$2,000 raised on World Homeless Day

Dozens gathered Sunday at the Hilda Barg Homeless Prevention Shelter on U.S. 1 for a dual charity event: Walk for the homeless, in honor of World Homeless Day, and pick up trash at the same time.

“They walk a half hour in any direction, picking up trash as they go, and then walk back in a different direction, again picking up trash as they go,” said Gayle Sanders, executive director of the shelter, which is part of the Volunteers of America-Chesapeake organizational umbrella. “Instead of just walking, which seems like a waste of energy, we clean up, too. It’s important how the shelter looks, and Route 1 around it, because of stereotypes.”

Adult walkers paid a $25 registration fee; youths, $15. And even though not all participants paid – some just turned out for the trash pick-up and volunteered time — collections still hit the $2,000 mark, said Tracey Thomas, program assistant, with all the money going back to the Hilda Barg facility.

The shelter has largely remained at full capacity for months, due in part to the tight economy, but what’s new is the number of single females seeking a place, Sanders said.

“We were just having a meeting about this,” she said. “It’s going to be a huge problem for our winter shelter.”

Normally, the shelter houses about a dozen single women, Sanders said. In July alone, though, “we turned away 43 single females,” she said. On top of that, 38 single men and 149 people in families were turned away, she added.

“This is the first time – and I’ve been doing this for 20 years – but this is the first time I’ve ever seen that many single females turned away,” Sanders said, guessing part of the increase might be due to communication difficulties in the females’ families that lead to them being thrown out of the home.

“We see both sides of it,” Sanders said, referring to the female who seeks shelter as well as to her family and friends, whom they contact to discuss the situation. “We try to find out what went wrong … and part of me understands when the family maybe puts their foot down and says, ‘enough is enough.’ But there’s another side of it, too. And we see all that.”

The shelter has 30 beds and a handful of cribs, with certain rooms and space set aside for single men and women versus full families with children.

Staff writer Cheryl Chumley can be reached at 703-530-3903.