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

Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

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.

President Answers Homeless Question

Thank You Ebony Magazine for Asking the Question

We were able to hear a diversity of questions at the Tuesday night Presidential Press Conference including a question from a reporter from Ebony magazine. No major newspapers and no NPR, but we heard a question about veterans from Stars and Stripes and this question from Ebony:

"Thank you, Mr. President. A recent report found that, as a result of the economic downturn, 1 in 50 children are now homeless in America. With shelters at full capacity, tent cities are sprouting up across the country.

In passing your stimulus package, you said that help was on the way. But what would you say to these families, especially children, who are sleeping under bridges and in tents across the country?"

What a great question!! The answer needed some work. Don't get me wrong it was a long time ago that the President of the United States has been asked about homelessness, so maybe the Chief Executive was just rusty. It started out well with President Obama talking about the injustice of homelessness especially among children. But the leap to jobs was a bit of a stretch. We are 100% on board with linking jobs to homelessness, because without a sufficient income there is no way that someone can afford a place to live. The issue is that America needs a raise especially those who are disabled. No where in the United States does a disability check pay the fair market housing. We appreciate the efforts within the Veteran's Administration to expand assistance and the emphasis on families, but creating jobs is one step away from addressing homelessness.

We need jobs that have a living wage so that people can afford to buy a car and stay in housing. We need the disability assistance to either come with a housing voucher or be at least doubled so that people can pay for housing. For this reason, we need a White House Conference on Homelessness in America to educate the Executive Branch including the President about the problems. One of the bloggers at Huffington Post picked up on the new attention to homelessness in America.

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

A New Plan to End Homelessness in America

How Can I Get to An Obama Rally?

President Obama introduced a new plan to end homelessness in America on Tuesday: Get to a rally with the President in attendance and figure out how to ask the President a question about your own homelessness. If Obama could host three meetings a day, and take 20 questions from each audience with Sundays off, he could solve homelessness for 6,260 people in one year. That is some progress that may inspire Governors and Mayors to follow suit. There may be a few riots on the way to this progress with everyone trying to get to the microphone to ask a question, but those are details that can be worked out later. It would be rough at the New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and District of Columbia rally, but we could have additional security employed for these rallies. Ms. Hughes in Florida waited until she could ask the President for help. She mentioned the long wait for public housing, and that she was sleeping in a car. I talked to a Florida advocate on Tuesday who said there were hundreds of families waiting to get into shelter in her city. They stay on the streets or in cars with their children just to get a shelter bed. It has come to the point that the safety net is so broken that our only hope is asking the President of the United States for help.

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

More Questions Than Answers

Family Homelessness on the Rise in Cleveland

On Tuesday, the County and the Sisters of Charity Foundation hosted a half day conference on family homelessness. It raised more questions than it answered, and gave very little information about how bad families have it in Cleveland. We have a report on our website about Family Homelessness that gives a good overview of the problems faced by Mom, Dad and their kids. The best part of the day was the presentation by Marge Wherley of the Hennepin County Housing and Homeless Initiatives. She knew exactly how to solve this problem and the people in Minnesota had bucked the national trends to put in place a good program to end family homelessness. I sit on the National Coalition for the Homeless board with two representatives from Hennepin County Minnesota. I visited Minneapolis and can tell you that they know what is going on up there.

You may have heard the story on WCPN this week about these national experts coming in and talking about family homelessness. I was disappointed in the program, and seemed like a bunch of people who recently found religion about homelessness. Federal policies for the last eight years and pushed by some of these groups was to focus resources on long term homeless people has taken away funding for families. I mean the folks from Columbus do not even have a plan for ending homelessness among families, but they suddenly found this was a need when the State published a request for proposals to address the growing problem of families in the shelters. So, Columbus is studying the problem to see what will work right now. All four of the other biggest cities received this funding--Cleveland with its largest family homeless population in the state lost out. We were beat out by Fayette County Ohio.

