The Comfort of Home

Video

Skinner in Her New Apartment

Virginia Skinner, who had lived in a tunnel on and off for about 12 years, moved into her own apartment in October.

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She has made curtains for the bathroom. "I have my things packed up neat," she says. "I plan to do one room at a time. Somebody is giving me a sofa."

She moves into the kitchen. Obsessed with cleanliness, in the kitchen she has lined bottles and bottles of cleaning fluids along the kitchen window -- Oxy Power, all-purpose cleaner, baking soda, Comet, Bon Ami, three bottles of bleach, Pine-Sol, Lysol spray. "I like to keep clean," she says.

On the stove, she lifts a lid from a pot in which she is boiling a mop head. "I'm sterilizing my mop." She shifts her weight at the stove like a busy chef. She lifts another lid of a boiling pot. "These are my socks."

In the oven, she is drying a purple scarf and cans of food in a casserole dish, and another pot of socks. The oven is on low. The heat, she says, is good for drying clothes. You are concerned about carbon monoxide and a fire. "Oh, don't worry. I have a carbon monoxide detector and I'm always here when the oven is on. I can just run right in here," Virginia says, standing in the kitchen.

She lifts the lid from another pot of boiling socks: "The next time you guys come over, you'll have to come over for a meal. I make really good crackers. And I make really good biscuits."

And as you stand in the kitchen doorway, Virginia appears to be her own kind of Martha Stewart, lucid one minute and boiling socks the next. Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, rubbing industrial-strength cleaner on the edges of lucidity.

Deserving of Dignity

Who had faith that Virginia Skinner could be moved?

"The easy answer," says Sharan London, executive director of the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless, "is if you believe people deserve the dignity of a home, then you don't give up. You keep going. You keep going out where she is and meeting her and trying to convince her. Our staff just went into Bethesda and talked with her and met her and kept going back until she was ready and now we are thrilled to have her.

"The secret is the secret in all relationships: you just keep trying," London says. "You don't give up. A man went through detox 120 times. It sounds extraordinary but on the 121st time, he got sober and has been so for 25 years. Some people say don't ever give up. That is the answer for any outreach. At the core of all that is, people deserve a home."

A cadre of advocates for the homeless -- from the coalition, Bethesda Cares and Threshold Services -- worked with Virginia. Treating her with compassion. Giving her blankets. Food. Watching her stuff. Talking to her. Setting up appointments. Empathizing. Keeping promises.

Virginia had been on and off the streets for more than 12 years. She was considered a hard case.

Jennifer Blackwell, a coordinator for Home First, said that by the time Blackwell reached Virginia, Virginia's preference was to come in off the street. "We didn't have to convince her," Blackwell said. "She was willing." And with the move, people notice that Virginia is happier. "She is much more high-spirited," Blackwell said. "She doesn't seem as drained. . .