When the city clears a homeless encampment in Baltimore, there’s a typical cast of characters:

Public Works crews heaving tents and blankets into garbage trucks. Cops directing traffic. Former owners of those same tents, watching their homes and personal possessions transformed into “garbage” and hauled off to the dump.

Very often, another figure on the scene was an attorney from the Homeless Persons Representation Project (HPRP), monitoring the city’s behavior, helping distraught people find a meal, alternate shelter and services. Basically trying to get them back on their feet.

But now it’s HPRP that has fallen on hard times.

Citing “a decline in unrestricted revenue and a loss of cash reserves,” the organization announced last Friday it is shutting down after nearly four decades serving as a lifeline for the most vulnerable in Baltimore and beyond.

HPRP lawyers have long been a dominant presence in advocacy for the homeless, not just in soup kitchens and shelters and on the streets but in courtrooms, as their clients grappled with evictions or stolen benefits, and as expert advocates decrying what they saw as misguided policy and calling for change in City Hall and Annapolis.

What went wrong?

“Well, it wasn’t any one thing. Just kind of a decline overall, especially with corporate giving, that was one major decrease in revenue,” began Laura Wellford, HPRP’s director of development and communication, when asked by The Brew about the organization’s finances.

Online tax filings for the nonprofit suggest recent financial reversals. Revenues basically tracked with expenses between 2011 and 2023, but liabilities soared to $810,000 in 2023, the most recent year for which Federal 990 tax information is available.

HPRP reported net earnings of just over $14,000 in 2020, then struggled with a negative balance until 2023 when it posted a net income of $50,764. Against that income were liabilities that soared from $126,334 in 2022 to over $800,000 in 2023.

“The organization does not have the monthly cash flow to finish its current fiscal year ending June 30, 2025,” the group’s press release stated.

“The fact that we had to use reserves to keep operating in the previous fiscal year meant that we couldn’t cover any gaps when we needed to, and grants were not coming in,” Wellford said.

“It’s hard to sustain”

The spokesperson did respond to a request for more detailed information about the group’s finances.

“I don’t know what explains that large increase in their liabilities. But it’s a sad day to see what’s happening,” said housing advocate Jeff Singer, who helped found HPRP in 1987.

Fundraising always was a challenge for the organization, said Singer, who went on to become CEO of Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) for many years.

“Unlike HCH where we could bill for medical services, lawyers bill their clients and people have no money,” he noted. “It’s hard to sustain.”

But that same reality is why the loss of HPRP’s dedicated attorneys is such a tragedy, he continued.

“Things are only getting worse for people in poverty and for people experiencing homelessness. The numbers are skyrocketing everywhere, not just in Baltimore. Who’s going to defend impoverished folks now?”

Trouble with Eviction Grant

To explain the drop in corporate giving, Wellford pointed to changes in the group’s board structure.

“We lost a lot of attorneys who used to be on the board who had connections at law firms,” she noted.

(Top leadership also changed when longtime executive director Antonia K. Fasanelli left in early 2021. The current interim executive director is Keiren Havens.)

Another major problem for the nonprofit was the loss of eviction prevention grant funding it had been receiving through the Maryland Legal Services Corporation.

“One of our grants was tied to how many eviction cases we were able to close,” Wellford said. “Because we weren’t able to hire any housing attorneys for a long time due to the job market, we couldn’t utilize fully that grant.”

“We had several open positions for more than a year, and it just really put a damper on our ability to use that grant,” she continued. “There’s just so much available out there for attorneys – so many legal services organizations and, of course, private law firms – we just weren’t competitive enough.”

“Because we weren’t able to hire any housing attorneys for a long time due to the job market, we couldn’t utilize fully the grant”  – Laura Wellford.

In addition to Maryland Legal Services Corporation, other funders include the Abell Foundation, Casey Foundation and Goldseker Foundation.

The organization, which in prior years had a budget of $2.5 million and a staff of 20, is down to 17 right now, she said.

The main office in Baltimore is expected close by the end of March. A Silver Spring branch office shut down earlier this month.

The Community Law Center is assisting with the transition, as HPRP seeks to pass cases along to other organizations and lawyers. As for the staff, efforts are underway to find new homes for them as well.

“We were trying to find someone we could partner with, who might be able to take us on, but nobody’s able to do that,” Wellford said. “So it’s just going to be kind of piecemeal, finding organizations that can take certain staff.”

“We were a team”

The press release announcing the group’s imminent shutdown noted how it was established in 1987 under the auspices of the Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Services as a pro bono legal services provider.

Singer recalled how he and attorney Peter Sabonis, another co-founder, met.

“He was a legal aid lawyer who would go to the Helping Up Mission and the Rescue Mission and try to help people with their legal problems,” he recalled. “And I was at the homeless unit at the Department of Social Services. We ran into each other, and the HPRP came out of that.”

In the early days, the staff filed ambitious lawsuits against government bodies – splashy litigation that attracted attention and shaped public opinion, even if they didn’t always win.

“We sued the Downtown Partnership and the Baltimore Police Department for illegally harassing homeless folks,” Singer said. “We had them give us their records from that year, and they recorded harassing homeless folks more than 900 times.”

The organization went on to help thousands of unhoused and unstably-housed people secure shelter, food and cash assistance, healthcare and employment through direct legal services, education and advocacy.

Typically HPRP closed 800-900 cases a year, preventing evictions, securing access to public benefits and expunging criminal records, its press release noted.

The group advocated for fair housing, called for more support for homeless youth, and have continued to push Baltimore officials to embrace a “housing first” approach and end the practice of encampment clearing.

• BREW COVERAGE of homelessness over the years

• Mayor Pugh’s latest homeless encampment clearing veers off script (2/28/18)

• She helped other homeless people stay warm, then died in the cold herself (12/20/20)

• Early razing of Wyman Park encampment denounced as cruel to homeless and “slap in the face” to advocates (3/7/24)

In recent years, their work with other groups on behalf of residents who saw their food stamps and other benefits evaporate due to electronic skimming resulted in legislation to reimburse millions of dollars in stolen benefits.

“Our staff supported Marylanders who live under the most traumatic, stressful circumstances,” managing attorney Carolyn Johnson said in the statement.

“Together we were a team that knew all about the frustrating, debilitating hurdles that unhoused people have to jump through for their basic rights,” she continued. “That made us great advocates and partners in the work to end homelessness.”

– To reach a reporter fern.shen@baltimorebrew.com