Care Critical for Homeless

At the Volunteers of America shelter in Woodbridge, Gayle Sanders and her staff work with families and nursing homes to help homeless people who are sometimes too fragile to stay at the shelter.

"We really need something that's between a shelter and a nursing home," Sanders said.

In the District, there is Christ House, an unprepossessing brownstone on Columbia Road that is also a 24-hour health-care facility for the homeless.

Some patients are referred there from hospitals and others by Unity Health Care, which operates clinics in homeless shelters across the city. Nurses and doctors live at Christ House, along with patients who stay and mend for as long as their illnesses require, getting food and rest as well as medical care and social services.

On one recent day a procession of men, many using canes or walkers, made their way down a hall after eating a nutritious lunch. Darryl McCallum, 46, who has advanced AIDS, was among them. He was very thin when he arrived in late July and very sick.

"I wasn't taking my medication. I had nowhere to keep it if I had it," McCallum said. But now he is feeling much better.

"They have been taking good care of me," he said.

As for Bell, he now has a place at a transitional shelter run by the Frederick Community Action Agency, where he stays busy applying for affordable housing and preparing his own meals.

"I am not lucky," he said, "I am blessed."

He is on a three- to five-year waiting list for a kidney, hoping to become strong enough to finish his college degree and return to youth-counseling work.

With good care, his health is steadily improving, he said.

"There are no more spots on my body. My health is better. My diet is better. My life is getting better," Bell said. "It's a blessing to know the right thing to do, and to be able to do something about it."