Homeless Congress Next Week

Transformational Art at Cosgrove Center

State Officials to Meet with Homeless Individuals Focus on Shelter and Jobs

Cleveland, OH-The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless along with the Homeless Congress will host elected officials from the state legislature to hear concerns that include shelter standards, funding for shelters, transportation, and more access to housing in general.  The meeting is Thursday March 15, 2012 at 1 p.m. at the Cosgrove Center gymnasium. 
      The Homeless Congress, a group of members of the homeless community and their advocates, meets monthly to address the needs of homeless individuals and to bring those issues in front of County, State elected officials, and the media. It consists of two representatives from each Cleveland shelter and six from the 2100 Lakeside Men’s Shelter and three from the Norma Herr Shelters.  It is organized by members of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless.
      While the State does fund a small amount of the budget for the local shelters, this funding has not changed in over a decade while the amount of people requiring shelter and assistance continues to increase. Though the problem of homelessness is overwhelming and funding is difficult to come by, the Homeless Congress has narrowed down some specific and immediate problems that with some attention could provide a small step in the right direction.
      The topic at the forefront will be that of our shelters, and making certain that they are abiding (and have the means to abide) by uniform health and safety standards. Additionally, transportation needs to be made more available, so that people needing to travel to job interviews and landlord interviews can do so safely. A special concern deals with housing, specifically for families due to the sharp increase in family homelessness during the downturn.  Due to overcrowding, the entry women’s shelters has been forced to close during daytime hours.  The Congress will also be asking for assistance in putting job-training programs in place that specifically serve homeless people, helping individuals to assess and improve work skills so that they may find gainful employment.
      This month’s Homeless Congress meeting will be held on March 15, at 1:00 PM  at the Bishop Cosgrove Center, 1736 Superior Ave.  (enter in the back and go to the second floor.)
      The State Elected Officials scheduled to attend the meeting include:

• Ohio Representative Sandra Williams,
• State Senator Shirley Smith,
• State Senator Mike Skindell,
• State Senator Nina Turner.

     The Homeless Congress looks forward to giving the local homeless community a voice at a state level. The meeting is open to the public and those wishing to support the Northeast Ohio Homeless Coalition as well other local elected officials are encouraged to attend.

Brian and Lauren the volunteer
Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Emergency Solutions Grant

How Should We Spend Our ESG Dollars?

The Homeless Congress in cooperation with NEOCH, the City of Cleveland, the Cuyahoga County Office of Homeless Services, and the Bishop Cosgrove Center are hosting a meeting to discuss the new Emergency Solutions Grant funding. This is a new pool of funds that were intended to replace the stimulus funding from 2009.  It is hardly a replacement since we were given around $5 million per year for preventing homelessness in Cuyahoga County and the new allocation in 2012 will be around $600,000 to $700,000.  This is all because of the push in DC to cut, cut, cut, and cut until it hurts.  The program has been effective in serving thousands in Cleveland, but it will have to be scaled back because of funding from the federal government.

The Emergency Solutions Grant funding is distributed to Cuyahoga County and most every Continuum in the country.  In accepting these funds, the City/County must adjust their Consolidated Plan.  The Homeless Congress is having a special meeting on Tuesday February 28 at 1 p.m. at the Cosgrove Center to hear input from consumers of homeless social services about their recommendations in utilizing these prevention dollars.   The Office of Homeless Services is hosting another public meeting for social service providers and other members of the public on 

                                              Friday, March 2, 2012

                                              9:00 - 10:30 AM at

                                              the ADAMHS Board, 6th Floor

                                              2012 W. 25th St.--the old bank building kitty corner 

                                              from the West Side Market.

Parking is available on the street and at the West Side Market.  Parking is not available in the ADAMHS Board lots. Also, do not park in the depressing shopping center across the street or your call will be towed.

 

Congress passed the stimulus in 2009 to get the economy going, and with the housing crisis there was a huge pool created to prevent homeless.  There was an attempt to get this money on the street quickly, and so they dumped this money into existing programs.  Cuyahoga County received $14 million to be used between July 2009 and July 2012, and is just about out of funds.  Just for context, the program served 10,224 individuals between September 15, 2009 and December 31, 2011.  There were 2,074 families were served which is made up of 4,441 children.  Five percent of the total are veterans and 29% have some long term disability which makes it difficult to find housing.  Of the 6,800 who left the program before the end of 2011, 32% receive Social Security as their primary source of income with another 8% were receiving Social Security Disability, and 38% had some earned income but if they did not receive help they would have become homeless and had to live in a shelter. 

