Homelessness and Housing
Life on the streets of a frigid Baltimore
For some there’s no house, no bed and nothing more than a blanket
Above: On this icy day, people sleeping outside in downtown Baltimore were not hard to find. The scene at the corner of Baltimore Street and Guilford Avenue at about 4 p.m. (Fern Shen)
As wind whipped through downtown today and the city braced for another cold night, evening commuters drove past several people preparing to spend it right on the sidewalk on Baltimore Street.
At the Guilford Avenue intersection, one man lay on his side near a venting steam cover, his bare legs exposed, a single blanket covering him.
A woman and child waiting for the light to change looked down at him and moved on. An office worker looked at him, doubled back and looked down again, appearing distraught, but never rousing him.
On the other end of the block, at the Gay Street intersection, another man was down on the sidewalk. His knees were bent under him, his face was down on the sidewalk.
He lay absolutely still. People stepped around him.
Then an MTA bus stopped in the middle of the street and the driver dashed over.
“Sir, are you alright? Are you okay?” she asked him.
The man got up, staggered a bit and asked the first passerby he encountered for “some money for the bus.”
Wednesday evening rush hour traffic on Calvert Street streams past a man sleeping on the sidewalk. (Fern Shen)