Meeting with RTA Officials

Larry from Organize Ohio helped to set up a meeting with Joe Calabrese of the Regional Transit Authority to talk about the difficulty homeless people have with transportation.  Calabrese was great and straight forward with the facts.  The reality is that when you live in the fifth poorest city in the United States almost everyone needs a discount on bus fare.  He laid out the facts about the fragility of the system.  Only 22% of the funds come from the fare box.  The other 78% is subsidized from the government.  After the 2007 financial crisis and the skyrocketing cost of diesel, the agency was in trouble.

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Veteran Street Card

We have published the updated Veterans Street Card this month.  With the new funding for ending homelessness among veterans a great deal has changed over the last year.  The new Veteran's Steet Card includes the 1-800 number for those need help.  There is the new Family Services grant for Mental Health Services and the new Central Resource Center that opened for Veterans are all on the new Street Card.  Feel free to print out the Street Card and make as many copies as you want.

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Homeless Stand Down 2013

Another successful homeless Stand Down.   This year the all day service fair took place at Public Auditorium in Downtown Cleveland.  This is the 22 year of this event that serves both veterans and non-veteran homeless people.  They served at least 1,200 people this year and around 200 of those individuals were veterans.  WKYC had a really nice report on the event both yesterday and today. 

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Mental Health Housing Developer at CAHA

We asked Kathy Kazol to present at the last Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance meeting in January 2013 as she prepares to retire from EDEN Development Corporation.  This was billed as a graduate level discussion explaining how to develop affordable housing based her 20 plus years of service to the community.  EDEN is the lead organization in much of the Permanent Supportive Housing programs and the Shelter Plus Care program locally.  Kazol has helped developed hundreds of fixed units of affordable housing and created thousands of housing vouchers. 

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Voting Success in the Last Election

Homeless People Do Vote
We are working on compiling the numbers from the last election, and so we are looking at homeless participation in the 2012 Presidential election.  We had a great response to voting by those sleeping in the shelters and were newly registered.  The NEOCH staff signed up 322 voters from July through October, and 93%  of those we registered actually voted.  This is a powerful number proving that homeless people do in fact vote.  To show how important it is to have as many early voting hours as possible only 2 out of the 322 people voted on Election Day.

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City Wide Prayer Vigil on Tuesday

Pastor Jerome Hurst is coordinating a City-Wide-Prayer, which will take place on January 15, 2013 to remember Timothy Russell and Melissa Williams.  This is the actual date of birth of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.--an appropriate day to remember the death of two homeless people.  Please plan to attend and support the family in their effort to bring everyone together to pray and to pressure the government for justice.  The prayer vigil is at the Southeast Seventh Day Adventist Church on January 15, 2013 at 7 p.m.   The Southeast Seventh Day Adventist Church is at 16602 Tarkington Ave. near Karruish Park off of Lee Road.

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Veterans Administration Opens New Center

The Veterans Administration announced the Cleveland Community Resource and Referral Center (CRRC)  is now open.  They are located at 7000 Euclid Ave., Suite 202, in the Midtown neighborhood of Cleveland.  Their hours of operation are Monday-Friday 8:00 AM-8:00PM.   This is part of the VA initiative to end homelessness in the veterans population by 2015.  We applaud this great idea and welcome it for Cleveland.   We believe that having a central intake center separated from the shelters is the right way to go. 

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Blanket Drive Continues

Diane (pictured here) participated in the Brown's Blanket drive in December.  Thanks to the Browns for donating the tickets to assist with the 2012 Blanket Drive.   We collected over 500 blankets in one week.  We are still working on collecting blankets.  Thanks to Shaker Heights Congregational Church for the van load of blankets they delivered this week.   We will be collecting blankets through March 2013.

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Out with a Whimper

Another rough year for non-profits in Cleveland.  The big news was we lost the second largest mental health agency in Cleveland: Bridgeways.  After seven months they are still trying to sort out the property owned by the non-profit and their dealings with a for-profit subsidiary.  There were a number of affordable housing projects owned by the non-profit and de-tangling that when the agency goes out of business has been tough.  We saw WECO go out of business earlier in 2012 after 40 years in Cleveland.  Some of their projects were taken up by Neighborhood Progress Inc., but WECO was helping low income people with obtaining funding for micro-enterprise projects and that was not picked up.

For more information on the other non-profits that went out of business go here...
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CAHA on Monday January 7

The next meeting of the Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance will take place January 7, 2013 at 1:30 p.m. at the local HUD offices.  The meeting is in the US Bank building at 1350 Euclid Ave. in the lower level.  This next meeting will be a graduate level symposium on affordable housing taught by one of the local deans of building and managing property.

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Homeless Stand Down 2013

The Annual Homeless Stand Down is January 26, 2013 at the Public Auditorium in Downtown Cleveland.  Doors open at 9 a.m.  Enter off of Lakeside near East 6th St. entrance.  We distribute Winter clothing, and there are 60 some agencies that attend.  Veterans need to bring their DD 214 or VA ID for special services available only to vets.  For more information go here or here.  

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