The program has funded legal help, mediation assistance,  the housing website, eviction prevention, rental assistance, housing search help, case management, and education of tenants of their rights when facing an eviction. We will have to figure out how to sustain these services with additional state or local dollars or figure out how to keep people out of the shelters with only about 15% of the money we had before. 

Brian

Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

In Memory of a Friend

Gloria attended the 2011 Hand Up Gala

Gloria Wilson 1974-2012

The Bishop Cosgrove Center remembered Gloria at a memorial on Monday January 30, 2012.  Gloria helped us start a women's residence council at the Community Women's Shelter when the program was run by Catholic Charities.  Before health issues limited her ability to attend meetings, she was always vocal about her opinion.  Gloria attended Homeless Congress meetings, and encouraged others to speak up.  She attended the St. James church and sang in the choir.  She had found subsidized housing, which was the hand up she needed to find stability.  Gloria was very good at briefly and clearly telling an audience the problem and providing an avenue for others to help.  I remember that she testified about poverty at a gathering of advocates at Trinity Cathedral.  Gloria had five children and a loving family.   Gloria volunteered a great deal to help clean up at the Cosgrove and I always saw her at the Homeless Stand Down.  We will miss Gloria's voice at local meetings.

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

What is Happening Around Homelessness?

Upcoming Dates

Remember that this week is the week to get your clients to sign up for a housing voucher. Right now the website is down, but it should be up soon. This is only going to be up for this week. You can also go to www.cmha.net to get more information. The housing voucher program is only open for a short time every five years. If you do not get on the waiting list this week, then it could be a long wait. Last time 40,000 people applied and 10,000 were put on the waiting list.

Hand Up Gala--October 21, 2011
Mark your calendars for the second annual fine dining meal for homeless people will be October 21, 2011 at the Cosgrove Center. The dinner will again be prepared by Sans Souci chef John Aldewereld, and will mark the kickoff of the winter activities for NEOCH. This is a fund raiser for both Catholic Charities and NEOCH in addition to raising awareness. Cosgrove will use their funds for transportation, and NEOCH will use our funds for our blanket and winter supplies distribution program. Check the website for more details and to look at the pictures from the event last year.

Homeless Congress September 8 at 1 p.m.
Every month homeless people meet to discuss issues that have an impact on the entire community. The big issue is passing a County minimum shelter standards bill. The meeting takes place at the Cosgrove Center at 1 p.m. typically on the second Thursday of the month.

Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance meeting--September 12, 2011 at 1:30 p.m.
Every month housing advocates, landlords, social service providers and government officials meet to work to prevent any further loss in affordable housing. Typically, there is a speaker who details new projects or expanded opportunities or gives a status update on critical programs in the community. Then someone from HUD provides information on any troubled property in the community. The meeting is the first Monday of the month at HUD 1350 Euclid Ave. unless there is a federal holiday (like in September).

Finally, NEOCH is introducing an electronic newsletter only for paid members of the organization. We hope to send this out every two weeks and will give additional resources as well as look at current advocacy around homelessness. If you are a paid member of NEOCH, send us an e-mail to make sure that you are on the list (neoch (at) neoch (dot) org.

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

Homeless Congress Last Week

Thank you Dale Miller For Attending

County Councilman Dale Miller attended the February meeting of the Homeless Congress. We had around 30 homeless or recently homeless individuals attend to ask questions. There was a great deal of discussion regarding the County passage of a law to regulate the shelters. We talked about why the City of Cleveland was not willing to introduce the legislation. Miller warned that the County Council is still a work in progress and there is still uncertainty regarding enforcement. Councilman Miller was supportive of the idea, and expressed support for introducing the legislation if nothing else to introduce a community discussion about shelters.

There were questions about the move of the fragile populations from North Point to 2100 Lakeside and why we cannot try to renovate some of the abandoned properties locally. There were calls for the county to secretly visit some of the shelters to see the treatment that goes on at night. There was continued discussion about the problems at the Community Women's Shelter.

