For all its beauty, life in rural America presents a special set of challenges to meet the critical needs of its people, and some of those needs are invisible. According to a 2019 Federal Reserve study, 4 in 10 Americans can’t afford a $400 emergency, and 22% say they expect to forgo payments on some of their bills. HomeServe USA reports 31% of Americans don’t have at least $500 set aside to cover an unexpected expense.
Homelessness can be the next step for people balancing on the edge of their last paycheck.
More than 6,000 people are estimated to be homeless in rural Maryland at any given time, depending on which criteria you use to qualify it. Because it’s not as evident as a tent community in a city, it’s a hard problem to measure and address.
The “hidden homelessness,” those who do not seek needed services, do not appear in the standard statistics. While they might not be sleeping in local parks, they may be migrating from relative to relative or friends, sleeping in cars or uninhabitable structures.
Of those counted, according to a January 2020 Maryland estimate, 17,601 Maryland public school students experienced homelessness over the course of the year. Kent County reports about 20 young adults without sustainable housing.
Obstacles facing solutions to homelessness can be overwhelming—housing affordability, assuming one can qualify; transportation, mental health, and addiction issues— can all merge into insurmountable problems. Even a wage earner making one dollar over the upper-income limit can be disqualified. An arrest record, disqualified.
To explore the issues and seek solutions to homelessness on the Eastern Shore, the Spy reached out to Deborah Vornbrock, Executive Director of Martin’s House and Barn, formerly Saint Martin’s Ministries, in Ridgely.
Since 1983, Martin’s House, a non-denominational non-profit, has been essential in the Mid-Shore to serve the poor and homeless and provide essential shelter, food, and clothing for those in need. They also seek to help clients find resources to overcome barriers to self-sufficiency.
Aside from their ongoing food pantry serving 250 families per month, Martin’s House and Barn provides shelter specifically for families who have found no other pathway to affordable housing. Families with children require a private living area. Currently, four families are living at Martin’s Barn with a capacity of 12.
Vornbrock says that the young families she sees often suffer from generational poverty. If they stay with other family members in subsidized housing, they put that family’s contract with subsidized housing at risk. Martin’s House is a central part of the network of service providers available to address poverty and homelessness on the Eastern Shore and coordinates with Mid Shore Behavioral Health’s Continuum of Care.
The Spy will next be looking into Kent County’s efforts of the Local Management Board and their efforts to address transportation, affordable housing, and emergency shelter.
This video is approximately nine minutes in length. For more information about Martin’s House and Barn, go here.
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