For years, Baltimore has served as the Statue of Liberty to the metropolitan region, the place where 70 percent of the jobless, homeless and poor cluster.

Thousands of Baltimore children are born each year to unwed mothers. Half of the state's welfare recipients live here. Whole neighborhoods are afflicted by drugs. And the city unemployment rate is almost double the national average.

The result is that Baltimore has twice as many people living below the federal poverty level as the five surrounding counties combined. But if city business and political leaders have their way, that will all soon change.

Over the next 10 years, Baltimore redevelopment plans include demolishing downtown's west side, pulling down the last high-rise housing projects and moving the homeless out of the center city.

City leaders have made no bones about their efforts to scatter the poor. During the recent announcement of federal funding to bring down the city's last high-rise housing project, housing officials noted that 30 percent of the tenants will not be readmitted, with many others having to pass a formal review before they are.

Of the business properties targeted by the west side plan, 63 percent are either vacant, or pawn shops or beauty salons, businesses that traditionally cater to the working class. The goal is to bring in more high-end stores.

Downtown business leaders also are offering to help pay to move Our Daily Bread, the city's largest soup kitchen, away from downtown, where city leaders vow to more stringently enforce nuisance laws to diminish panhandling.

Advocates for the poor, however, worry that in the end, the less fortunate will be chased out of the city and the poor will become unwelcomed in Baltimore's 21st century.

"Development is wonderful, and it's a sign of progress," said Sue Bradford, director for development at the Franciscan Center, 101 W. 23rd St. "But you just can't take an eraser and erase the poor. Hiding them is not the answer to addressing their needs."

Yet city leaders believe that in order to turn the city around, they will need to remove the droves of poor who wander downtown streets panhandling, giving parts of the city the look of a Third World nation.

Baltimore is following a national urban trend of cracking down on homelessness and nuisance crimes, efforts dubbed "zero tolerance" that have helped cities such as New York reclaim their streets. Baltimore business and political leaders hope that improving downtown and razing troubled projects will sprout prosperity.

"What's wrong with scattering the poor?" city Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III said. "We're at the point where Baltimore city should not be the only jurisdiction handling the poor."

Social services and health care spending by the city have risen by $115 million -- practically doubling -- over the past 10 years.In his book Unbound Baltimore, former Albuquerque Mayor David Rusk contends that the city will never be able to heal itself unless surrounding counties share the responsibility of supporting the urban poor.

"Such hyperconcentration of minority poor creates social dynamite -- high crime rates, drug addiction, family disintegration, welfare dependency and illegitimacy," Rusk said. "Caught between rising service needs and a relatively shrinking tax base, Baltimore city government is in a constant fiscal squeeze."

The city's push to distribute the poor has already begun. In 1995, the city settled a suit with the American Civil Liberties Union, which accused Baltimore of racially segregating blacks for six decades. As part of the settlement, 1,350 families were given the chance to move outside the city.

In addition, city housing officials have pushed for more federal Section 8 housing vouchers that will allow the poor to find their own homes rather than be forced to live in federally funded projects.

Advocates for the poor criticize this relocation policy, saying that families forced to live in the projects are now being forced to uproot their lives.

"It's bad because of the motivation behind it," said the Rev. Douglas I. Miles, leader of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, which represents more than 200 city churches. "The motivation is to get poor people out of the city."

City officials disagree. Moving the poor makes sense because it gives families an opportunity to raise children outside the mean city streets where guns, drugs and violence mar lives, they say.

"People have said to us that concentrating the poor in projects was a mistake," Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said. "We must not allow our cities to become quarantine zones for the poor."

Social service leaders worry that the disruption will result in an exodus that will leave the city poor farther away from services. The west side renovation plan includes leveling 18 square blocks downtown, including the Healthcare for the Homeless site at 111 Park Ave.

Jeff Singer, president and chief executive officer of the agency that serves 150 homeless clients per day, joins other advocates in calling for the city, state and federal government to pour more resources into attacking the underlying problems of addiction, joblessness and homelessness rather than uprooting the poor.

"You're going to spend $350 million downtown when you have some of the worst housing in America three blocks away," Singer said.

Singer's sentiments speak for the droves of wandering downtown poor who struggle for basic amenities, such as housing, while a new $220 million football stadium built with tax dollars sits on the horizon.

Sharnell Alexander, 30, is a mother of four recently diagnosed with HIV. She lives with her grandmother in Pigtown and laments her inability to get a home.

"You've got people who need housing who are sleeping in the gutters," Alexander said.

Others, however, including some of the poor, say the city has done its job in addressing their needs. Thomasine Evans, 34, spends her days across the street from City Hall in a plaza with about two dozen other homeless people waiting for a 6 p.m. meal from traveling social service advocates.

"There aren't any homeless people in this city who should be hungry," said Evans, who sleeps in a friend's garage. "Some of these people choose to be here."

Brendan Walsh of the Viva Baltimore Catholic Worker agency at 26 S. Mount St. in West Baltimore estimates that one of every five city residents is either homeless or living in substandard housing.

"For the most part, they double up or go to a house that is in worse condition," Walsh said of those displaced.

Bernard Siegel is caught in the middle of the debate. He is chairman of the Weinberg Foundation, which funds social services such as the Franciscan Center. But the foundation is also at the forefront of the west side renovation, holding 6 percent of the downtown properties being considered for renovation.

Siegel believes enhancing Weinberg's downtown investments will allow the foundation to continue to support the poor.

"The more downtown decreases, the less able the city will be to do anything with the poor," Siegel said. "In order to make grants, you have to make money."

Pub Date: 10/27/98