Randy Wilson and Tim Walters attended to talk about the possible cuts in the state budget, and some upcoming advocacy events including a bus trip down to Columbus. The shelter standards steering committee gave a brief report of their plans to see the legislation through to becoming a law. The next meeting in March will focus on foreclosures.

Brian

Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Collecting Your Shelter Stories

Have You Had Experience with Cleveland Shelters?

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless and the Homeless Congress are collecting the stories from people who have previously lived in a shelter in Cleveland. We want to hear both the good and the bad experiences. We want to hear from you about your discharges from the shelter or the first day that you showed up at the shelter. We want to hear about staff treatment, and the things that surprised you while staying in a shelter. We would like to know if the shelter met your expectations, and if you felt safe. We want to know that your tax dollars were being used to effectively serve the population.

NEOCH and the homeless people who attend the Homeless Congress have been trying to convince City Hall that there is a need for oversight of the shelters. The Homeless Congress members decided to start collecting stories to present to local elected officials. We have made this easy on our website. Sprinkled throughout the site is the above logo. You can click on the logo and complete the form to easily send information to the Coalition about your experiences with shelter. We will keep your identity private, but we may follow up with you to verify the information. Please send this information onto others that you know who spent time in the shelters. We want to present an accurate picture of the shelters in Cleveland.

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

Homeless Congress Asks for County Help

Poor People's March in Downtown Cleveland in 2008

County Candidates to Meet with Homeless and Congress Asks for Support for Regulating the Homeless Shelters

After two frustrating years attempting to work with the City of Cleveland to get a minimum standards bill passed, the Homeless Congress is now asking Cuyahoga County candidates to support the development of a shelter standards bill for Cuyahoga County. In an absolute violation of the state standard, the County placed 100 women per night in a shelter that only had one working shower. The Congress is asking for local regulations that will be enforced by some office within the County with an ability for homeless people to file a grievance if the shelter is not performing. All of the publicly funded shelters are in the City of Cleveland, but the County takes the lead in the providing the funding for the shelters.

The Homeless Congress has asked every candidate running for the new Cuyahoga County Council and County Executive to support the adoption of some form of local shelter regulation that every publicly funded shelter will have to follow. We have also invited the candidates for the two downtown districts (7 and 3) to attend the Homeless Congress meeting. District 7 candidate Phyllis Crespo attended the September meeting and Yvonne Conwell and Jeff Kipp both candidates from District 7 will attend the October 14, 2010 Homeless Congress meeting at 1:00 p.m. at the Cosgrove Center to talk directly to homeless people.

The candidates who have indicated support for the Shelter Standards Bill include:

• David Ellison and Ken Lanci candidates for County Executive
• Ryan McGilvray candidate for District 1 County Council member
• Dale Miller candidate for District 2 County Council member
• Patty Gascoyne and Alan Crossman candidates for District 3 County Council members
• Ann Marie Donegan candidate for District 5 County Council member
• Phyllis Crespo and Yvonne Conwell candidates for District 7 County Council members
• Laverne Jones Gore and C. Ellen Connally candidated for District 9 County Council members
• Kathryn Gambatese candidate for District 11 County Council member

ABOUT THE HOMELESS CONGRESS:

The Homeless Congress began in July 2006 with two representatives from each shelter and six from the 2100 Lakeside Men’s Shelter coming together to put forward an advocacy agenda that serves the needs of those experiencing homelessness. The Congress meets with elected officials, social service providers and bureaucrats who hold the power of the pursestring. The Congress has worked on shelter standards, a hate crimes bill, a foreclosure recovery plan, and a recommendations for housing and jobs for homeless people. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless organizes the conference and takes notes and sets up the meeting, but the decisions are made by the members of the Congress. They meet on the second floor of the Cosgrove Center once per month in the gymnasium (enter through the back in the cafeteria).

Update 10/14/2010: Chuck Germana candidate for District 4 agreed to support the shelter regulations.

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

Updates

Look at the NEOCH Website...

We now have 16 items for the auction as part of the Hand Up Gala. If you would like to participate in the auction go here. Things are all coming together for this first of its kind event. We hope that many will be able to enjoy a great meal, and we hope to have support from the community.

