Sleeping Outside in Cleveland 2010

Award winning photo by Pleasure Simmons of Downtown Cleveland from the 2008 NEOCH Photo project.

Outdoor Count

Every year since 2000, volunteers have gone outside to count the number of people who sleep downtown. This was in response to the lawsuits in the 1990s challenging the City of Cleveland repeated arrests of homeless people for sleeping outside. We eventually settled with the City and then every November, we go out to make sure that homeless people are not being harassed. This year we saw a decline to only 14 people staying in the downtown. This is really good news for the Downtown Cleveland Alliance and the folks at Block by Block who act as ambassadors to keep people visiting downtown. This is the first serious decline in five years. With the horrible economy and the lack of jobs, I thought for sure that we would see an increase. This is also good news for the City and County that have done all they can over the last few years to keep the shelter doors open. Finally, we have to recognize the most important reason that we have such a small number: the fantastic outreach teams in Cleveland.

We really have an exceptional group from Mental Health Services, Care Alliance, Volunteers of America, Helena from Downtown Cleveland Alliance and the Veterans Administration who are on the streets every day. We have support from 2100 Lakeside, St. Pauls outreach, the Salvation Army, as well as the John Carroll, Case Western Reserve and St. Ignatius Labre Projects to serve the population. All of these men and women who go out in the cold and rain to assist those resistant to shelter deserve a ton of credit. They are working to build a relationship with the men and women living outside to try to move them back to stable housing. They are out on the street protecting people from freezing temperatures and from the health effects of the elements.

The Thanksgiving week is typically the low point for the winter, because many family take their loved ones in for the weekend. So, this is the smallest number who will be outside for the entire winter, but it is a good number. We have a graph on the blog measuring the last 10 years to give some idea of the history of downtown homeless. We had over 60 people sleeping in the immediate downtown in the late 1990s and today we are down to 14. That is pretty impressive.

There are many that complain about panhandling and homelessness, but compared to nearly every other American city, we really don't have a big problem. There are not people sleeping on every corner like in Washington DC. There are not people trying to wash your windshield at every traffic light like San Francisco. There are not massive encampments of homeless people like in Columbus. There are not the hundreds turned away from shelter every night like in Cincinnati. We have a lot to be proud of in Cleveland with regard to keeping the number of people sleeping outside down to a small number.

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

Sleeping Outside in Cleveland

How Has The Economic Crisis Affected Homeless Living Outdoors?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Will Gone Wild

Local University Students Sleeps Outside

I have never been a big fan of these fund raisers, but apparently Habitat for Humanity supports the concept locally. CWRU students slept outside earlier this month, and had a great night. One of our old interns wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the mixed up message and inappropriate stereotypes. Mike is correct that it is difficult to match the goals of raising dollars with awareness campaigns. There is some debate at the national level about these pizza and box nights. It is not fun to be homeless and it is nearly impossible to realize the problems faced by homeless people in one night.

The issues associated with being homeless is that there collapse of all stability without an end in sight. There is no place that is safe that people can use as a headquarters. There no place to put your stuff as George Carlin loved to talk about. There is no privacy and the future is always cloudy when you lose your housing. It may be fun for one night or even a couple of weeks, but that sense of freedom wears off real fast. Eventually, we need a regular safe place to return to. We all need a dresser to hold important documents and clean clothing. We want to stay up late if we feel like it, and we want a private quiet place to just think.

I know in Columbus and Athens do a homeless experience project to try to get across to students the frustration of being homeless, but they are not usually fundraising opportunities for the agencies. Back in the 1980s, the students built a shanty on the quad at CWRU. This was my first experience with the problem of homelessness, and got me interested in working on these issues. It was not a fund raiser, but an attempt to get the students involved in the problem. This was similar to the anti-war and anti-apartheid movements of the 1970s and 1980s. The organizers brought in speakers both local and national and confronted the university administration over their lack of involvement in addressing poverty. The students were arrested, but it generated a great deal of media and student attention. The group that formed met throughout the rest of the year and did a few other events to try to push the university to become more involved in taking a leadership role in addressing the poverty all around the school.

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

Downtown Shows Marked Decline in Homeless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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