Statement concerning the women claiming to be from "Project Hope"

You may see a story on 19 Action News tonight regarding two woman claiming to help people under the agency name "Project Hope." First, we are sorry that any student and/or lower income individual was taken advantage of by the two allegedly deceptive individuals preying on people looking for help. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is not a partner and has no relationship with this group claiming to be Project Hope. NEOCH merely offered space to this organization as we would do with any groups claiming to help homeless people. As soon as we found out that these two women were not from Project Hope and may be deceiving the public, we notified the Cleveland Police. We have offered space for meetings, for free, to hundreds of groups over the last five years on Perkins Ave. We have never screened groups or made it difficult for the relatively small number of organizations trying to help homeless people to use our space. However, because of the situation today in which a group was arrested while using our conference room, NEOCH has implemented the following policy going forward:

1. We will only offer space to existing non-profits that we have an existing relationship.
2. We will not offer space to any new group.
3. We will ask that any group that wants to use our space must sign an agreement that they will use the space exclusively for meetings and will not use the space to provide counseling or direct client assistance.

Brian Davis--Executive Director
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.