Pamela "PJ" Craig and colleagues from the Harford Community Action Agency (HCAA) briefed the Harford County Council on the county's freezing-weather plan and the limits of the local homelessness response. Craig said the presentation was intended to provide "correction through clarity" and data to explain recent operational changes.

"Tonight is not about optics. It's about the truth," Craig said, describing HCAA as a federally and state-funded community action agency that manages emergency assistance, food, utility support and homelessness referrals. She and senior director Brian Wainwright told the council their referral network includes Anna's House (four emergency family rooms, four additional transitional rooms for domestic-violence survivors), Harford Family House (34 beds for single adults), and other providers, but that capacity for families is critically low.

Wainwright said on many days the agency must decline referrals despite maintaining a by-name list of more than 200 households seeking shelter. "Unfortunately, we have to say no more often than we say yes," he said, describing the secondary trauma experienced by staff when they cannot place families.

Presenters described a recent operational pivot: budgeted motel vouchers (used in past freezing-weather activations) were removed in favor of a congregate-site strategy. A proposed church-based mass-sheltering plan did not move forward because the site did not meet the city's zoning code, and the county instead designated the Edgewood senior center as the centralized location. That change reduced expected capacity from a perceived 60 people to roughly 30 single-adult spaces and left families with children without a guaranteed motel alternative.

Council members and agency staff exchanged detailed questions about how intakes verify county residency, whether motel vouchers had been abused by out-of-county visitors, and what oversight and data were tracked for after-hours placements. Agency representatives said intake includes outreach and attempts at reunification and that some post-5 p.m. placements were not tracked consistently; HCAA said it had identified four to five households it believed were inappropriate for motel placement but that some of those households were nonetheless housed overnight in hotels.

Specific figures provided during the meeting included 124 hotel/motel placements in the prior winter and an expense reported as $55,956.57 for hotel placements in an earlier period. Presenters also described plans to expand the Welcome 1 shelter (drawings complete and expected to go to bid in February) to add space for about four families and additional congregate capacity for women.

Public commenters and rotating-shelter hosts urged improved county coordination. Adam Schellenbarger, whose church hosts the rotating shelter, commended creative county efforts but said oversight and coordination had weakened since earlier continuum-of-care leadership. Angie Myers, a shelter site coordinator and volunteer, cited ADA concerns and gaps in communication and offered volunteer-based shelter proposals.

What happens next: agency leaders urged the council to pursue funding and options to increase bed capacity for families, re-evaluate motel-voucher policies for qualifying family cases and to track post-5 p.m. placements more closely. The council also heard that county staff will continue permitting and planning work for Welcome 1's expansion.