Take A Bottle of Water To Work Week

Water Needed Downtown

Your assignment for this incredibly hot week is to help out a friend with a bottle of water. Tonight and all this week put a plastic bottle of water in the freezer. Take it out on your way to work and give it to someone sitting or sleeping downtown. Even that annoying panhandler will appreciate a bottle of water especially with some ice in it. Water can be a life saver for the men and women who stay outside.

If you are not comfortable approaching someone on the streets, drop bottled water or even gallons of water at the NEOCH, Care Alliance, Volunteers of America, West Side Catholic or 2100 Lakeside shelter offices. We can all use water during the summer, and we will get it to the people most in need. To find one of these facilities go to the First Call for Help website. They all ring the downtown, and they are probably on your way into work. But to make thing easy, if you work downtown you can just drop the water bottle in a homeless individuals cart or bag. My experience is that we typically have as many homeless people die of heat exhaustion as we have die of hypothermia in Cleveland.

Please keep your fellow citizens in mind this week as you go downtown. Water is a great way to make a difference in another person's life.

Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Sleeping Outside in Cleveland

How Has The Economic Crisis Affected Homeless Living Outdoors?

Over the Thanksgiving weekend holiday, the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless recorded the number of people sleeping outside; an annual project that NEOCH has conducted for the last 12 years. NEOCH attempts to count and talk to everyone (if they are not sleeping) in the area between West 6th St. & East 20th St., then between the Lake & Carnegie Ave. “We believe that this is a good baseline for the lowest number of people sleeping outside for the year in Cleveland since, during the holidays, families take their relatives inside and so fewer people are homeless. This count does not define the number of people sleeping outside, but it is a good indicator of the trends,” said Brian Davis, executive director of NEOCH. This year’s extensive search tallied a number very similar to that in the counts of 2007 and 2008.

Here are the thoughts of the Director of the Coalition, Brian Davis, on the reasons for this trend:

• The sustained high rate of foreclosure has continued to make available a number of vacant properties in neighborhoods. Often these properties are abandoned, some still have furniture, and some even have heat. Many homeless people sleeping outdoors see this as an opportunity to find a good alternative to sleeping outside in the cold exposed to the elements and possible attack.
• The blue-and-yellow Downtown Cleveland Alliance’s clean up crews are patrolling the downtown for the fifth year. Their presence has made it very uncomfortable for homeless people who want to be left alone but, for their own safety, do not want to be invisible. The Downtown ambassadors do make the downtown look nicer, but for some this rigid attention to the sweeping of the sidewalks makes it uncomfortable to live on the streets. There is a noticeable improvement in the how things look Downtown. Without the construction of the Euclid Corridor and with the admirable efforts to keep the streets clean, the City is sparkling and ready for a turnaround. It really looks nice and inviting if not a bit lonely early in the morning.
• For the last two years, the Coalition has hosted monthly meetings to get all professional outreach teams on the same page. By keeping their maps of the city’s homeless updated, teams have been able to continue talking to the men and women who are resistant to shelter. The teams have worked out a schedule to talk to everyone outside in order to convince those resistant to shelter to come inside. Their coordinated efforts have helped stabilize the outdoor count over the past few years, even in the wake of economic downturn.

However, NEOCH staff do not believe that there has actually been an increase in the total number of homeless people. In fact, both major men’s and women’s shelters over this past summer were full or at overflow. Also, the number of homeless schoolchildren has risen steadily in Cleveland, a shocking epidemic that has just begun receiving nationwide attention.

If our goal in the community is to get homeless people off the streets, we have done a good job. We have unfortunately done that at the expense of the thousands of former home owners who have had to endure this foreclosure nightmare. If the goal is to get men and women into stable, decent, affordable places to live, then we still have a long way to go in Cleveland.

Brian Davis
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Yellow Meters Not a Big Deal

Why are So Many Talking About the Donation Meters?

I have only one problem with the yellow donation parking meters that the Downtown Cleveland Alliance installed downtown, but they are not a big deal. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion about these meters. There are those who love them and feel a sense of triumph that we are finally doing something about panhandling. There are many who feel that this is some weak attempt by the City to make money off of the charity of pedestrians. Neither of these scenarios are true. My biggest concern is that people will feel that we are addressing homelessness with the table scraps that will be collected. Homelessness is an expensive problem to solve that has resulted because our federal government has tried to find ways to cut costs. They have cut housing, job training, health care, and entitlements, and basically passed those costs onto the local community. That is why we have so many homeless people and why there are so many people who resort to begging for cash.

