Five Years After Recovery Act: Cleveland Homeless Better Off

This week was the anniversary of the American Recovery Act signed into law to clean up the mess that Wall Street made of our economy.  The lax regulations of big banks and the unregulated housing market corrupted the financial industry.  A lot of ink has been spilled to complain that the ACA was a giant boondoggle because we still have a relatively high unemployment rate.  I don't know about the other areas of the ACA, but I can say that it was a life saver for homeless people in Cleveland. 

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New Street Chronicle Available Now

Cleveland Street Chronicle Issue #21.1 is now on the streets.  The vendors are very happy because the Winter festival on West 25th St. is today.  They have new content to distribute to shoppers of the West Side Market and the businesses over on the Near West Side.  They have become a staple over there even appearing in the history book documenting the first 100 years of the institution.

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Permanent Supportive Housing Featured on WCPN

David C. Barnett had a nice story on WCPN yesterday regarding the new permanent supportive housing projects.  We appreciated hearing from a resident "Joan" who lived at one of the apartments.  We know many people who have been on the streets for years living in these properties.   We have a former vendor who has a huge issue with alcohol living in the Broadway neighborhood.   His former residence was a tent next to the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. 

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National Homeless Updates

Barb Poppe Stepping down at InterAgency Council
Our friend, Barb Poppe, from Columbus Ohio former shelter director and current US InterAgency Council on Homelessness has announced that she will step down next month.  She is the wife of COHHIO Director, Bill Faith and was the coordinator of funding in Columbus Ohio for years.  The InterAgency Council publishes reports on homelessness and was the first agency to push a housing first strategy.  They also have a really nice newsletter.  Barb put her stamp on the agency by focusing on the rise in family homelessness and beginning to talk about the problem of youth homelessness.  The InterAgency Council is supposed to work with all the federal departments (Social Security, HHS, HUD, Labor and others) that may have cross agency concerns with homeless people.

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A Few Quick Updates

CWRU Civic Engagement Conference and Learning Center along with the InterReligious Task Force on Central America had their 14th Annual Teach In conference on a cold snowy day in February.  I was one of the presenters regarding homelessness in Cleveland.  It was amazing how many students came out to participate.  Sarah Kalloch of Oxfam and Dr. Rhonda Williams of CWRU Social Justice Institute were the two keynote speakers for the conference.   100,000 Homes Campaign was featured on 60 Minutes on Sunday February 9.  It was a nice piece on the savings for the community in providing housing before wasting time with services.

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Social Security Administration Delays Changes

Since the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle offices do not seem to have access to the internet or the E-verify system, we have no idea how they are going to deal with this problem of the Social Security Administration not providing a print out.  This is a huge problem for homeless people which are regularly having their important documents taken or they get lost with all the movement in and out of housing and shelter.  We are still waiting for a response from the Ohio BMV. 

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Housekeeping on the Website

On this cold wintry day in Cleveland, we have made some changes in the website.  We posted Don's message about the Street Voices program on the front of our website.  We moved the Homeless Memorial Video to the In Memoriam page of our website.   Brent has created a channel for NEOCH on You Tube here, which has four videos currently available.  We have added a gallery of pictures from the Homeless Stand Down 2014.  We know that over 1,400 people attended the Stand Down this year despite the horrible snow storm on January 25, 2014.

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Don Messitt Promotes Street Voices Program

Brent is going to post short promotional videos with our Street Voices presenters.  The first video is of long time speaker, Don Messitt, who talks about the value of this program to break stereotypes.   You can schedule a speaker by calling Ken at 432-0540 ext. 106 or by going to the Street Voices Section of our website.  We are hoping to schedule more engagements in the next year, and we will post all the videos on our website.

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