Continuum of Care Dollars Released

Behind the Headlines

Homeless people do read the paper. They visit the library and read the national news online as well as perusing the local Plain Dealer regularly. This is the time of year when the federal government releases its annual "Continuum of Care" funding, and I get a lot of questions from homeless people about all this money given to Cleveland for homelessness. Perhaps you saw the headline over the last day, "Obama Administration releases [some many millions or billions] to deal with homelessness." This dates back to the Clinton administration when they combined all the homeless money given to states and localities into one release of dollars to maximize news coverage. Clinton did it right by releasing the money right around a big, tug-on-the-heart-strings-holiday of either Christmas or Thanksgiving. It was difficult for the Bush administration to manage the release of the HUD grant around a good holiday, because the federal budget was not regularly passed by the October 1 deadline. Bush was often relegated to second tier-tug-at-your-heart holidays like MLK Day or President's Day for his homeless press release. Obama released the funds yesterday with a $1.6 billion headline provided to local and state jurisdictions.

We certainly appreciate the help with Cleveland/Cuyahoga County getting all that they asked for in $22 million, but what does that mean? In almost the entire United States, the money just renews existing programs. So, the headline should be "Obama renews shelter/housing grants so no one will be forced to close." It is not a huge new pool of money even though the headline makes it sound like that. In Cleveland, we had room for a few new housing vouchers and one new project, but otherwise all the money went to renew the budgets of the existing shelters/housing vouchers. The shelters do not get a cost of living increase or money to serve new populations (like foreclosure victims). They get the same amount of money that they asked for when they were originally funded. While utility prices, food prices, health benefits, and salaries have all gone up over the years, the shelters must figure out how to make up the shortfall because the federal government does not pay for any cost of living increases.

So, a big thank you has to go out to Ruth Gillett from the County Office of Homeless Services locally who fills out all the paperwork and checks all the boxes to make sure that we get our fair share. It is a huge job that takes months, and was complicated this year because everything had to be submitted electronically. As you may be aware, the federal government takes many years to figure out how to move away from paper, so it was a rough ride this year. She has to gather all this information from every facility and gather information about their clients and put it in one application that printed out is about 3 foot tall stack of paper. She has always secured the money set aside for Cleveland/Cuyahoga County with only a few minor problems. Other cities (Akron, Ohio, Columbus, Canton and Dayton) have all had major problems in the last five years costing their homeless populations millions of dollars.

One unfortunate note for those who embrace the rivalry with our downstate competitors in best city in Ohio starting with the letter "C". Both Columbus and Cincinnati as well as Dayton and the Ohio small cities collaboration received one of the 23 demonstration grants released yesterday by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is amazing that out of 23 grants nationwide Ohio scored 4 of them. HUD funded groups to set up pilot programs to rapidly re-house people in order to avoid homelessness. I tried to find what the other cities applied for, but I could only find the Columbus plan. They are setting up some intensive case management using the Salvation Army combined with rental assistance money. The question is why didn't the Cleveland project make it? Why couldn't we compete with Dayton or Cincy for the one million dollar "rapid-rehousing" demonstration programs?

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