The Homeless Congress is gathering signatures from the candidates running for County Council and County Executive to support regulating the shelters. They have obtained the support of the Green Party executive candidate David Ellison, and now six candidates running for County Council have said that they will support a bill to regulate the shelters if it comes up. We have invited the candidates from the downtown districts to the next Homeless Congress meeting. The Congress needs six candidates who win a seat on the new Council to support this legislation to get it passed by the Cuyahoga County. They will continue to work on this critical issue.

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

County Council Election

State Senator Mike Foley speaks at the 2007 Homeless Memorial

Homeless Congress Asks Candidates to Support Regulating the Shelters

The Homeless Congress last week voted to ask every candidate running for the new County Council and County Executive to make a pledge that if elected they will support the regulation of the shelters. At this point, there is no law that sets a minimum standard for shelter in Cuyahoga County. We spend $30 million on homeless services, and have no ability to enforce regulations on the shelters. This has allowed 100 women to sleep in a shelter with only one shower. This lack of a policy has allowed women and men to be kicked out of the shelter at 10 p.m. forcing them to sleep in a bus shelter or on the streets. This lack of oversight has made it nearly impossible to get the government to review a complaint that a client may have with regard to a publicly funded shelter. The members of the Congress are willing to negotiate exactly how the regulations are structured, but they want something in law that will protect homeless people from being dumped out onto the streets without warning.

At this point, three candidates have endorsed the regulation of the shelters, and the full list can be found here. Thanks Phyllis Crespo of District 7, Laverne Jones Gore of District 9 and Dale Miller of District 2 for endorsing the regulations. A special thanks to Ms. Crespo who attended the Congress meeting last week to listen to homeless people. There is one more Homeless Congress meeting before the election, and we have invited District 3 and District 7 candidates to meet with representatives of the Homeless Congress.

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

Update on the Shelter Regulations

New Support After Scene Article

The Homeless Congress had three candidates return their form over the last day after the Scene Magazine put a story on their blog yesterday. We now have 17 of the 57 candidates including 8 who were in office in 2009 have endorsed the regulation of the shelters. The primary election for Cleveland City Council is in two weeks, and then there will be 60 days before the regular election. The primary will narrow the field to two candidates who will run in November. Homeless Congress members will continue to solicit support from the candidates right up to the November election.

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

Update on Shelter Regulations

Homeless Congress is Collecting Signatures

The members of the Homeless Congress sent out letters to every candidate for City Council (57) to ask that if elected will they support some form of regulation of the publicly funded shelters in Cleveland. We have heard back from 14 who claim that they will support the legislation including five incumbents, and two came back returned to sender. Last week was our first meeting since the first letters went out, and one candidate, Maryanne Petranek, attended the meeting. Her message at the meeting was that she does not support more government regulations, and wanted to see a City Council committee set up to change the homeless system. This did not sit very well with the members of the committee who had spent months writing this potential piece of legislation, but Ms. Petranek sat through the meeting and listened to the concerns of the members of the homeless community. It was nice to see that she had enough interest in the civic problems facing Cleveland that she attended the meeting.

Today, she sent in her form expressing her support for the potential regulations with this note on the back:

"Thank you for allowing me to speak at your meeting on Thursday, August 13, 2009. I do not support federal $'s for shelters but I do support the local community supporting the individuals who have become homeless for whatever reason.

We need a paradigm shift and a new model to assist people in becoming free of the bondage of homelessness.

I will be happy to meet with anyone who will help construct this new model to end homelessness permanently and give every human being the opportunity to live as an individual, making his/her own choices in a healthy community.

Sincerely, Maryanne Petranek"

Petranek is running against Council President Martin Sweeney and Norbert Dennerll Jr. who endorsed the regulations four weeks ago. We are willing to post any message from Sweeney or Dennerll in response to Ms. Petranek's comment, since NEOCH and the Homeless Congress are not taking any position in support of any candidate for City Council. The next Congress meeting is September 10, 2009. Any or all candidates are welcome to attend.

Brian

Update 8/19: Scene Magazine did a short article about the quest for shelter standards today in their magazine. Also today, current Council President, Martin Sweeney endorsed the shelter regulations today.

Posts reflect the opinion of those who sign the entry.

