Distributing Toys

NBC Today Show Toys and Household Items Distributed by NEOCH Staff

NEOCH Staff Wrapped and Distributed Toys Locally
Every year, NEOCH is the local recipient of the NBC Today Show Toy Drive gifts.  These are books, toys, and other household items donated by major retailers in the United States to go to children and families in shelters.   This year William (Santa hat) and Larry played Santa Claus by distributing the items.  Ms. Harris and Ms. Barnes wrapped the toys that we received from HomeGoods.  We gave out new cutting boards and kitchen cutlery and cooks' tools to those in transition to housing.  We distributed women's intimates, and bath and soap items to a women's shelters.  We gave away winter clothing, and a few smaller items that came in.  All of these items are new and the kids items we wrapped and delivered to family shelters with name tags identifying who would appreciate the toys the most.  This is a great program for shelters throughout the United States.  Thanks to NBC and the Today show and all the corporations which participate in this program.

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

A Couple of Items You May Have Missed

Homelessness in the Media

NPR's Morning Edition had a story of a homeless woman trying to get enough money to send a Christmas Card to her daughter on the popular StoryCorp section of the broadcast.  While living in the shelter, Queen Jackson was depressed around the holidays until she received a hygiene kit that contained a bottle of lotion with the most fantastic fragrance.  It cheered her up, and got her through the season.  Remember NEOCH is also collecting items to distribute to homeless people.  We are collecting blankets and winter items including hygiene items to distribute to those on the streets. Maybe your donation could help a woman down on her luck make it through the holidays. 

Staff of the local coalition as well as the National Coalition for the Homeless were quoted in the latest Nation magazine.  The article describes the cuts to the housing budget nationally and the strain that is putting on those with a low income.  I really like the quote from Neil Donovan at NCH:

“Today the housing safety net isn’t just frayed,” says Neil Donovan, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “It’s missing. And still everyone’s being told to walk the tightrope without any net.”

The entire issue is dedicated to a look at the cuts to all the New Deal programs and the impact of those cuts on our society.   From Medicaid to Food Stamps to poverty programs, they are all facing the chopping block, and the authors look at how this affects the Bronx or Cleveland or the Oakland school system.  It is a good read--check it out. 

The National Center for Family Homelessness has received a great deal of attention for their report on the sharp increase in children experiencing homelessness during the recession. The director was on Tell Me More on NPR talking about the report, and many newspaper wrote about how their state compared with regard to childhood homelessness.  This is the best part of the Center for Family Homeless reports is that it compares various state efforts to address the problem. It shows how state efforts to cut taxes has a consequence on the number of people living in poverty.   This report shows that nearly every deep Southern state as well as the desert southwest states having the largest increase in homelessness of over 40% in the last three years.  California is also on the worst list.  Texas is in the second worst category of 31% to 40% increases in childhood homelessness along with the other states bordering the South along with New York and Oregon.  Two Southern states (North and South Carolina) break with the rest of the South seeing only a 21% to 30% rise in childhood homelessness.  These are certainly not good numbers, but at least they are not horrible like much of the South and West.  This 21% to 30% increase in childhood homelessness is the same percentage increase for Ohio, Michigan and Indiana.

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

New School Children Resource Available

What to Do If You Are In Danger of Becoming Homeless While in School?

The state and federal government have clear and unequivocal rules for protecting a child's education. The goal is to get a child situated within 24 hours after becoming homeless with a preference for maintaining their school life unbroken. So, whenever possible, advocates try to keep the child in the school they were attending before their guardian became homeless. The State of Ohio Department of Education enforces these rules, and will make sure that school districts don't try to enforce an arbitrary residency rule on homeless children.

Thanks to our new VISTA, Holly, we have updated the list of contacts from each school district in Cuyahoga County. As the new school year begins, we have posted the 2010-2011 list of homeless liaisons within each school district in Cuyahoga County. With the passage of No Child
Left Behind each district in the United States had to appoint one school official who could help children who may be experiencing homelessness. These liaisons can help identify resources within the community for homeless children, and will help set up transportation back to their school of origin. So, lets say a child's family becomes homeless in October while the child was attending Maple Hts. elementary school, they could search our list and find the district's contact. This district official would help the child pay for transportation from the Harbor Light shelter in Cleveland back to Maple Hts. school every day. They could help with tutoring assistance or printing a family street card from our website to help the household stay together during their stay in the shelters.

