Looking to the future

DENTON – While a network of agencies in the Mid-Shore area in general and Caroline County in particular are addressing the very real problem of homelessness and housing instability, local experts say more and better could be done.

The problem in Caroline, they say, is four-fold: no official agency is tasked with dealing with housing, few rural transportation and childcare options are available, and ever-tightening financial constraints put pressure on agencies who find themselves in rescue mode rather than root-cause problem solving and permanent solutions.

Even with myriad organizations in the county, both public and private, providing practical help – from food to clothing to rental and utilities assistance – the task of providing stable housing opportunities needs to center on an official housing authority, which doesn’t exist in the county, local experts said.

“Without a housing authority or without an entity that is looking at this as an overall issue, there just isn't a go-to place,” said Kat Stork Blaher, facilitator of Caroline Better Together, formed in autumn 2024 by local leaders to strategize how to address issues surrounding poverty, food insecurity, housing availability and homeless solutions.

Blaher said she doesn’t care what it’s called, as long as it looks at “some of these issues collectively.”

Deborah Vornbrock, executive director of Martin’s House and Barn, applauds Blaher’s efforts to “bring stakeholders together to address systemic issues.”

The biggest systemic issue is “the need for affordable housing,” Vornbrock said. “But I would say that flowing from the affordable housing issue is a livable wage, jobs, childcare, transportation.”

Ashley Kessinger, manager the Mid-Shore’s Continuum of Care, otherwise known as the Mid-Shore Roundtable on Homelessness, said future priorities should include more wraparound services for those in permanent supportive housing, rural transportation solutions, and building true low-income housing and assistance for seniors on Social Security incomes.

Salisbury native Jake Day, Maryland Secretary of Housing and Community Development, at the Maryland Association of Counties winter convention Dec. 11, 2024, in Cambridge, said, “We are short 96,000 housing units in this state, and that is a conservative estimate.”

Compounding the housing shortage situation, “one in three Maryland families are cost burdened by their monthly rent or mortgage payment, including 53% of Maryland renters who pay more than 30% of their monthly income toward their rent,” Day said. “In addition to that, … Maryland ranks 43rd among states for housing affordability, ninth highest in total cost of living, and we are the highest in the mid-Atlantic region, and this is driving out-migration, led by Marylanders aged 17 to 34 who made up 65% of out-migration, with nearly 40,000 young Marylanders leaving the state in 2022 alone. This problem is only worsening.”

According to the 2024-2027 Caroline County Community Assessment published by the Caroline Human Services Council (HSC), “Nearly half the households in Caroline County are Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed (ALICE) or below the federal poverty threshold. These households struggle to make ends meet.”

The Caroline HSC is the Local Management Board (LMB) for the county. All 24 Maryland jurisdictions (23 counties and Baltimore City) have an LMB.

“While 12% of Caroline households fall at or below the poverty threshold, 19.5% of the county’s children live in households below the poverty threshold as compared to 12.1% for the state,” the report states. “Housing related costs are the largest financial expense for families. Caroline County families are significantly cost burdened by increasing rents, interest rates and utility costs.”

“While those living in poverty based upon the federal poverty threshold remains pretty consistent, the number of individual households and families that are in that ALICE category is increasing,” Blaher said. “And it's not increasing because we're raising people out of poverty. It's increasing because people are falling out of the middle class and into ALICE.”

Low-income housing options are available, but more are needed with more flexible terms. In many cases, the only persons who can stay in subsidized housing must have their names on the lease.

For example, Vornbrock said the “vast majority of the calls we get” sound like this: “‘I'm staying with my mom. She's in subsidized housing, and I'm risking her housing if I continue to stay here’ or ‘I'm staying with a friend, (and) the landlord's getting mad. I can't stay here any longer.’”

“Even the ability for other people -- family and friends -- to be charitable gets taken away,” she said.

According to Shore Legal Access, the average eviction filing rate for the Eastern Shore counties is 25% -- more than three times the national average. And over 30% of those threatened with eviction are under age 15.

Some with profound needs may fall into the category known as “chronic homelessness.” These include those with mental or behavioral health issues are challenged even further, needing more comprehensive help. The housing crisis is affecting those in their golden years, a situation noted by Maryland officials. Seniors with dementia are increasingly requiring housing with wrap-around services.

“When we made our annual allocations to the Continuums of Care to address homelessness, we increased that bucket of funds by about $2.5 million in rental assistance for this fiscal year,” said Danielle Meister, assistant secretary of homeless solutions in the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. The fiscal year runs from July 1, 2024, to June 30, 2025.

“Two primary things we're working on right now are increasing the availability of rapid rehousing, which is time limited, permanent housing assistance up to two years, and permanent supportive housing, which is meant for folks who are chronically homeless, meaning they have a disability and long histories of homelessness,” Meister said. There are 64 permanent supportive housing slots in the Mid-Shore region.

Even short-term solutions could be considered by houses of worship in the future, according to Stefanie Johnson, executive director of His Hope Ministries in Denton. She suggested churches could plan to serve as cold weather shelters. Shelter volunteers also are needed.

The Caroline County Commissioners approved Martin’s House and Barn’s application for a Maryland Community Development Block Grant of $175,000 to enhance essential case management services for high-needs families in the shelter.

“We're radically underfunded,” Vornbrock said. “And you cannot run a shelter and depend on a bake sale – not a shelter, not a low-barrier shelter. You have to have adequate staffing, trained staffing, and I can't worry that, at the end of the fiscal year, I'm not going to have the funding to pay for that staff.”

In its 2025 budget, the Commissioners allocated to Martin’s House and Barn and His Hope Ministries $5,000 each.

One of the bills addressing homelessness introduced at the 2025 Maryland General Assembly is not endorsed by the Caroline County Commissioners.

In a Feb. 12 letter, the Commissioners expressed their “strong opposition” to House Bill 487 titled “Unhoused Individuals – Rights, Civil Action, and Affirmative Defense.”

“This basically means that someone could come and pitch a tent out here and live on the courthouse green, and there wouldn't be anything we could do. And if we try to, they can sue us,” Commission Vice President Larry Porter said at the Jan. 28 meeting of the County Commissioners.

“While we support compassionate, effective solutions for homelessness, HB 487 fails to balance public safety with these goals,” the letter stated.

In December, Secretary Day looked toward a brighter future of housing against a backdrop of “economic stagnation” caused by “affordable housing availability and housing availability” – even before belt-tightening measures were announced at the state and federal levels this year.

Even so, he predicted three pieces of legislation passed by the 2024 General Assembly and the 2025 budget, “created pathways for more homes to be built in Maryland in the next 15 years than in any of the previous years.”

“We are currently working very hard to create more permanent, supportive housing,” Day said. “It's why we are currently working very hard to increase our production of low-income housing, and it's why we need market rate housing as well.”