Last Week

A Few Notes from Last Week

The Homeless Grapevine has been offline for three months. We finally went to press and will publish a new issue next week. 15 pages packed full of good stuff. I believe that it will be out on Wednesday at the West Side Market and Downtown. It has been a rough couple of months trying to scrape by with no money.

We finally got word why CynDe was not posting at her blog. Her partner, Gary, has been sick and she has been caring for him. Gary is a graduate of the photography program also. Please keep him in your thoughts. They have struggled in this economy like the rest of us.

There was an interesting Office of Homeless Services "Advisory Board" with the county staff presenting a Blueprint for how to use the homeless prevention money. This may seem strange since the applications for the use of those funds were due nearly two months ago, but we hope that all the partners come together in the best interest of the homeless people.

There was a public meeting with staff from Fannie Mae staff to answer questions about their new efforts to stem the tide of foreclosures in the United States. We talked about the new rules regarding foreclosures and especially with regard to renters. This law went into effect in May, and everyone is just learning what it means for homeowners and renters. We still could use a moratorium on foreclosures in the state of Ohio even with the new federal law.

Finally, on Thursday we had a good Homeless Congress meeting with representatives from six area shelters. The group decided to ask every candidate for City Council to support the regulations of the shelters in the next session of City Council. As soon as the letter is sent out and we start getting them back we will release the names of the candidates who support such legislation. The Congress also requested a moratorium on the co-pay fee that MetroHealth is charging until the flu pandemic passes.

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

Homeless Congress Meeting

Councilmembers Attend Congress Meeting

Every month, NEOCH organizes a meeting called the Homeless Congress at the Bishop Cosgrove Center in Cleveland. This meeting features two homeless residents from each of the shelters in Cleveland and six from the big men's shelter at Lakeside, and three women who represent the Community Women's Shelter. They have worked on a response to the foreclosure crisis, they raised concern in November 2008 about the conditions at the Community Women's Shelter. The Congress has recently commented on the Central Intake, and they have helped with a number of research projects about the state of homelessness in Cleveland. This last week, both Cleveland City Councilman Joe Cimperman and Matt Zone attended the meeting to talk to representatives of the various shelters.

There were 10 different shelters represented at the meeting, and we had a full agenda planned with a discussion about this $12 million that was coming to Cleveland to prevent homelessness. We never got around to most of the agenda, because we spent about an hour of the meeting on the state of the shelters in Cleveland. We were able to get a few updates on previous issues that we have focused on, but the individuals wanted to talk about the sorry state of the shelters in Cleveland. Before people jump to negative stereotypes about the "ungrateful homeless who have the nerve to comment on a charity that they pay nothing for," we have to say that the shelters are way better than they were in the 1990s when the bulk of the shelters were just a matt on the floor of a garage. We have to also say that homeless people pay a higher percentage of their income on taxes than the typical home owner in our community. They often do not qualify for Earned Income Tax credit because of debt, and certainly not all the tax credits for owning a home or heading up a household. So, they pay a great deal in sales tax and pay employment taxes without much opportunity for taxes returned to them from an income tax return every year. Bottom line is that they pay into the system at a high level, and do not get much back (no free health care, no guaranteed safe place to live, or even a solid minimum wage job). So, at least they could expect the overcrowded shelters would provide a safe, decent, warm environment to find stable housing.

There were a lot of charges that came up at the meeting especially around conditions at the Community Women's Shelter in Cleveland. To be fair, the shelter has a new director who started only two and a half weeks ago, and is trying to clean up the facility while at the same time staying in operation. Afterall, a new director cannot fire everyone to get the staff back under control. The shelter is a vital service and must remain open 24 hours a day 365 days a year. It is difficult to steer a shelter that has gone far off course. The women heard about this meeting in February and met to develop a presentation for the Councilmembers. They wrote down dates and times and issues that happened at the facility. Some of the incidents that came up included the serving of expired food, one woman was jailed by the police/security on site. They arrested her for raising her voice to a staff person putting her hands on the resident. Staff disrespect was a common theme for many of the shelter residents. There was a call for better training across the board especially mediation training. The other issue that came up repeatedly was where do homeless people go to complain about these issues? What government entity would respond to these concerns. Other concerns expressed by residents include:

• Staff do not know CPR or other basic health issues.
• We need better oversight of the resources donated to the shelters
• Questions about who makes sure that the shelter dollars are going to those in need?
• We need a place to send those actively using drugs or alcohol (not the streets as happens now.)
• We need more nurses in the shelter.
• There were allegations of some illegal activity at the shelters including sexual harrassment and theft by staff as well as charges that some staff would come to work drunk.
  
