Numbers Of Maryland's Homeless Increasing GREENBELT, MD (wypr) -
Sitting in the Jobs Have Priority, or JHP, office in Greenbelt, long curly, red hair flowed down Angela's back. Biting her nails, the 44-year-old said she said she's on medication for post-traumatic stress, anxiety attacks and bi-polar disorder. Wearing a green skirt, cream shirt and glasses, she said she used to make 70-thousand dollars a year working on computers. When she started taking medication, she said she couldn't get out of bed to go to work. With her savings depleted, she added that her home was foreclosed and she was out on the streets in January.

I was ready to go sleep with someone, so I would have a warm place to stay, which you know, was very unpleasant. It's enough to make anyone want to kill themselves. I mean, I've never professionally sold my body, so it just was inconceivable that I was in this position when my family lived here. But that happens to a lot of people. More people than I would've expected.

Nicole, and Roger --not their real names were at JHP, too. Nicole, a middle-aged, heavy-set woman said mothers need more resources, so they don't have to take their kids to a shelter.

The Warm Nights shelter is for everyone, even though they do make the arrangement to put the mother and children area. But the kids still see the homeless men also. And they share the same toilets and so forth. You know, that's not wise for a mother with kids to have to send your boys with other men to use the bathroom.






In January, Department of Social Services volunteers in Prince George's County counted more than 170 homeless families, 200 adults and more than 340 homeless children. But they are just a fraction of the state's overall homeless population.

Last year, Annual Homeless Assessment reported there were more than 96-hundred homeless people in Maryland -- a thousand more than in 2006. In addition, the Homelessness Services said state shelter providers turned away homeless people more than 40-thousand times, because they lacked space or money.

Contessa Riggs, Executive Director of Jobs Have Priority, which helps the homeless find jobs in the District of Columbia and Prince George's County, said homelessness is increasing. She added that many people are out on the street for the first time.

Because living on the streets, you end up, if you didn't have a disability or a drug addiction or something like that when you started on the street, if you are on the street for a year, my guess is that nine times out of ten, you're going to have a disability, a drug addiction an alcohol addiction.

William Fletcher, 51, lives in the Prince George's House, a men's shelter in Capitol Heights in suburban Washington. Thin, well-dressed and walking with a limp, Fletcher doesn't look like he's homeless at all. But he said the homeless are everywhere.

They all over. Ain't nowhere for them to hide, they all over. So, I don't think like, it's going down. I think it's going up worser and worser.

Wearing a cell phone around her neck, Bridgette Joseph is a dreadlocked, 31-year-old, homeless mother of two. She said people shouldn't have to get three jobs to pay one bill.

They might see a decline in homeless people as far as people pushing shopping carts on the street, but there's everyday brothers and sisters, wives and you know, husbands that are falling into financial ruin because of the state of the economy today, the jobs are not paying us enough to support families, and they're not paying us enough to even rent houses.

So far, this year, the JHP has served 427 homeless adults in Prince George's County. That's already 50 more than this time last year.

I'm Farrah Childs, reporting in Capitol Heights and Greenbelt, for 88-1, WYPR
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