Homeless find shelter, faith at downtown church

"The people who come to our church usually were either thrown out or walked out of other churches." Pastor Richard T. Lawrence leaned in heavy and delicately worked at a cup of coffee. He was a big man with a bum leg and an expansive beard. When he talked, he was deliberate and steady, like a Catholic, but when he looked up, he winked like a Baltimorean. His family has been here five generations, but his church has been here longer. As live-in pastor at St. Vincent de Paul Church, Lawrence is the caretaker of the oldest parish church in the oldest archdiocese in America. "We're one standard deviation more liberal and one standard deviation more intellectual than the other churches of Baltimore," he continued. Behind his head, next to the window that looked over the small outdoor statue of Mary, sat a row of tobacco pipes. "The funding is always slim, but never precarious. Our parishioners are very generous." He moved to his coffee again. It brought him to the subject of the homeless.

St. Vincent de Paul would, perhaps, not be as noticeable were it not for the small plot of land that butted up next to its outer wall. It is, after all, dwarfed by the Shot Tower, the memorial to fallen policeman, even the concrete walls of the Postal Service building across the street. It sits blocks from the freeway, and climbing vines and the trees that clatter against its roof shade its white tower. Standing out against the patchy scrub grass of the plot, however, are the reminders that St. Vincent is a house of charity. The tents are out now, in the biting end of winter, strung over with excess blankets or scrounged plastic tarps, but often, in warmer weather, they are packed away, hidden in shady corners by their owners, a small fraction of the homeless population of Baltimore's men, women and children who have nowhere to live.

"I work 70 hours a week," Lawrence said. "I used to do more, but when you're my age and my size, it's hard. But, I do live here." He patted his desk with a free hand. "The Catholic Church, the Fire Department and the U.S. Navy are the only three sleep-in services left in America."

Lawrence will often say things like this, in this wistful tone. He is, in many respects, a man deeply rooted in the past, a man who had four generations of his family serve as steamboat crew on the Old Bay Line out of the Inner Harbor. This may explain some of his affinity for the homeless, many who are stuck in a cycle that all goes back to that first drink, or the first needle prick, back to the past." The park outside belongs to us. It provides a venue for them -- a place for them to set up an encampment. This encampment is a step up, it's a self-governing community. They figure out on their own what's tolerated and what's not tolerated, what the consequences are when you break those rules. Doing this helps them move up the ladder toward treatment."

For Lawrence, treatment is the best advice he can offer those who come to him, like the man who lived on his front porch for two years.

"Homelessness is so often linked to addiction. It's the case when your mother, your brother, your best friend, they've all kicked your ass to the curb. It's the point when they realize they're becoming enablers. The first time you steal something of

your mother's to sell for drugs, it breaks her heart. The seventh time, you're gone."

He admits it can be a hard sell. The man on his front porch did odd jobs for the church, earning pocket money.