Poverty and Housing Needs

Shelter Stays Up, Poverty Increases, and People are in Need of Housing

The Community Women's Shelter in Cleveland has seen record numbers in August 2011.  They are way over capacity, and are struggling to serve all the families showing up who are in need.  Cleveland is one of the last cities in the United States that does not turn people away who show up for shelter.  The social service providers work to find a place for everyone requesting help.  We are lucky to live in a city that values keeping people inside and safe.  This has caused the agency running the Community Women's shelter to have to juggle staff and thus close during the day.  The women have to go to the Bishop Cosgrove Center or a library or somewhere else.  This has been a hardship for the women, but the agency is working everyday to serve the historic number of women showing up.  The shelter is more than 60% over the capacity.

Today, the US Census bureau released the federal poverty numbers, which shows that poverty has increased to a figure we have not seen since 1993 and increased by 2.6 percentage points in the last three years.  These are the regional and national figures released today.  The state and municipal numbers will be released later this year.  The South had the sharpest rise in poverty in the United States with African Americans seeing a 1.6% increase in the number of people living below the poverty level between 2009 and 2010.  This shows the Great Recession continues to have a huge impact on our local communities.  The other figure released today was that unemployment rose for the third month in a row.  All of this contributing to the rise in homelessness in Cleveland. 

How this plays out on the local level is that evictions within the City of Cleveland are up, and a record number of people applied for a housing voucher in August.  There were 64,700 unduplicated number of individuals who entered their name into the Section 8/Housing Choice Voucher lottery from August from CMHA.  Only 10,000 names will be drawn so an applicant has a 15% chance of getting a voucher.  The person "winning the housing lottery" could wait up to five years for their number to come up.  The last lottery, in 2006, saw 40,000 unique individuals apply shows the level of need in our community. 

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Latest Appeal To Mayor For Help

NEOCH Board Asks the City to Enforce Building and Housing Standards

Dear Mayor Frank Jackson:

For the past two months, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless has tried to improve conditions at the Community Women’s Shelter. Our goal is to get the same treatment for homeless women as would be extended to women living in an apartment. As you know, on May 3, 2010, residents of CWS were moved to their current and temporary facility at 1701 Payne Avenue due to renovations of the CWS building. The site contained no shower forcing women to go to nearby Cosgrove Center and North Point Men’s Transitional Shelter to shower. If this were an apartment building with 90 women and one shower, this would have been condemned the day that it opened.

NEOCH’s has worked for 10 years to improve the conditions within the shelters, and we feel that things are moving backward with this temporary location. We have spent countless hours over the last month to work on the problems at the Community Women’s Shelter. Our board member, Rosie Palfy has filed numerous complaints to city officials about the health and safety of the shelter. We filed complaints with the state, and with every department that will listen. NEOCH filed complaints with building and housing citing multiple building code violations in the first week of June. Please remember that homeless people typically spend less than 30 days in shelter, so for many this will be their only contact with City or County funded shelters.

Palfy called repeatedly and even drove downtown to check on the complaint in person, and no one answered or responded to her messages. After hearing no update on her complaint, she called Inspector Santora from the office of Building and Housing in late July. Mr. Santora had made a visual inspection of the facility and finally called Ms. Palfy on July 23, 2010, and remained adamant that the shelter is complying with all health and safety codes. Ms. Palfy cited many violations in the shelter such as the number of people per toilet and the lack of showers, the overcrowded conditions, the lack of the proper number of sinks, and the deteriorating conditions in the shelter. Inspector Santora remained unyielding in his defense of the shelter and insistence that the plumbing was adequate. However, it is our understanding that congregate living facilities must have at least one toilet and shower per 10 people. The shelter regularly has 80-100 people per night with four working toilets and only one shower. Mr. Santora was described as “rude” during their phone conversation by Ms. Palfy.

The inspector could not explain why the certificate of occupancy indicates that the shelter can only have 50 beds, but now has 80 beds and as many as 100 women sleeping in the shelter. The inspector indicated that he toured the showers in the building around the corner to see where the women shower. Despite the fact that there is nothing in the building and housing code that allows residential facilities to have showers available for a few hours a day down the street. The inspector did not check on the fact that women were using the urinals because there are not enough toilets, and that the water pressure is so low it is often the case that they do not flush. The inspector’s response was, “Where do you think they would be going if they were [sleeping] outside?”

Santora believed that the women were not in any imminent danger and so was unwilling to take corrective action. We have done as much as we can to prevent harm, but are not receiving any help from the City. We have already seen a majority of the women not showering. We have already had women going to the hospital because of infections. Inspector Santora seemed to be treating the Coalition as the enemy here, and he seemed to indicate that it was our intention to shut down the facility and make the women homeless again. This is not our intention or our goal. We just want the women to live in humane conditions, and for the City and County to take this problem seriously. We ask that the bureaucrats who spent a year planning this move to admit that they made a mistake in not planning for the proper number of showers and the large number of women who needed shelter, and fix their mistake. NEOCH is asking for your help to stand up for the women in the shelter. Your intervention can help improve the conditions in the shelter. We are always willing to help, but we cannot tolerate the conditions that the women are living under.