The questions that came to mind for me include: No one talked about how to address women who have sizable income, but are caught up in a domestic violence break up and are out of their house and restricted from accessing their funds. How is that Columbus can serve families with their permanent supportive housing? HUD rules do not allow this, and Cleveland only serves those with a disability with their permanent supportive housing stock? Why do social service providers keep saying that if we can just get families to use "mainstream resources" we would significantly reduce homelessness? This is like saying if we could just get families to touch the horn of the mythical unicorn, we could eliminate hunger. We would love to have access to mainstream resources, but we do not have five years to wait for housing, disability or the other programs in our shredded safety net.

The most frustrating part of the day was how there have been so many programs in Cleveland that were similar to those mentioned in other communities that the county has let wither or die locally. The one program in Minnesota is similar to Bridging the Gap that the County could only find $40,000 a year to support. It could have done so much more if it was provided more funding. The County has never supported Homeless Legal Assistance program which helps 99% of the clients facing eviction in St. Paul. We could do the same thing with public money to prevent all evictions.

Mandel did a study on family homelessness, which was fine but only gave the dry numbers on the problems not the impact on our community. There were no stories about renters becoming homeless and having all their stuff locked up in legal limbo. Or the Mom and Dad who have to go to two separate shelters because there is no space for men at the women's shelters. We needed to see the face of family homelessness. Besides, the numbers that Mandel had to use were fatally flawed because they did not include the biggest shelters in the community. So, the numbers were released were a dramatic undercount in the real problem.

The national expert, Nan Roman, is a long time advocate to end homelessness with a well endowed agency and a powerfully connected board of trustees. Unfortunately, homelessness has increased in nearly every community in the United States during the last 20 years. While they were pushing the federal department that funds most of the homeless programs to focus on single adults who have been homeless for long periods of time, welfare was pulled out from people and family homelessness started increasing dramatically. Then the system collapsed in many cities with the foreclosure crisis. So, the National Alliance switched gears and started talking about the assault on the Section 8 program and the problems faced by families. It was interesting to see that St. Paul had rejected the National Alliance led focus on single adults 16 years ago and they are beginning to see the rewards. I asked if the National Alliance if they were supporting an expansion of the definition of homelessness to include those who are sleeping on sofas in overcrowded houses (which is the situation for most families), and Nan said "no" they were not. It is impossible for most HUD funded programs to provide help to families unless they give up the sofa and go to the shelters. Unfortunately, Cleveland has lost hundreds of shelter beds for families so that is not an option for many. We only have a limited pool of money in our community, and slicing off one-third of the pie to serve the long term single adults has had an impact on our families. Unless Congress substantially increases the pie we can't do both with serving families and serving single adults.

I like Nan a lot, but I hope that the next administration drops all this silly focus on one population. Every homeless person deserves and needs help no matter if they are a single adult or a family. We shall see if the county learns anything from this presentation and puts some value to prevention programs, legal assistance, voice mail, and on-going follow up services after the family is placed into housing.

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

Correction

Regret the Error

I got a call from the Plain Dealer reporter about the posting on East Side Catholic back in December. Stan Donaldson did not like the fact that I did not call him to ask about the article he wrote, and was concerned that I wrote, "Stan D. never asked Ruth Gillett why she could not have kept the shelter open or forced a change in leadership." Donaldson is correct that this sentence is difficult to verify and is factually incorrect. I am sorry for the error.

What I intended to say was that the Plain Dealer did not print the heart of the story and what matters to all of us working on homeless issues. The heart of the story is what does Cleveland do to replace or bring these beds back into service? Family homelessness is out of control and we need every bed, unit, opportunity for families we have in the community. I do not fault reporter Stan Donaldson, because my experience is that getting a solid answer from the County about homelessness is nearly impossible.

One thing that I learned about East Side Catholic that was never printed was that the agency was $1.5 million in debt. I do not know who loaned these guys over $1 million. There was just no way that this organization could continue, but did we have to lose the beds? There are rumors of another organization stepping in to take over the beds, but those details have not been finalized. The families who have had to split up over the last month because every bed is full would have appreciated a deal worked out before East Side Catholic closed.

