The big news for this week is the introduction of the new website for housing in Cuyahoga County called HousingCleveland.org. This collaborative took 2 years to pull together. If you want to read the press release you can read it on our website. Or you can go directly to Housing Cleveland.org by clicking here.
This website has a rent calculator to get an idea what a potential tenant can afford to pay for housing. The website has a checklist that a tenant can print out a checklist when you go to look at a property, and you get some information about various neighborhoods in the area. It is a wonderful website for tenants and a great place for landlords to list properties that are available to rent. The site is free to use and was supported with funds from Cuyahoga County. Check it out. The property pages are managed by a group called Socialserve.com from North Carolina. They call the landlords to make sure that the site is always updated, and have a call center if people have problems using the site.
Behind the scenes of the site, it is very difficult to put this collaboration together. Having government, religious, non-profit, advocates, lawyers all sit at the same table is difficult enough. We had a lot of disagreements along the way, which certainly cost us time, but the collaboration is stronger as a result. Thanks to all the hard work of the groups participating in the collaboration, and thanks to Leigh Ann Ahmad formerly of Bridging the Gap who helped coordinate the effort with Diane Gatto of 2-1-1/First Call for Help. We need to continue to market the website and work to assure that every homeless person and every person in need of housing looks to HousingCleveland.org for help.
Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.
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