The long debate in Howard County over where to put a consolidated crisis center is changing direction as advocates try a new tack - splitting homeless shelter beds off from other emergency services.

Andrea Ingram, executive director of Grassroots, the county's privately run homeless shelter, told county politicians yesterday that social agency leaders now hope to expand and renovate her 32-bed shelter, adding 18 beds at its location next to Atholton High School on Columbia's southern fringe.

Ingram said the plan, which would seek a home for other crisis services elsewhere, was, in part, a response to a mounting homeless crisis in Maryland's richest county.

Last month, Grassroots turned away 260 of the 275 requests for shelter the agency received - a figure that appeared to shock County Councilman-elect Ken Ulman, a west Columbia Democrat, who asked where all those families were going.

Ingram said they must go elsewhere - part of a pattern of sloughing off social problems that has not endeared wealthy Howard County to other, less prosperous places.

"Other jurisdictions are not happy to take Howard County's homeless," she said, noting, "We have a reputation for exporting our problems."

Ingram said the social service agencies hope to find another location to build a center to deal with domestic violence and sexual abuse problems as well as nonresidential emergency mental health screening.

Until now, the plan had been to build a $6.5 million, 33,000-square-foot building for all the services in one place.

Last month, Grassroots had more than 2,000 hot line calls, 42 people came in for emergency crisis counseling, and there were 12 mental health emergencies that required the mobile crisis team.

The police reported 69 child runaways, 86 juvenile arrests, 203 domestic violence calls, 47 psychiatric emergency calls, 10 suicide attempts and 39 victims and children were sheltered by the domestic violence center after suffering or witnessing abuse in their families.