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

Your Government Inaction

Family Shelter Closing

East Side Catholic Center announced on Monday that they would be closing on December 21, 2007. This 32 to 40 bed facility has stopped accepting families for their emergency shelter, and will work to relocate their residents over the next two weeks. In addition, East Side Catholic administered a program called “Miracle Village” in collaboration with Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, and has announced that this program will also shut down. Miracle Village provided treatment for women with a chemical dependency and could serve up to 135 women. The agency has had financial issues for three years, and County officials were not able to provide assistance to keep the programs operational while family homelessness is the fastest growing subpopulation within the homeless community.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development released a report “Assessing the Number of Homeless People in the United States” in February 2007 and found that nationally 48% of the homeless population were a part of a family. This translates to over 9,000 members of a family in Cuyahoga County were homeless in one year or 5,000 people were age 0 to 17 years old and found themselves without housing in the most recent figures available. Family homelessness is on the rise, and the service providers are not keeping up with the calls for help. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is calling on government officials specifically, the City/County Office of Homeless Services to figure out how to keep these services operational in one of the poorest cities in the United States. While shelters are not the answer to homelessness, they are an essential part of our safety net to keep families together while they struggle to get back into housing.

In a forum held by the Coalition in early March 2007 around Family Homelessness we learned of:

• The funding problems faced by the family shelters because of federal policy, and we raised the issue of three of our family shelters that were in danger of closing in Cleveland.
• The significant decrease in the number of shelter beds for those fleeing an abuser in the last five years.
• The lack of oversight of the shelters, which makes it difficult for women to stay in the system and many fear using the shelters.
• The current shelter policy especially for those who are newly homeless makes it difficult for a mother and father to stay together. We heard from women who had to separate from their husbands because the entry shelters do not allow men.

With the dramatic increases in foreclosures, the levels of poverty in Cleveland, and the growing waiting lists for affordable housing, we do not need to see a family shelter close in Cleveland. I am amazed that Ruth Gillett of the Office of Homeless Services with the backing of Cuyahoga County could not figure out a way to save these programs. We had three years to put a plan in place to keep in place the shelter and treatment, but community leaders did not step in to help. I have to wonder if the County has decided that these programs are not necessary or was all their attention focused on the closing of Aviation High School overflow shelter? The shelter was put on notice two years ago after a review by Cuyahoga County officials that prevented East Side Catholic from seeking federal dollars until they cleaned up their agency’s finances, management, and program operations. At the time, the County put East Side Catholic on notice, Gillett and others made a commitment to maintain the service in the community. It is ironic that the shelter chose December 21, National Homeless Memorial Day, as the day to close since that is the day to remember those who passed away over the last year because of homelessness. Will we see an increase in the list of names read at the 2008 Homeless Memorial Day because of the inaction to save East Side Catholic?

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

Governor's Wife Meets With Homeless Families

Ohio's First Lady Sits Down to Listen and Learn

Frances Strickland, Ohio's First Lady, was in Cleveland on Monday 8/20 to meet with a group of homeless women and children. Trinity Cathedral hosted 7 women and their children, and one recent graduate of the Cleveland Public Schools who struggled with homelessness. We met in the comfortable surroundings of the Charter Room with couches and comfortable chairs. So comfortable, in fact, two of the children fell asleep while their Mom's held them. This was an attempt by the Governor's wife to stay in touch with homeless people, and she wanted to hear from the students about their experiences in managing school during their period of housing instability. Ms. Strickland was soft spoken, but a good listener. She went back over the points that the women made to make sure that she understood. The families came from Miracle Village, West Side Catholic, New Life Community and Cleveland Public Schools Project Act, and most left with a positive impression of the First Lady.