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

Street Cards Published

All Street Cards Updated and Posted

Thanks to MetroHealth Hospital for printing the 2010 version of the Street Card. It is out now, and available on the NEOCH website. We are working to distribute them throughout the system. This is the eighteenth year of updating the Street Card in Cleveland. Every year one of the hospital systems agrees to printing the card. We distribute 10,000 to schools, libraries, police stations and social service providers. Many print the Street Card directly from our website. This is the most popular page of our website by far, and people are free to download the Street Card and make copies and distribute themselves. For those who are not aware the Street Card is a free resource guide for those in need of help. It lists all the services available in the community that a person can access directly from the streets (no referral necessary). It lists only weekly food sites. New this year is some help with obtaining identification. I saw a section on ID on one of the street cards from another city in the United States and decided that we need something similar. If you are visiting a store with some fraudulent women holding a street card asking for a donation, don't be fooled. They are scammers. Don't give them money.

A few months back, NEOCH announced that we were creating a special Street Card to serve families. Thanks to the internship of CWRU student, Joe Baum, we were able to publish this Street Card last week. We were seeking donations to help with this project, and about 20 people responded. Thanks also to the Dominion Foundation who saw this project and stepped forward to get it done. They are helping with the printing and the distribution of this Family Street Card. It is available on our website here. The Family Street Card is tailored more to homeless children and their parents. It lists childcare options, foreclosure assistance, and contacts at local school districts for families struggling with housing. We will begin to distribute the Family Street Card throughout the community this fall.

In addition, both the Veterans Street Card and the East Cleveland Street Card were updated and are available on our website. For case workers who work with these individuals, these are invaluable resources. Please feel free to download any or all of these Street Cards and distribute them to people in need.

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

Support A Reduction in Family Homelessness

Dear Friend of the Coalition:

Honor your Parents for the Holidays

The fastest growing subpopulation of homeless people in America is families, which typically means a Mother and one to two children. Imagine your own mother having to spend time in a homeless shelter. Imagine trying to figure out how to maintain a job, your child’s schooling, and search for housing while staying in the shelter. It is a miracle if a Mom and a Dad can stay together during a period of homelessness in Cleveland, and please realize that it is extremely difficult to find a shelter bed for a Dad with his children.

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is working every day to preserve affordable housing opportunities, expand job opportunities and eliminate civil rights barriers that confront homeless people. We make every effort to work with the City and County and the social service community to reduce the time a family spends homeless in Cleveland. In our recently published State of Homelessness Report we found that:

• The school district reported a 17% increase in children experiencing homelessness in the last year.
• First Call for Help reported a 82% increase in requests for food pantry assistance since 2006.
• The Domestic Violence Center reports a 8% increase in families served between 2008 and 2009.

Today, we introduce an effort to honor the mothers and fathers in our community while improving the services to those families that become homeless. We are asking for your support in an effort to create a Family Street Card directed at parents facing either foreclosure or are danger of becoming homeless. In exchange for a $35 donation, we will post a message on our website honoring a mother or father that you feel deserve to be recognized. We need $2,500 to prepare this Family Street Card, print the card and begin to distribute this one page easy to use resource for families struggling in our community. Currently, we print an East Cleveland Street Card, a general Street Card, and a Veteran’s Street Card. With the explosion in family homelessness over the last four years, and the decline in the number of shelter beds for families over the same period, now more than ever we need a resource to distribute to those families struggling with their housing.

For every donation that we receive, we will memorialize on our website the parent or loved one who worked to raise a child and deserves some public recognition. We will also send a thank you note either to that individual or directly to you for your support of social justice and of families who are struggling with housing. Your tax-deductible donation will allow us to create a new resource for families and at the same time honor the parent in your community who influenced you or demonstrated exemplary behavior in teaching the next generation.

To support this project, you can return the enclosed form or go to our website and donate online. Either click on the “Reduce Family Homelessness” button on the front page of our website or go directly to www.neoch.org/honoring_parents.htm in order to donate. Mark your donation with the phrase “Family Homelessness” in the purpose line. We can send a card to you to recognize your donation or we can send the card directly to your parent or the individual that you want honored, and we will also post a message on our website honoring a parent in our community.

Please help us create a new resource for families and support the Homeless Coalition. As you prepare for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, take a minute to acknowledge someone who has had a tremendous impact on your life.

To donate go to www.neoch.org and click on Family Homelessness!

Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Homeless Families on the Rise

New York Times Story on Homeless Students

The New York Times had a great feature on the increase in homeless children within school as we start the new academic year. This is a huge problem in Cleveland, and we try to help by offering a contact sheet for children in their school district here. This provides information on who is responsible for helping a child that is in danger of being homeless or already without housing. Often the teachers are the first to recognize that there is a problem with the family and their housing situation. They will notice a child will be suddenly come to school tired, depressed, grades will drop, and often the teacher is the one will confide in. The one good thing to come from "No Child Left Behind" Law is that every district has to have a liaison to help students who find themselves homeless and report those stats to the State of Ohio. We are fortunate in Cleveland to have a model program for homeless children at the Cleveland Public Schools with Project ACT.

