A Few Interesting Notes

Roldo Transcript on Meet The Bloggers

Just to prove that Cleveland is in fact "Cool:" We have Roldo and New York Does Not.

The Roldo Transcript is now at Meet the Bloggers. Here is an interesting exchange:

Roldo Bartimole: I think there is a change. I think that you didn't see the homelessness in the 60s that you see now. Part of that is having tossed people out of institutions where they are getting help for their mental problems. A lot of people in the street are afflicted with some kind of mental disease.

McKala Everett: In the 60s?

Roldo Bartimole: In the 60s, they were institutionalized. I am not sure that that was the answer, if they weren'’t getting proper care and rehabilitation, but the answer wasn'’t throwing them out on the street. There is a lot more hunger, because I think there are a lot of things that, as somebody was saying before, they see people who have large televisions and other things. You almost have to have a car to have a job these days. That I think is somewhat different. A lot of the things that should happen have not happened. One of the other things that has happened as far as homelessness is concerned is a lot of places that were single-room occupancy were destroyed. When I first came to Cleveland, I was here alone (my family was still back in Connecticut), and I went into a single-room place near the Plain Dealer. There were hundreds of them between Euclid and Superior, and they were all knocked down by CSU, and there has never been real replacement for that. So the other part that someone else mentioned earlier was the single family. There are so many more single families than there were in the 60s. And I think the other part is the inability to deal with especially poverty in the African-American community. WeÂ’ve sort of decided as a community that we are not going to deal with that problem anymore. The end of welfare programs, where at least you had some support, some financial support from the government. I think thatÂ’s hurt too.

We have a new list of Strategies to End Homelessness on our website, which talks about the need for Single Room Occupancy housing or flop houses that Roldo talks about. This is a huge priority for homeless people in Cleveland.

Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.