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.

Congrats and Upcoming show

New Blog and Oprah Show This Week

One of our good friends and graduate of the photo project, CynDe, has a new Blog available. This is one of those rare success stories that we all need in this time of terrible economic news. CynDe has photography and a good look at her life now that she put behind her those rough nights in the shelters in Cleveland on her blog. I encourage you to bookmark From Homelessness to Homeowner and check back frequently. CynDe is starting this blog as the beginning point of a book about her experiences as a casualty in the war against the impoverished.

WCPN is going to feature one hour on the foreclosure plan introduced by the Obama Administration last week on Tuesday February 24 at 10 a.m. I don't know who the guests are, but it should be interesting. Tune in and call in.

Also, I am pretty sure that the Oprah program, which is on sometime in the afternoon on some local channel near you, will feature a piece on tent cities as a result of the foreclosure crisis. I believe that it will be Wednesday February 25 on a television near you. I know that Sacremento and New Orleans, Portland, Seattle all have large collections of tents that have sprung up over the last few years. Imagine in the richest country in the world, we have people living every night in a tent. There are 300 to 400 families, veterans, and young people sleeping under a makeshift home in numbers we have not seen since the 1930s. These people are asking for help from their government and wondering why all these homes are sitting vacant in the hands of banks.

“If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution”

--Abraham Lincoln

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

A Few Quick Updates

What is Happening in the Cleveland Homeless Community?

NEOCH is Working Through A Strategic Plan

The Plain Dealer is doing a series on “What Ever Happened to…” Exactly, a year ago NEOCH went through its worst financial crisis ever. With the help of the City of Cleveland, Local Foundations (St. Luke’s, Gund, Cleveland, and Deaconess) and a number of individual donors, we made it through the year, and put in place a plan to stabilize a future for the Coalition. We have transferred the Bridging the Gap program to the Cleveland Tenants Organization and the Community Voice Mail Program to 211/First Call for Help. We have downsized the Homeless Grapevine, and the NEOCH Board has set up a Development Advisory Board. So, we have made it to the one year anniversary of the crisis. We are testing some of the assumptions about future funding with a strategic plan. We did a survey of our membership, and we hope to have the final report done by September. We will keep you informed on our progress.

ID Collaboration Out of Funding

One of the NEOCH VISTAs worked on constructing a collaboration of social service providers to assist with identification (birth certificates/state IDs) issues. The collaboration eventually received funding, and was under the guidance of St. Colman’s Church then West Side Catholic. Director Skotch from West Side Catholic was able to secure over $100,000 over the last year and a half, and they have helped thousands of lower income people with identification issues. Just in 2008 in the first six months there were 2,282 separate forms of id were purchased with the help of the program. At this time, the collaboration is out of money, and looking for on-going support in a rough economy. In a Post 9/11 world, being able to prove your identity is critical to getting a job, voting, finding housing, or even getting in a government building.

Mark Your Calendars for the Next Teach In

Speaking of voting and IDs, the next Teach in is set for September 16 at 5:30 p.m. at NEOCH and we will focus on the identification issues as well as our plans for the upcoming election. NEOCH is working to assure that every homeless person participates in the 2008 November election. We have big plans and hope that our members and friends can help with transportation and assistance in getting homeless people to the polls. Please call NEOCH at 216/432-0540 ext. 106 to RSVP for the fall Teach In.

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

Homeless Coalition Updates

Photo appearing in the new Grapevine #84 by 2008 Photography student Cheryl Jones.

After Four Months--Grapevine is Available

The Grapevine was forced to take a break, but we are back on track. We have a bunch of new vendors and the new paper is out. Available downtown, and at the West Side Market. We had to take a break and re-group, but things are looking good. There are some great photos in the new paper from students taking the 2008 Photo class. There are stories about North Point Shelter, and a few stories about homelessness across America. There is one interesting story about the City of San Francisco passing a shelter standards bill. The Grapevine has a few sad stories about hate crimes in Ohio and those who had passed away in 2007. Check it out.

We had a nice Teach In this week. The next Teach In is set for September 16, 2008 and will focus on voting and identification issues at 5:30 p.m. We will have an ability to RSVP on our website in June.

The new Street Cards are out and available on our website. We have distributed 4,000 so far. Thanks to University Hospital for printing this year's Street Card. In case you are not familiar this is a one page piece of paper that lists all the services available to homeless people right from the streets. We have published 18 updates of the street cards over the years.

HousingCleveland.org saw a huge increase in users over the last month. This must have something to do with the large number of foreclosures in Cleveland, but the housing search website saw over 1,700 more searches done this year over last. We have doubled the number of unique users from the same period as last year. In the last month, 6,517 unique users made over 50,000 searches on the website--a new record.

In a similar story, the Plain Dealer covered the story today of the dramatic increase in homeless children using the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. We are so lucky to have Project ACT in our community. Imagine everything in your world collapses including your housing, but Project ACT is there to make sure that your school situation does not have to change.

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

Updates on Previous Stories

The Ups and Down of Previous Blog Stories

Great Music and Good People
I attended the Woodchopper's Ball last night at the Kent Stage. I have been to two or three, but I think that this one was one of the best. It was worth the trip down to Kent despite the weather for this great event. Sure it was $20, but the concert featured 9 artists plus talented guitarist and host Charley Brown for four and half hours of music. That is $2 bucks an artist or $4.44 per hour. Where can you find great music for between $2 to $4.44 in Northeast Ohio? The three panels were expertly paired, and they all complemented each other nicely. We raised a fair amount of money for NEOCH. Brian Henke, of Bay Village, puts a ton of work into this concert every year, and the guys from Kent Stage were great and unbelievably hospitable to the cause. Catch it next year--it was well worth the journey.

How Did Cuyahoga County Get Beat by Fayette County??
We reported a couple of weeks ago about the rough process for developing a grant to prevent homelessness locally. In case you don't want to go back in time, the State of Ohio released funds to put in place five demonstration projects in order to prevent homelessness. Cleveland has by far the largest homeless population in the State and we have one of the best programs in the state to identify people who are potentially homeless with the Cleveland Tenants Organization's eviction diversion program so we were a natural for the program.

Unfortunately, the Cuyahoga County application had a mistake, and so we did not even get to compete. Toledo, Dayton, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Fayette County are the five places that will be funded to develop programming to prevent homelessness. This is a setback for homeless people in Cuyahoga County. The Office of Homeless Services, which coordinated this process, has promised that they will find other funding to implement the program locally. What program will be cut in order to fund this prevention project, stay tuned?

Plain Dealer published the Correction today
I never did see an official correction in the paper, but the Plain Dealer published my "Letter to the Editor" today correcting their story about NEOCH's support of the anti-panhandling campaign.

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