This is not a City of Cleveland program, and none of the money goes to the City. No city employee will even be collecting the money. These funds may benefit a few panhandlers who need identification not just to get social services, but to get housing, jobs and in many cases prescription drugs. Most people will continue to give to panhandlers, because they will want to give directly to a person without the administrative overhead. Finally, panhandlers rarely organize themselves and will not complain very loudly because they do not want to call attention to themselves. It is unlikely that we will ever see a panhandler revolt or even a panhandling protest.

With this in mind, I have to question the Plain Dealer editorial on Friday. This big corporate interest in Cleveland with their own building and security personnel is condemning the poorest people in our community who have decided that they have no where else to turn but to beg for money in the hot sun or the rain.

"JEERS . . . to panhandlers who don't like the yellow meter idea. They may prefer the direct approach, but most pedestrians don't enjoy it. It's possible that because of the meters at least a few people will be moved to charity, rather than just moving across the street to avoid a panhandler."

What is the purpose of this swipe? The biggest fear for these suits from the suburbs up to now is if it is going to rain on Saturday thus wiping out their golf or tennis game now are concerned about the complaints of panhandlers. Here is something to be afraid of: put these yellow meters in the lobby of City Hall and the County Administration building so that our elected officials can put in spare change into them every time a corporation or businessman comes in begging for a tax abatement or a variance for their building.

Bottom line is that these are not a big deal. People need to calm down about the yellow donation meters. We still have the choice to give or not to give. This is just one more opportunity to do something charitable. Now, the panhandlers just need to figure out how to quickly accept credit card donations in order to get a leg up on the yellow meters.

Brian
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Another Day: Another Report

Photo by Pleasure Simmons (NEOCH Photo Graduate 2008)

State of Downtown Cleveland Homeless

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless has published a report on the State of Downtown Homeless in Cleveland. It is on our website under Solutions/Public Policy section of the site. In 2007, during our budget woes at the Coalition, the City of Cleveland engaged a contract with NEOCH. This was a historic change from the bad days of the 1990s when we were forced to sue the City of Cleveland on a regular basis. NEOCH had never in our 20 year history had a contract with the City of Cleveland. Anyway, we completed our one year contract working on assisting the City with issues of homelessness downtown. The big success was moving the food providers to a new location without a lawsuit or a big demonstration. We started to see a large reduction in the number of people sleeping in the downtown. Unfortunately, with the problems facing our economy, the number has started to increase again. We could claim that there was a direct relationship between the numbers starting to rise immediately after our contract ended with the City, but that would not be true. We have continued to do much of the work, because the coordination is valuable.

We have a better network of coordination of outreach workers, we have a coordinated food distribution, and we have far fewer people in the overflow shelter system. NEOCH staff and board hope that the City will renew the contract this spring, and we can continue to work on other issues to reduce homelessness in Cleveland. It is a good report that gives a good overview of homelessness downtown.

Brian

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

Don't Forget the Vendors

"Change" Campaign Includes the Grapevine

After I posted the entry about the Change campaign, I got some questions from the vendors of the Homeless Grapevine newspaper about the donation meters. They are afraid that people will put money in the meters, and not buy the street newspaper. So, let me revise my support to urge people to not forget about the Homeless Grapevine vendors. I still do not think that the meters are a problem, but I hope people will remember your friendly neighborhood vendors. The Homeless Grapevine was the original alternative to panhandling in our city, and still publishes after 16 years. Feel free to give your change to the meters, but save $1.25 for the Homeless Grapevine.

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

A Lack of Collaboration

Unhelpful Websites

I was doing some searching various websites to see if there are negative or positive stories about the Coalition, and I noticed a few strange things. By looking at the websites it is clear that there is very little collaboration among the homeless service providers. One rare exception was not even a homeless service provider at all. We do not always see eye to eye with Downtown Cleveland Alliance, but at least they have the courtesy to put a link to the NEOCH website on their website about homelessness.

On the opposite extreme, I checked many of the other homeless social service providers in the community and I could not find one that linked to NEOCH. The worst was the County Office of Homeless Services barely mentions NEOCH (1 time), and never provides a link to our website. site. OHS does not provide a link to the housing website or the United Way First Call for Help website. There is very little helpful information on any of the homeless social services websites especially anything that might be useful to homeless people.