• All the shelters need to be more like West Side Catholic shelter.
• There are not a lot of service offered to teach people how to live independently.
  
• The current standards are only verified once a year, and no one make sure that the Ohio Basic Shelter Standards are monitored on a daily basis.
  
• Most do not get basic items like hygiene kits or clean linens or even to talk to a housing professional.
  

The Councilmen and Bill Resseger from the City of Cleveland could not make a commitment that the proposed Shelter Standard's Bill that the Congress developed would be passed into law. (It has to go through the administration and committees and a hearing, etc.). Bill Resseger did assure the Congress that he would work with NEOCH and the social service provider in charge of the Community Women's Shelter to get that shelter back under control. Councilman Zone wanted to assure everyone that all three of the people representing the City at this meeting care about this issue and want to help homeless people cut through the bureacracy to improve the system. Joe Cimperman mentioned that he would advocate for a meeting with the shelter executive directors to see what could be accomplished without having to change the law. Cimperman also asked about his 1998-1999 law change which required the agencies to have one homeless person on the board of every non-profit receiving City of Cleveland money. I responded that it was a worthy effort, but has not solved the problems for a number of reasons, which I will talk about in a future post. Both Councilman were concerned that the City would over-regulate the shelters or would cost too much money to implement some of the ideas contained in the document. Finally, there was a concern that some of the regulations may put a few of the shelters out of business, and the city would be stuck with even fewer shelter beds.

There were a few members of the Congress who urged passage of the proposed Shelter Standards Bill. I have to mention Richard, who recently got into housing and represents the Bishop Cosgrove Center at the meeting, passionately argued that the only way that the shelters will be cleaned up is if the City passes a law to protect homeless people. It is an election year in 2009 for City Council members. There was a great deal of anger and passion at this meeting by people who sleep in the shelters. We will help homeless people make this an issue with the City Council election. Afterall, 80% of the budgets for the shelters comes from public sources. There is extensive scrutiny of most other public funds, but the shelters seem to be outside public oversight except the once per year review. If a taxpayer is sleeping in a landlord's building they can go to court to seek relief from invasions of privacy or harassment, but a taxpayer living in a shelter is at the mercy of the staff and have no where to complain.

We have a special meeting in two weeks to talk about the prevention dollars, and we will take up the shelter standards bill at our April 9 meeting. We have to thank both Councilman Cimperman and Councilman Zone for attending the meeting and listening to the concerns of this constituency.

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

Great Scene Magazine Article

Photo by Cheryl Jones, NEOCH/Grapevine Photo artist. All rights reserved.

Turn Over the Homes to Homeless People

I did not have time to blog about Michael Gill's article in last week's Scene Magazine. At every gathering of homeless people, the topic of the number of vacant and abandoned houses in the community comes up. The number of abandoned units has grown steadily since 1995, and exploded in 2004 to the present. Now as Michael Gill points out there are three times as many abandoned units in just the city of Cleveland, and that does not include the surrounding suburbs. East Cleveland probably has 40% of their units in serious disrepair, and Cleveland Hts. has seen over 1,500 foreclosures in the last two years. But there are abandoned houses throughout the County. This demonstrates the need for a County Land Bank (click here for the discussion on WCPN on Monday). An urban homesteading program will not solve this problem, but it cannot hurt to try it.

So, in responding to the concerns of the Homeless Congress and their strong desire to try something to pair skilled homeless people (electricians, plumbers, drywallers, and painters) with some of the recent houses that were vacated due to foreclosure. The Congress wanted to put some of these houses before they are stripped clean back into use. We did not ask for a large amount of money, and we just want to see if this could work. We have heard the cautions, and we heard the failures of previous homesteading programs, but we feel that it can't hurt to try. At this point with so many vacant houses, we cannot afford not to try as many solutions as possible. We need the land bank; we need the County Trust Fund; we the proper amount of destruction and rehab; we need an urban homesteading program; and we need a development of parks or urban farming programs to use the land vacated by the foreclosure crisis. It is angering to sleep in the shelter every night while a few door down there is an intact building sitting empty in the shadow of wealth everywhere.