Sincerely yours,

Marcia Bufford

Bufford also sent this to Building and Housing Director Rybka as a follow up to the early June complaint and members of Cleveland City Council.
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Shelter Still Lacking in Showers

NEOCH Scolded For Asking for Decent Conditions

In an interview with Ohio News Network about the debacle surrounding the temporary location of the Community Women Shelter, Cleveland’s chief of Public Affairs, Natoya Walker Minor, claimed that NEOCH is “completely wrong on [our push for improved condition for the 80 women currently sleeping at the shelter].” She went on to say that the issue “has gained too much notoriety for a temporary situation.”

Much of the notoriety the issue has gained has been because of the Board of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless voicing concerns over the shelter, which is accommodating more people every night than that building can handle, and only has one shower. Because of these issues, NEOCH feels that this location is unacceptable for human habitation, regardless of whether it is a temporary situation. After all, half the women who enter the shelter today will not be there by the middle of August. So, there entire experience with homelessness will be at a facility without enough showers, beds, sinks or toilets.

Because the city and the county have largely dismissed the pleas and concerns of the NEOCH Board, they have filed complaints with the State, the fire department, and other government entities. NEOCH Board members, however, question the planning process that preceded the shelter’s relocation. Walker Minor and Cuyahoga County Director of Homeless Services Ruth Gillett said they spent between six months to a year planning the renovations and move of the shelter, but were unable to find a facility with showers.

"The question is why do city and county officials think that inhumane and intolerable living conditions are acceptable under any circumstances -- temporary or otherwise? That is the most disturbing part of all of this,” said board member Rosie Palfy. The NEOCH Board cannot understand how any plan involving a temporary shelter did not consider the shower needs of the women and the natural increases in homeless women every summer. The facility has had over 100 women on some nights with even pregnant women sleeping on the floor on a mat.

“I’ll be the first to admit, it is inconvenient,” Walker Minor told ONN. NEOCH maintains that this inconvenient solution is not an acceptable one, especially after a year of planning. If there was an apartment building with 90 residents and only one working shower, that building would quickly be condemned and the residents would be immediately moved into a facility that is in compliance with the law. “Why do homeless women and pregnant women have to suffer through this summer sleeping on the floor without adequate bathroom facilities because of poor planning and an unwillingness to seek help from the public to pay for a decent temporary shelter,” asked Marcia Bufford, NEOCH Board President?

These problems, accompanied by the sweltering heat Cleveland has encountered recently, combine to exacerbate the issues facing the women staying at the temporary shelter. The shelters need to maintain compliance with some minimum level of basic standards, and should not place women who have already experienced extreme hardship into a facility that is so overcrowded and does not provide a place for women to practice good hygiene as they prepare for job interviews or a meetings with potential landlords.

Press Release by Marcia Bufford and Rosie Palfy
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Women's Shelter Population Growing

Is there anywhere that is free out there in Cleveland to house 100 homeless women?

Rising Temperatures and Resident Counts at Women’s Shelter Continue to Worry NEOCH Board Members

Nearly two weeks after Natoya Walker Minor, Cleveland’s Chief of Public Affairs, and Ruth Gillett, Cuyahoga County’s Director of Homeless Services, refused an invitation from the female board members of Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless to spend two nights at the Community Women’s Shelter, conditions continued to deteriorate over the holiday weekend.

As the weekend temperatures soared, so did the number of homeless women seeking shelter at the temporary location. The almost 80 women found themselves enduring the scorching heat wave in a shelter with only one shower. During previous years, this shelter has traditionally housed about 100 women a day during the summer months. Despite this fact, Walker Minor and Gillett made the decision to relocate the women to a facility designed to house only 50 people when the publicly-funded shelter closed in early May for renovation.

Each government official said that they had spent years planning for the renovation and searching for temporary sites, yet they chose a building with only one shower, five sinks and five toilets. Walker Minor and Gillett declined the invitation to stay at the shelter, whose facilities they agreed were “inconvenient”, but “doable.”

Due to their poor planning, the residents have been forced to use showers at the nearby Bishop Cosgrove Center and North Point Men’s Transitional shelter. Cosgrove was closed over the holiday weekend as well as on Monday. During this time, the women’s only other option was North Point, which only has one shower available for their use.

“There are too many people living in that shelter. They've run out of beds, so some women are sleeping on mats on the floor. This building is clearly not designed to accommodate the needs of that many people," said Rosie Palfy, a NEOCH board member. "There is absolutely no way that nearly 80 women can be expected to adequately bathe themselves under these conditions."

The steady increase in the number of women sleeping in this shelter has caused concerns about the women’s hygiene and safety while in the shelter. The current situation violates not only Ohio’s Basic Shelter Standards, but also Cleveland’s building and housing codes. Aside from these issues, the limited number of showers continues to cause worry about its inaccessibility to disabled women and fear about the residents’ ability to find and maintain employment.

“We cannot risk women getting a staph infection or losing their job because they cannot maintain their personal hygiene,” said Marcia Bufford NEOCH's board president. The board continues to fight for shelter standards and stands unified in their decision to challenge city and county officials to improve the living conditions for homeless women.

Marcia Bufford and Rosie Palfy are the contacts for this information

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Post Script: After this release was developed, we have been told that 100 women are now sleeping in the shelter. Ruth and Natoya would know this if they had accepted our offer to sleep at the shelter.