The one recurring issue that came up from the women were the difficulty in finding stable housing without some financial help. A number of women talked about how they found help for themselves and their children from the Department of Human Services, but once they started earning money it all fell apart. The shelter usually only allow a family to stay for three months, and the women find a job, secure their benefits, and then eventually find housing. Once a woman starts earning income, their food stamps are reduced and their child care assistance is reduced. They just barely make it with a job and the County assistance, and then the county begins to withdraw that help and one unexpected expense can cause a return to the shelters. This is a big issue that the State can address. If as a society we are not going to demand living wages from all our employers, then we have to subsidize childcare, transportation, housing and food--sometimes for life.

Other issues that came up during the discussion:

• The shelters turn developmentally disabled individuals out when they turn 18 even if they are still in high school under the care of a parent or guardian. One disabled young man was taken advantage of and raped because he was separated from his mom when he turned 18. The state needs to revise its rules for the shelters.
• Suburban schools have an unfair advantage over Cleveland schools in the tests. Too many kids start behind their neighbors in the suburbs, and the Cleveland kids are always playing catch up.
  
• Our community has no idea what is happening with homeless kids who leave their parents or guardians before they are 18 because we don't have a place for these kids to go.
  
• No matter what the County says publicly, they often take custody of children just because the Mom becomes homeless.
• The Housing Authority is not doing a good job with inspections of potential apartments for those using the voucher program.
• Suburban school districts do not always follow the rules with regard to allowing a child to return to their school of origin when a family becomes homeless. Lakewood specifically came up in the discussion.
  
• Why does ODJFS (Welfare Department) want us to provide ID every six months in order to get benefits? All that information is on file when you apply, why do we keep having to bring our ID and birth certificates with us? They do not change.
  
• Child support orders do not always transfer very smoothly between Counties. This is a big problem for those fleeing because of domestic violence.
  
• Poor people fall through the cracks in health care, and the hospitals try as hard as they can not to serve you especially with dental care. Follow up care is especially difficult.
• There is too much paperwork to get a few food stamps.
  
• Things start crushing down on the women at the shelters and there is not enough counseling help. Shelters need more workers who can help, and those shelters need a highly professional staff like West Side Catholic.
  
• Shelters need more budgeting classes. Some of the shelters have nothing (no classes) and no one can help with anything, while others have everything.
  
• There is a lot of racism in finding a job or housing in this community.
• One woman mentioned having lost everything and started over in the shelters. Then she got her life back together and the County cut all her help because she started earning $8 an hour, which was not enough to pay the rent/food/childcare.
  
• The income that one woman found did not pay her expenses, and so she has no idea how to pay for childcare services.
• Most of the housing has this incredible waiting list of three to five years.
• The oversight of most of the subsidized housing (vouchers, Public Housing, and HUD housing) is not very good and needs improved. Too much bureaucracy and not enough scrutiny.
  
• There is way too much abandoned housing in our community. Many women mentioned the need to fix it up and get homeless people moved in to those units.
  
• One of the women was going to school at CSU, but also had to have a full time job. Tuition is too expensive and grants are not available.
  
• Cleveland Public Schools said that they were starting out the year with 700 homeless children registered.
• One woman mentioned that she was homeless as a child, and was terrified that she would be homeless again. She constantly has that on her mind that she does not want to go through the trauma of homelessness again.
  
• Shelter Plus Care is a very good program.
  
• They need more programs to help women do things for themselves.
  
• New Life Shelter complained about the time limits put on treatment and job training. This has harmed their program and the women in the program.
• Apartment owners are not taking care of their property, and again inspections are not working.
  
• A few said that they were very grateful for the programs and the services available. Some of the shelters are not providing the same level of service as others, and women have to go to the schools or churches or other places for help.
• When a family starts making a little money is the time that they start taking away your day care or transportation. No one could make it on $7 an hour and the small amount of help that the County give you.
• Why would one of the shelters force you to leave once you get a job? This seems like the opposite message that the shelters should be giving to homeless women. It is like they want people to be dependent if they are discouraging employment.
  