Thanks to Michael Gill who spent a lot of time on this story and interviewed a bunch of homeless people.

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

Homeless Congress Talk to Councilman Zone

Homeless Congress Talks About Shelters, Vacant Buildings and Overflow

We had a small crowd for the Homeless Congress meeting last week because of the ballgame going on at the same time. Approximately, two hundred or more homeless people work the game through clean up crews or the parking lot attendants at nearly every home Indians game. Despite the new name of the ballpark, indentured servants wait in the wings to clean up the beer and trash as the cheers fade away in the not-so-progressive field. We had about 15 homeless individuals, a couple of agencies, staff from Dennis Kucinich’s office, a representative from the County Office of Homeless Services advisory (the Homeless Book Club), and Councilman Matt Zone.

Councilman Zone was invited to the meeting (along with his 20 colleagues) to hear the concerns of homeless people over the conditions in the shelters and urge passage of the shelter standards bill in Cleveland. He heard an earful:

• One woman said that she was told by the shelter staff to put her baby in the foster care system while she looks for housing. She did and now that she found housing, she was told that her babies were up adoption. Bad advice.
• The men at Lakeside shelter are upset that when they visit family, go to the hospital or have to do a third shift job and they come back to find someone has taken their bed. This sounds reasonable to the world because we are not running a hotel here, but to the men the new person is unknown and coming into the community straight from the street. He could be drunk; he could be stealing items; he could be bring bedbugs. There is concern that the only way that 2100 Lakeside works with 400 guys is to divide the facility into six smaller shelters and force people to work and make milestones to move into the better communities. Sticking a guy who may have a prison mentality right into one of the higher communities even for a night, is a recipe for disaster. They want a reversal of this policy by creating sufficient overflow to address make this not necessary.
• There were concerns about shelters throwing away a person’s identification.
• There was concern about the training of staff who work at shelters and screening them for drugs and relapse issues among the staff.
• One of the shelters has a massive bedbugs outbreak, and the men were concerned about the ability to sleep in a facility with bedbugs.
• One other shelter primarily serves fragile populations of disabled and elderly men and does not have a defibrillator for heart attacks or the proper emergency equipment.
• Finally, the women expressed concern about the hot water tank repeatedly breaking in the Community Women’s Shelter.

Councilman Zone listened to all the concerns and agreed to take the concerns back to Councilman Cimperman and the city administration to activate this committee and begin discussing the Shelter Standards in Cleveland.

Other issues that we discussed included a proposal by the Congress to look at the abandoned property in Cleveland, and look into how those buildings may be turned over to homeless people in a modern urban homesteading initiative. We are going to invite community development folks to the next meeting to talk about the issues.

The County staff could not attend so they sent current North Point director Ed Gamerchek as a representative of the poorly named Office of Homeless Services “Advisory” Board. I say, poorly named because they really do not advise anyone. He received the Homeless Congress concerns about time limits along with the similar concerns expressed by the Coalition. He came to assure the group that no time limits were being talked about, but there was a concern about the amount of time spent in the shelters by some individuals. It should be noted that this is an extremely small number (single digit percentage of the total) who spend more than one year in the men’s shelter. There was also concern that some people were rejecting available spaces in transitional shelters thus there are vacancies in the transitional facilities and overcrowded conditions in the emergency shelters. The men said that the problem was that the County needs to step up and demand the transitional shelters make it easier to get in, and there must be a safety net so that if you fail out of the transitional facilities you do not have to start over at the beginning of the emergency shelter without a locker or fixed bed. It takes a lot of time and patience to move through the system, but there are set backs in a person’s recovery and the guys do not want to have to go all the way back to the unsafe and disruptive entry system.

We thank Councilman Zone for coming and listening, and we hope that he and other Council members will continue to join us. Thanks to Ed for attending, and the other community members for their help. We should recognize Laurie Rokakis and Congressman Kucinich for bringing two gift baskets to the meeting in March that we raffled off during the meeting.