The Coalition published a report in 2007 on the State of Family Homelessness. We detailed the problem back before the current downturn. The bottom line note from our report was that 2007 was the worst time in our history for homeless women. We listed a number of overarching issues including the lack of domestic violence beds, the inability for couples and even married homeless couples to remain together, and the poor conditions of the family shelters with four facilities closing in the last six years. Things have only gotten worse in Cleveland over the last two years. We saw an amazing increase from the 2006 to 2007 school year and similar numbers last year. Check out the report and the state of homeless reports on our website.

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

Things You Need to Know

When You Fall...You Fall to the Bottom

Every few days, we get a call at the office from people who are new to homelessness, and they cannot believe that they have to go to a shelter. They are losing their home or their apartment, and are calling around a long list of numbers hoping for some help. There are some who had no idea that their landlord was being foreclosed on, and were told that they had to find some other place to live. The middle class has shrunk over the last 25 years, and there are many more people who are in danger of being homeless. Here are a few things that you need to know in order to prepare for the "Brave New World" without a safety net:

• There is no emergency housing in our community. There is rental housing and there are shelters. There is nothing in between. There are no more flop houses or places to pay for a week or a day at a time. There are motels, but those are not appropriate to live since they have no kitchens.
  
• There is no place to store your items. When you become homeless and you first go to shelter there are no places to keep your belongings. You must compact your entire life into one bag.
  
• Theft is a huge problem within the shelters. Take care of your valuables.
  
• No one from the County will tell you this to your face, but they have opened up files at Children and Family Services because a family became homeless. Stay strong, and go through all the hoops. Don't let the system take your children because you don't do the paperwork or show up for their hearings.
  
• If you are not the primary caregiver to a child and you are no longer married, immediately go in and request a change in your status. It takes months to get the payments on child support lowered, so you need to start that paperwork immediately. The debt accumulated while waiting for a child support correction usually can never be reduced or eliminated. It can last forever.
  
• It is highly unlikely that Mom and Dad can go to the same shelter. Unless the stars align perfectly this is not likely to happen. Stay strong and meet your spouse during the day. If you are not married or cannot prove you're married you will not get into a shelter together.
  
• When you first become homeless you go to the two entry shelters around 3 p.m. There is no need to call, they are not supposed to turn people away. If you are a woman go to 2219 Payne Ave. If you are a man go to 2100 Lakeside Shelter on Lakeside Ave.
  
• Call every morning to see if there are vacancies at the other shelters or you get stuck in the two entry shelters. There is usually no choice on the shelter that you start out in, and the rest of the shelters do not keep waiting lists. No one is going to advocate for you or open doors for you. You have to be a little pushy to get through the system. Ask questions, talk to people, and remember that you will make it through this if you stay strong.
  
• Word on the streets is often more reliable than the information you may get from the providers. Other homeless people know a great deal of information, and you should talk to them. They often know more than the case workers and social workers who are barely keeping up from one emergency to the next.
  
• Except for the entry shelter for women, nearly every other shelter will ask you to leave to go find housing or a job during the day.
  
• Make sure that you get a voice mail box early so that you are connected to the rest of the world. This will help move through the system quicker.
  
• Bus tickets are gold, and cigarettes are silver. They are also a form of currency in the homeless community.
  
• The libraries are great places to go during the day, and usually the librarians are incredibly helpful. There are plenty of resources on the computer that can help. The best are the 211 website www.211cleveland.org and the housing website www.housingcleveland.org. Both have all the resources you need at your fingertips to get out of your situation.
  
• It may be the time to take a break from the rat race and improve your skills during this time of homelessness. This may not be what the shelters suggest, but you should think about what would be best for you for the future. A period of homelessness is the best time to evaluate your life and your career and whether you have enough education.
  
• There are 19,000 people in the same situation as you during a year. So, while it is frustrating, there is no easy way out. There are long waits for subsidized housing, good jobs are hard to come by, and finding a professional to talk to is even difficult.
• Stay connected with your family and friends. Some of the things that you see during homelessness are amazing and can make you crazy. It is important to have people who you can talk to who are outside of the system.
  

Good luck. You can make it out of this situation. Too many people give up, and prolong their stay in the shelters. You can do it if you stay focused.

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