste once a week of what the homeless may bring to their neighborhood.

"He urinated in the bushes and then he turned around to me and said, 'Ha! Ha! Ha!'" recalled Kathryn Mitchell after encountering a patron in the alley as she put out her trash.

"They expose themselves to people,” added her husband, Stacey, “They get into fights. The police are out here all the time, and when the church tells us, 'This is a good thing to do,' I'm afraid the church has not proven itself to be trustworthy."

Neighbors say they didn’t learn of the plans for a shelter until the preacher announced it during the Sunday service two weeks ago.

Homeless advocates say the men would rotate between churches, and would only occupy the house 10 days out of each month through April.

At a meeting Wednesday night, the head of the Greater Dundalk Alliance told members of the church and the organization that the parsonage was not zoned for a homeless shelter, and they would need to apply for a variance.

Shelter officials say they will try to do that, but it's not clear whether the dispute can be resolved in time to move the homeless men into the parsonage by the planned October 11 date.