Another Day: Another Report

Photo by Pleasure Simmons (NEOCH Photo Graduate 2008)

State of Downtown Cleveland Homeless

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless has published a report on the State of Downtown Homeless in Cleveland. It is on our website under Solutions/Public Policy section of the site. In 2007, during our budget woes at the Coalition, the City of Cleveland engaged a contract with NEOCH. This was a historic change from the bad days of the 1990s when we were forced to sue the City of Cleveland on a regular basis. NEOCH had never in our 20 year history had a contract with the City of Cleveland. Anyway, we completed our one year contract working on assisting the City with issues of homelessness downtown. The big success was moving the food providers to a new location without a lawsuit or a big demonstration. We started to see a large reduction in the number of people sleeping in the downtown. Unfortunately, with the problems facing our economy, the number has started to increase again. We could claim that there was a direct relationship between the numbers starting to rise immediately after our contract ended with the City, but that would not be true. We have continued to do much of the work, because the coordination is valuable.

We have a better network of coordination of outreach workers, we have a coordinated food distribution, and we have far fewer people in the overflow shelter system. NEOCH staff and board hope that the City will renew the contract this spring, and we can continue to work on other issues to reduce homelessness in Cleveland. It is a good report that gives a good overview of homelessness downtown.

Brian

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