Shelter receives state grant

$250,000 will add to Project ECHO's new building project

Friday, July 17, 2009

Project ECHO is a non-profit organization that has provided emergency shelter to homeless people in the community since 1992.

In the 2007 fiscal year, the shelter provided more than 6,600 bed-nights and 14,000 meals to homeless families according to its 2007 Form 990. The shelter receives most of its funding from county and state grants, United Way, local churches and personal donations.

The new shelter will have a 40-bed capacity, 15 more than the current Prince Frederick facility. After several years of planning, construction crews broke ground in January and expect to be finished this fall. The four-floor shelter will have an elevator, dining room, office, classroom, and an isolation and examination room for ill residents.

"This is a tremendous public-private partnership that will improve the quality of care for Calvert County's homeless population," Miller said in the release. "The community's commitment to this project is humbling, and I am pleased that the State of Maryland can partner with dedicated local activists to move forward on this issue."

In addition to providing shelter and food to the homeless, Project ECHO helps "point them in the right direction" while searching for employment, housing and education and drug rehabilitation programs, according to the shelter's Web site. Each resident can stay for a maximum of 90 days and is required to open a savings account and contribute to it during their stay.

The shelter also opened two transition houses behind the shelter in 2001. Serving as either single family or group homes, they give residents time to weather the housing market.

Concerns over space and the building's age were the major reasons for the new shelter, manager Lori Hony said.

"The house is old and we've had some problems with it," she said. "It was time to think on the future. Certain things were breaking down."

The shelter routinely has to turn people away due to lack of space – 121 last year – and Hony hopes the extra beds will help bring that number down. The shelter's manager for 15 years, Hony has noticed the number of people coming to the shelter for help steadily increase each year. The current economic state hasn't helped either.

"There's a lot of different reasons people become homeless – family evictions, mental illness, substance abuse, jobs are harder to find and the cost of living" is higher, Hony said, adding that about one-third of the shelter's residents will return for another stay. "When I first began it was short term, like maybe two weeks, a month, but now they're using the full 90 days."

The St. John Vianney Catholic Church in Prince Frederick plans to buy the existing property from Project ECHO and level the main shelter. The church also plans to either convert the two transition houses, which were originally donated by the church 10 years ago, into homes for retired priests or level them as well and use the whole property to expand the church's cemetery, which borders the property.

The church is one of many in the area that supports Project ECHO, which has needed a new facility to replace the current one, originally built as the rectory to St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Prince Frederick, the Rev. Peter Daly of St. John Vianney said.

"It's a huge leap forward," Daly of the new shelter. "If you put 26 people in your house for 15 years, it would be worn out."

jnewman@somdnews.com