It was a good event, and I always learn a lot when homeless people are given the opportunity to talk about the system with someone they believe can help. Governor Strickland has re-convened the InterAgency Task Force on Homelessness of all the heads of agencies that interact with homeless people like Human Services, Mental Health, Drug Board, etc. They are supposed to try to reduce the bureaucracy between government agencies in an attempt to get assistance to those struggling with housing with the utmost speed. This InterAgency Council needs to convene similar listening projects around the state to get this kind of input.

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

Shelter Showdown Set

East Side Catholic Strikes Back Against County

After the County Office of Homeless Services Advisory Board voted in January to withhold future funding until East Side Catholic family shelter found a fiscal agent to manage their money, the shelter staff and board have finally responded. They have obviously calculated that they are too valuable to the community and the County will back down. They might be right, but my experience says that the County usually wins it just takes a great deal of time and aggravation.

For those who do not remember and do not want to go back to the link, East Side Catholic received repeated warnings about problems with the shelter. The County has had issues for two years now with the shelter and the administration of the shelter. It seems that the director left and the board dissolved. There were problems with an audit, and the programming that the women were receiving in the shelter. Anyway, there were serious problems and all the Board including the Coalition for the Homeless supported the actions taken by the County.

East Side Catholic sent a harsh letter to Ruth Gillett of the County Office of Homeless Services rejecting the oversight and demanding a meeting with the Federal Department overseeing shelter funds and Cuyahoga County. "East Side Catholic refuses to forfeit its FY 2006 grant award...East Side Catholic will not waive its rights to make application for FY 2007. " The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development gives a great deal of discretion to the local government entity to manage each of the projects. There are thousands of project sponsors in the United States and HUD depends on the local jurisdiction to provide oversight of each shelter. The FY 2007 applications are already done and currently under review. East Side Catholic already missed the local application deadline and is certainly going to be skipped.

I especially like this line from their letter, "East Side Catholic continues to have grave problems receiving complete and clear information from OHS. " Ain't it the truth. Ruth is notorious for providing incomplete and vague information. That is how she has survived in government for so long. No matter if this is true or not, the County will win. They beat Care Alliance and in the end owned the Care Alliance buildings. They eliminated University Settlement from federal funding. The County will eventually prevail. It seems that the staff and Board of East Side Catholic feel that the County is weak and can be bullied. That is a facade that the OHS staff put out, but it is not the case. There will be a long drawn out battle, which may lead to the entire program failing and hundreds of homeless families struggling to find a place to live. This is emblematic of how things work in the homeless system--no coordination, much competition, very little cooperation, lots of fights, and very little progress is ever made toward the goal of ending homelessness. The worst part of this is the negative impact this will have on a population that is already struggling in our community: homeless families.

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

Family Forum Reflection

Women Gather to Plead for More Attention

The Family Homeless Forum was not as well attended as we had hoped, but it was a wonderful forum with a four women doing a great presentation about their experiences. We prepared a good overview of family homelessness locally that will be on the website shortly. We intend to send the report to every elected official, foundation, and major religious institution in the area. Family homelessness is on the rise with 9,000 individuals from families who experience homelessness every year. Nearly one third of the total number of children in the Ohio school system who were homeless came from the Cleveland Public Schools last year. And the situation for families is only getting worse.

Federal policy has turned away from family homelessness, and this has caused great instability within the family shelters. Two of the 12 family shelters in the community are on the rocks and in danger of closing, and the waiting list for families getting into subsidized housing is 3-5 years. Michelle talked about how she had to wait for help because she did not have a drug problem and was not disabled. We heard from one woman about the lack of facilities for both Moms and Dads to stay together in the same shelter. One woman talked about having to make the decision to go back to an abuser, because she could not find any housing after a felony conviction. Sabrina talked about the horrible experiences within the shelters, and the fact that she had no where to turn for help.

The experience of homelessness is rough enough without prolonging that stay with silly and incorrect policies. In the past, we did everything, as a society, in our power to make sure that kids were protected from the most extreme forms of poverty. It seems that there are so many families suffering that we have just given up. We need local leadership to step forward, roll up their sleeves and begin to build more housing to keep families together.

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