The Downtown Alliance talks about the Grapevine and provides a link to NEOCH on their Homeless Education Page. The County Office of Homeless Services did a complete change of their website (no link--go find it yourself), and did not include one mention of the NEOCH website. This is strange since we coordinate the outreach for the community, we produce the Street Card--one page guide to homeless people on available services, and we have our most popular part of the website--the schedule of where lawyers are staffing clinics in the shelters. We are five of the top 10 search results for "cleveland homeless" on Google, and have 3,000 unique users a month to our website. NEOCH staff and board regularly complain and criticize the County for their slow response to the problems faced by homeless people, but why not provide a link so that homeless people can get off the streets?

I checked Hitchcock Center, Volunteers of America, Y-Haven, West Side Catholic, Salvation Army, and Mental Health Services websites. On all of those site there were only two mentions of the Coalition and no links. We all think that what we do is the most important thing in the community, but the Street Card lists every service available to homeless people and is updated every year. It seems that the providers would want to provide access to a one page guide to homelessness. Since the public libraries are busiest drop in centers for homeless people in our community, there are a great many web surfing homeless people. Most of the emergency shelters kick people out during the day and a large number of the 1,200 homeless people sleeping in the emergency shelters go to the air conditioned, comfortable libraries in our community.

Of course one of the best resources in the community is the 211/First Call for Help website. You can find every homeless service provider, and nearly every social service provider in the community on those sites. The 211 website combined with the Housing Cleveland website provide all the information that anyone might need to get off the streets. It is a shame that the County does not support these two valuable resources with all that they need, and they do not even provide a link from their Office of Homeless Services website.

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

Great Post and Good Meeting

Rats on Public Square Follow Up Meeting

First, there was a great discussion about the Rats on Public Square at RealNEO for all--check it out. I have seen a number of comments about how bad that story was in the Plain Dealer, and I didn't even catch the rats borough vs. burrow copy editing mistake when I read it. From my experience there were rats nests on the Square, and they were a health hazard. I cannot say whether they had anything to do with homeless people, the lunch crowd or the construction on the Square or all of the above as I am not a rat expert. I do know that the excessive quanities of food and the rats have made life difficult for homeless people, but the reaction from people downtown has also not been helpful. We have seen a great many laws created and directed at homeless people including the curfew, the panhandling law, and now the movement of the food. We have also seen a great deal of hostility toward homeless people with the negative stories and the horrible comments about homeless people in the newspaper and on a few blogs. Things must really be bad if we are blaming homeless people for all the problems of the City.

Also, we did have another meeting between the City and the Food Distributors. We have not had a meeting since October when there was a tense stand off between the two groups, so we were afraid this could go real bad. It actually turned out to be a pretty good meeting. The City got two more groups to agree to the alternate location. This means that every night but Sunday and Wednesday night are taken. The City made an exception for one group, but refused to relent on the Port-o-John issue. We need a bathroom Downtown. This would be a huge step forward if we could get some place where humans could relieve themselves in a dignified manner. We found a place and a group to pay for the Port-o-Johns while we work on a permanent location. The city is absolutely opposed to Port-o-Johns, but agreed to work on finding some permanent alternatives. The City has set a short time frame to find a permanent place for the food providers to feed inside, and has agreed to allow the groups to discuss the options in a subcommittee. Overall, it was a good meeting and we do seem to be making some progress.

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

Downtown Shows Marked Decline in Homeless

Every year since homeless people started being harassed in Downtown Cleveland, NEOCH staff and volunteers have gone downtown over the Thanksgiving weekend to see how many people are sleeping outside. For the last 10 years, we have tried to count and talk to everyone (if they are not sleeping) in the area between West 6th St. and East 20th St. then between the Lake and Carnegie Ave. We believe that this is a good baseline for the lowest number of people sleeping outside for the year in Cleveland. During the holidays, families take their relatives inside so they don't have to sleep outside or in the shelters. This count does not define the number of people sleeping outside, but it is a good indicator of the trends. The decline in 2000 was the first year that 2100 Lakeside Shelter opened.

Where Have All the Homeless (People) Gone???

