The Rev. Lonnie J. Davis Sr. watched dozens of Seton Hill residents file inside a squat building in St. Mary's Park and hunker down in flimsy plastic chairs with full not-in-my-back-yard agitation: feet tapping, arms crossed, arguments prepared.
Members of the Seton Hill Association, they came to voice opposition to a homeless shelter Davis operates at 700 N. Eutaw St., one they blamed for attracting crime and blight.
"We are under an extra burden by that shelter. We need to get rid of it. That's it," said resident Tom Kravitz.
It didn't matter to residents that Davis had only recently taken over the 11-year-old shelter, or that he'd been nicknamed "Rev. Fix-It-Up" for revamping homeless facilities in Baltimore city and county.
As complaints flew his way at the June meeting, Davis, seated with his back to a wall, quickly realized what his next project would be: mending a community's broken trust.
It's a challenge that highlights the inevitable tension that will arise between neighborhoods and shelters in the coming years. In February, the Board of Estimates approved $440,000 to build the first of six resource centers to aid the estimated 3,000 homeless men, women and children in Baltimore.
But city officials say they have confidence in Davis, a formerly homeless heroin addict and ex-convict who has earned a reputation for putting mismanaged shelters back on track.
"If anyone can do it, he can," said Otis Rolley III, first deputy housing commissioner. "How he took his personal transformation and transferred that into an organization that is reaching out to others is very impressive."
Davis' emergence as a leader in providing homeless services is one of the reasons why Mayor Martin O'Malley appointed him to the city's Commission on Homelessness, Rolley added.
As founder and executive director of the nonprofit I Can Inc., he runs three of the agency's five shelters with the help of his wife, Pamela J. Davis, his daughter, LaQuisha, his son, Lonnie Davis Jr., and stepson, Vernon Wallace Jr. Employees run the other two.
Men he used to buy heroin from, whom he stole cars with, whom he met in prison now work for him - inspired to change by Davis' own transformation.
He has adopted a no-nonsense style of intervention: It's not unusual for Davis to bluntly ask addicts, in his characteristic raspy voice, "Are you a pipe-sucking crack head?" or order them to "get out of that male PMS."
He's just trying to get through.
A commanding, energetic figure who is as comfortable in double-breasted suits as he is in khakis, Davis restored the trust of homeless men at Oasis Station, a 24-hour drop-in facility at 220 N. Gay St., after its previous manager was fired by the city.
He overcame the fears of homeless women and families at the Hannah More shelter in Reisterstown after its former operator quit amid allegations its staff intimidated residents.
And, in the early days of I Can Inc., he battled for respect in the Midway/Barclay community when he proposed opening a 100-bed winter emergency shelter at 22nd Street and Greenmount Avenue.
The three-story shelter on Greenmount Avenue, housed in a former Catholic school, has evolved into a 60-bed, year-round shelter with a convalescent care unit and a 58-bed transitional housing shelter. Residents and business owners say they are satisfied with I Can, which stands for "Individual, Character, Attitude and Newness of mind."
"It's been a lot of programs over there, but this has been the best by far I've seen," said Larry Haleem, owner of a nearby clothing store. "It gives them a sense of hope and puts them back on the good foot."
Haleem's neighbor, Bernard Cox, owner of H&B; Discount Store, said of Davis: "We thank God every day for his presence in our community."
Eleven years ago, no one would have said that of Davis.
Fired from his job in 1980 as a data teletype technician for Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Co., the Navy veteran began selling drugs. He soon became his own best customer, fueling a heroin habit he picked up in the 1970s while on military duty in Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.
Addiction was Davis' devil. "I would say, 'Devil, it's raining outside,'" he recalls. "The Devil said, 'Walk between the raindrops. Got to get my money.'"
One night in March 1991, Davis was on his stomach, pinned down by a police officer with a gun pressed to the back of his neck.
"Don't move!" the officer shouted. Davis and two other men were being arrested after fleeing a stash house near Lafayette Avenue and Bethel Street, tossing packets of heroin and cocaine as they fled.
Davis wound up serving seven months in prison, but he still wasn't ready to change. Not until he overdosed in the bedroom of his grandmother's apartment.
"I remember waking up humiliated," Davis recalled. "And from that humiliation I started promising her I was going to change."
Davis checked into the Perry Point Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Cecil County, and over his 33-day stay the shame of his life haunted him: the shame of being a deadbeat father. Of overdosing in front of his grandmother. Of failing to live up to the potential his family admired in him.
Counselors introduced him to the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous and he took to reading the Bible. One morning, he came across a verse in Proverbs: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight."
Suddenly, Davis saw new paths. He wrote in his journal: "I want to go back into the community in which I was a harmful element and do good."
Upon his release in May 1993, he began working for the American Rescue Workers. Over the next three years he became responsible for supervising the daily operation of two thrift stores, a warehouse, a substance abuse program and two homeless shelters. He became a minister in 1995.
Davis lived his work, using a room at one of the shelters as an office and sleeping quarters. From there he grew a fledgling nonprofit with a handful of employees into a social service provider with 56 employees and an operating budget of $2 million.
"In order for me to run it like I wanted to, I had to be here seven days a week, 365 days a year," Davis said of the office in what is now the I Can Inc. shelter on Greenmount Avenue. "This is my ministry, really."
Davis, round-faced and engaging, can often be found in his silver Chrysler PT Cruiser, instrumental versions of Marvin Gaye classics flowing from the speakers, answering his pager and returning calls on his cell phone as he shuttles between shelters.
His hefty frame seems to fill the halls as he greets each man by name - from the newly clean addict to a bedridden homeless man in the infirmary.
He connects with the downtrodden, but back in June, he wondered how he would get through to Seton Hill residents who didn't know much about his management style, or his successes. Winning them over wouldn't be easy.
Before it became the shelter called Eutaw Center, Engine Company No. 7 was Baltimore's oldest operating firehouse. But city officials shut it down in 1991.
The closure was a blow to residents who said the presence of firefighters deterred crime. It also tarnished the pride of the historic neighborhood. Site of the first Roman Catholic seminary in the country and home to the city's earliest gable-roofed rowhouses, it was a showcase for out-of-town visitors during Mayor William Donald Schaefer's administration.
David Keltz, a Seton Hill resident, said residents tried to help men who relied on the shelter by inviting them to community meetings and paying them to do odd jobs. But over time, the neighborhood began to see more burglaries, trash, drug sales and assaults, troubles that appeared to emanate from the shelter, he said.
Management problems at the shelter came to light in May, when the city terminated its $350,000 contract with the Center for Applied Nomadology, which previously managed Eutaw Center and Oasis Station. City housing officials discovered the organization provided few services and employed unqualified staff.
That month, Davis took over. Today, he says, the shelter residents once feared is gone, replaced by one that is well-managed and a model of safety. If there's crime, he adds, it's not caused by the shelter.
Once-hostile residents agree.
"There will always be those who are a little wary about it [the shelter], but there's no ill feeling, nobody's out to get them," said Ann McKenzie, a member of the Seton Hill Association. "So far as I've seen, we haven't had problems like the way we had before."
McKenzie now coordinates biweekly donations of bread to the shelter and visits often.
"If you can't beat 'em," she said, "join 'em."