Brian

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

Council Challenged to Sleep in Shelter

Homeless Congress Asks Council for Help

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless on behalf of the Homeless Congress is challenging the City of Cleveland Council members to either spend a night in a homeless shelter or introduce a shelter standards bill. The Homeless Congress is a representative body of homeless people which meets every month, and feel that improving the protections within the shelters is a priority. This group of homeless people spent four months to prepare a potential piece of legislation for City Council to pass, but no Council member has taken up the challenge to even introduce this bill. At the January meeting of the Homeless Congress, the members voted to request Council members attend the next meeting to set a date for the introduction of the bill or schedule a time to sleep in the shelters.

NEOCH has asked Council members to pass a law to set a minimum standard for the shelters in exchange for their public funding. The challenge was issued after NEOCH and Congress members repeatedly requested movement on the bill to council members about the proposal and received little response.

Currently, there are no existing standards in law, instead there is a list of recommendations by the state of Ohio and there is no penalty for compliance. Between 2006 and 2007, the Homeless Congress drafted a proposal of Shelter Standards in an effort to ensure all publicly funded shelters are required to provide a basic level of care. The big issue that has repeatedly come up from homeless people is that there is no public agency that will receive complaints about the conditions or treatment that homeless people receive within the shelters.

The next Homeless Congress meeting is February 7 at 1 p.m. at the Bishop Cosgrove Center. Anyone is welcome to attend and Council members are invited to the Homeless Congress meetings. The center is located at 1736 Superior Avenue in Cleveland. Please enter through the back into the cafeteria and go upstairs to the gymnasium.

For more information please contact Brian Davis at (216) 432-0540.
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.

Congress Met Today

Homeless Meet with City/County Today

The Homeless Congress meeting today had a huge agenda, and was one of the best meetings we have ever had. Our good friend Cleveland Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland attended to hear about the Shelter Standards. She pledged to bring the issue to the rest of Council. We agreed to give the social service providers a month and a half to get comments back to the Congress. Homeless people who attend the June 21 meeting will review the comments and suggest changes to the standards. Ruth Gillett and Rick Werner of Cuyahoga County both attended, and Natoya Walker of the City of Cleveland also joined the Congress. Gillett had not seen the Shelter Standards document, but did say there were already minimum standards for shelters. She suggested that if homeless people had problems they should file a grievance with the shelter.

This is not a NEOCH meeting, so it would have been appropriate to stand up and scream at Ruth that her suggestions just do not work in the real world in the same style many homeless people face at night when they question shelter staff. The problem is that a grievance always stays within the shelter, and there is no impartial look at the problem. It is like suggesting to those families facing foreclosure because of a predatory loan that they file a grievance with the mortgage company that issued the unethical terms for the loan and expect that they will reform themselves. We have laws in place to protect tenants, homeowners, nursing home residents, but homeless people have no law to turn to for protections against being thrown out into the snow in the middle of the night.

The most interesting part of the meeting was the discussions about Aviation High School and the North Point Motel. As we have discussed Aviation will close on Halloween, but the scariest part of this is the unworkable plan that the City and County have developed to replace Aviation. Tonight there are 550 people using either 2100 Lakeside shelter and Aviation High School, which operates as an overflow. The City and County are pushing the other shelters to take up the slack and move more people into housing/transitional housing and treatment. They want to reduce the number to 375 this summer so that there is no need for an overflow shelter. Then they want to open North Point as a permanent housing facility. Based on the questions, the Homeless Congress members were very skeptical of this plan. It was amazing to me that the only people in the room that could do basic math were the homeless people. This plan had post-war Iraq planning written all over it.

We have 15 years of proof that we are not going to open a facility like North Point with two people in a private room and expect fewer people to utilize the homeless system. It is like these government people do not understand poverty and they work in the poorest city in America. There are so many people waiting for housing (Over 50,000 according to most studies), but many choose not to use the shelters. Most in the community feel shelters are degrading, dirty, unsafe, or have one of a thousand other reasons, but if the City makes a shelter available that has a private room more people will show up for help not fewer.

City and County officials made a commitment to continue to allow anyone who shows up at the door to sleep inside a shelter, which is unique to Cleveland. No one explained how all these people would fit inside 2100 Lakeside or how many would sleep in the halls and cafeteria after the loss of the Aviation overflow site.

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