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, volunteers from the Coalition for the Homeless were only able to find 17 homeless people sleeping downtown. This was a huge decline from the 40 in 2006, so we went back the next day to make sure. We verified the numbers. I cannot explain the reason for the decline, but can give you some observations on what changed in the last year. There is no single issue like in 2000 with the opening of the shelter causing this decline, but here are my thoughts on some of the reasons:

• The clean up crews are now firmly established. The Downtown Cleveland Alliance funded clean up crews with their yellow and blue outfits have taken control of the downtown. They make it very uncomfortable for homeless people who want to be left alone, but for their own safety do not want to be invisible. It is hard to exist on the heated sidewalks with those huge blowers and cleaners running in the morning.
  
• The City of Cleveland has recently disrupted the food program downtown. The groups have moved around and been made to feel unwelcome by City officials. Some have stopped feeding. Others have moved outside the Downtown area. This has caused homeless people to relocate closer to where there are churches or meal program operating.
• With the anticipated closure of Aviation High School, the County has made a huge effort to open up housing for homeless people. From Stella Maris, Emerald Commons, Oriana House and additional housing vouchers, over the last three months there has been an unprecedented opportunity for people with disabilities to move out of the shelters.
  
• The foreclosure crisis has made available an incredible number of vacant properties in neighborhoods. Often these properties are abandoned, some still have furniture, and many have heat. Many homeless people see the foreclosure crisis as an opportunity to find low cost housing (FREE!) with some privacy.
• The outreach teams are now coordinating their work. The Coalition has begun hosting monthly meetings to get all the professional outreach teams on the same page. This has resulted in the teams mapping out the city (on Google maps), and they each talk to the men and women sleeping out on a regular schedule and try to convince those resistant to shelter to come inside. They all carry the same message, and they regularly talk to each other.
  
• The tent city was displaced. Last year, there was a growing group sleeping in tents near the Brown's stadium. This group was forced to relocate out of the Downtown area.
  
• The curfew on Public Square was passed by Cleveland City Council over the last year. During the 2006 walk, there were between 15 to 17 sleeping around the Square. This year there were three.
  

I am not sure that this means that there are fewer homeless people, because the numbers at 2100 Lakeside have not decreased at all. In fact, they have had near record nights six times in this last month and two near record nights in October. I also do not think that people moved just outside of the downtown clean up area. I feared that maybe this was the case, but I drove all around the Flats and in the St. Clair/Superior neighborhood and did not find any large groups. There were some places that homeless people have lived for years on sidewalks and out of the way areas that are no longer sites for homeless people in 2007. This is good news.

Overall, I was impressed with how much better the buildings and streets look downtown. I was sad that there were so few if any people walking around and now there were not even any homeless people, but the Downtown looked good. If our goal in the community is to get homeless people off the streets, we have done a great job. We have unfortunately done that at the expense of the thousands of former home owners who had to endure the foreclosure nightmare. If the goal is to get these men and women into stable, decent, affordable places to live, then we have a long way to go.

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

No, We Do Not Support the Anti-Panhandling Campaign

Plain Dealer Gets It Wrong

The article in Wednesday's Plain Dealer about the panhandling campaign and the $100 donated to the "Homeless Fund" stated that NEOCH supported the Downtown Alliance's campaign. This is incorrect. The Homeless Grapevine and the vendors of the paper support the campaign, because the they do not like panhandlers. The Coalition has never taken a position on the campaign, but we certainly would not support a battle against our own constituents. Sure, panhandlers are a tiny proportion of the homeless population, but we still have to respect our constituents.

We are not actively opposing the campaign. I believe that people Downtown are smart enough to realize what they are doing when they give to a panhandler. It is almost like pulling the lever on a slot machine--rarely do you win, but we always hold out hope. We know that most of the donation is wasted, but there is always that hope that your act of kindness will turn things around for the person. A great many feel that no matter what happens to their donation, it is a small token of kindness that they do not get from donating to a charity. So, while the Coalition is not big fans of panhandling, because of the degrading nature of begging for money, we would not campaign against something that has a longer history than democracy on this planet.

I went over this repeatedly with the Plain Dealer reporter, but he just did not seem to get it. I tried to explain that the vendors are allowed to express a contrary opinion to that of the Coalition. I told him that I was most disappointed that religious groups would sign onto the campaign because of the conflict over their messages: "Go out and give to the poor, but just not downtown when someone asks." I feel bad that the three major churches downtown are listed as co-sponsors. I do not understand why the reporter would list us as a supporter, but I hope the Plain Dealer prints a correction. Far be it for us to tell you what to do with your charitable dollars, but the signs downtown seem mean-spirited.

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