As the latest plan to re-open the federal government collapsed Tuesday, the residents of a homeless shelter on North Mount Street grew more anxious about what will happen to them as federal programs dry up.
The 75 women and their children who stay at Sarah’s Hope in a converted old elementary school already have their food stamps for this month and their temporary cash assistance.
But money for the Women, Infants and Children program, which helps buy formula and baby food, will only last to the end of the month. And that’s the one that could hurt the most, said Cyrene Medley. “Then I’m going to have to take some of that from food stamps and buy my son the Juicy Juice, the little Gerber things, the cereal, the bread, the milk,” said Medley, who has been living at Sarah’s Hope for two months with two of her five children. “Everything that they will stop I will have to provide with the food stamps, which will be very hard because I don’t even get much in food stamps as it is.”
Medley works for the company that provides security at Ravens games at M&T Bank Stadium, at Navy games in Annapolis and even the NASCAR races in Dover, Delaware. But that’s only part time and doesn’t really pay that much, she said.
Keisha Towns is about to move out of the shelter with her three children into an apartment of their own. But she worries because milk and baby formula are expensive. “I looked at the price today in Walmart, and for just a small container of what she drinks now, which is Enfamil Prosobee, it’s like twenty-something dollars for just that small can of milk,” she said. “That’s high, for just a powdered base of milk.”
If she loses the WIC money, Towns could lose her chance to move out. And that can create a domino effect.
Danielle Rankin, the assistant director of the shelter, said the women depend on several streams of income and the loss of any one of them could prevent them from going anywhere. And if the residents can’t move out, the shelter has no room for others who are sleeping under highways or in homeless encampments.
She said she is trying to gather as much information as she can for her frightened clients, who come to her daily worrying they may be stuck in the shelter for a long time. But much of the information is second hand and much of it depends on what happens in Washington.
Still, the clients seem determined. Towns even thinks this could be a blessing in disguise because it will “push a couple of females to look for employment harder” to provide for their children.
And Keena Brown, a New Orleanian who fled that city after Hurricane Katrina and landed in Baltimore, is making up a budget plan just in case. She knows her nine month old needs milk, she said, “So I know I have to put food stamps aside just for his milk, his baby food, things that he needs cause he’s still a baby. I have to put something aside for my 11-year-old and my nine year old, knowing that they need things.”
She can’t give them the world, she says, but she has her priorities established. And the top priority is making a home for her children outside of Sarah’s Hope.
Correction: This story was changed to reflect a correction and is different from what was heard on the radio. The WIC program has enough funds for the rest of October.