Upcoming Events at the Coalition

Homelessness Does Not End in the Summer

A few things that the Coalition is working on for the summer...

• We are welcoming two new VISTAs who will dedicate a year of their life to solving homelessness in Cleveland and Ohio. One of the finest programs ever created by the Federal government, which has survived despite both Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II trying to detroy the programs by putting their own stamp on these efforts.
  
• We are planning a series of events around how homeless people will have access to the election with the new rules demanding identification before participating in our democracy. We are also going to have a few demonstrations in the shelters to show people how to use the electronic voting.
  
• We are setting our local, state, and national agenda for the fall and early 2007. We are hosting an exciting event in July in which we have invited two representatives from each shelter in Cuyahoga County. This is our first attempt at a representative Congress of homeless people in which each person represents a sub population of homeless people or families. We will have disabled homeless people, single women, mom and dad families, and men all invited. It should be interesting, and we will set our agenda based on the meeting.
  
• The NEOCH Board is working on finances. The summer is always a slow time for support for homelessness. We would certainly appreciate your support this summer to allow us to keep working on solutions to homelessness.
  

A few things that we are planning for the fall...

• We have a Housing Service Fair set for October 20, 2006. This would be similar to the Homeless Stand Down, but restricted to distribution of information about housing. The event will be at the Bishop Cosgrove Center, and will feature programs that could provide housing to homeless people. Look for more details to come.
• The Quarterly Teach In will be September 20, and will focus on veterans issues. We have a large number of veterans who are homeless, but we do have a very nice safety net in place. We will highlight both the needs and services available in Greater Cleveland.

Details of all of these items will appear on our website in the next month. There is a very good discussion about Public Square and homelessness at realneo.us blog. Norm Roulet talks about the battle for public space in both Cleveland and San Francisco. I have printed out the post, and have been thinking about it all week. I encourage everyone to check it out.

Brian

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