Donation Meters Come to Cleveland

Photo by Toni Anderson--Photography Class Graduate

Downtown Cleveland Alliance Unveils Donation Receptacles

With little fanfare, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance has finally gotten its former parking meters--now donation meters up and running. After a long period of negotiations with the City, the program went live over the last month. They have placed about a dozen meters around the Downtown to begin collecting money that will support programs that help homeless people. Based on the first few weeks, this will not be a huge amount of money, but it will probably support the Change Bus and purchasing identification for homeless people.

The National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty criticized these programs in their recent report. There is nothing on the Downtown Cleveland Alliance's web page yet, but we got reports that they are now available downtown. The Alliance runs the downtown clean up and safety program with the yellow shirt staff on bikes and walking around the City. They also run an old circulator bus that transports homeless people to healthcare and other appointments. Finally, DCA has a paid social worker who interacts with homeless people and homeless programs. This social worker has in the past had some funds to give out to pay for birth certificates and state identification. The funds raised from the donation meters will go to support the DCA outreach efforts.

Brian
PS Thanks Toni for the Photo.
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