On a Desolute Stretch of Street...

Please Help Us Find the Killers of Anthony Waters

Maybe it was a misguided notion, but I understand the logic. Anthony Waters walked down the industrial part of East 55th to and from the shelter in order to avoid trouble. I talked to a few people in the neighborhood who felt it was better to walk near the houses, because no one wants trouble near their front door. They would have told the young people on the bikes to move it along. Waters was in greater danger in this particular part of East 55th than he would be walking in the more populous parts of Kinsman or Bessemer Rd.

It seemed like such a peaceful place with the exit ramp of 490 to the north and the tow/impound lot, the railroad bridge and a bunch of trees at Bessemer. On Wednesday night, Waters was attacked by a bunch of kids and beat to death. Only one month ago, the National Coalition for the Homeless determined that Ohio was one of the fourth most dangerous places to live for homeless people. We see how this can have deadly consequences.

If you were driving by and you did not stop to help, please come forward now and talk to the police about what you saw. It has to be tearing at you to realize that you witnessed the brutal beating to death of a human being. Any information that you might have can help the police track down these killers. Call the Third District at 216/623-5300 to report any information about this heinous attack.

We will pass along information from the shelter as it comes in about a memorial service or information from the City as it comes available. Mr. Waters had done a lot of work trying to kick the addiction devil hanging over his head, but it usually takes a couple of setbacks before a guy can break the hold alcohol has on some people. He had bounced around the shelter a couple of times as well as sleeping outside when he could not control his addiction. I hope that someone will come forward so that we can provide some peace to the family of Mr. Waters. What kind of cowards jump a defenseless man already down on his luck for a couple of bucks and then beats the guy to death?

After the dust settles and their was time to grieve, we can set about passing Representative Mike Foley's hate crimes bill to add homeless people to the state hate crimes definition. We hope that this will provide some pause to young people who target homeless people, but for now it is time to mourn and remember Anthony Waters.

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

Learn to Tell Your Story

Street Voices Update

If you are homeless or formerly homeless and are interested in becoming a speaker as a part of NEOCH’s Street Voices Speaker’s Bureau, now is your chance to join up!

Street Voices Speaker Training
Friday, June 27
10:30 AM – 1:30 PM
NEOCH Offices
3631 Perkins Ave

Street Voices is a program of NEOCH that enlists people from the homeless community to speak about their experiences at schools, churches, and other organizations. This is your chance to touch people’s lives and let your voice be heard! In order to become a speaker, you must attend the training. Also, if you have not done so already, please check out our new updated website:

www.neoch.org/streetvoices.htm

Use the website for information or for requesting speakers at your next event!

Joshua

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

Helen Jones Passes Away

Recovery Resources Director Dies Today


Helen Jones (center) pictured here in 2004 on the Mental Health Services website with the launch of a collaboration to provide alcohol and drug services to the women at the Community Women's Shelter.

I was not at the meeting this morning, but I have heard from two sources that Helen Jones passed away after having a heart attack after a United Way meeting. Recovery Resources was a partner in the struggle to end homelessness in Cleveland, and the agency has a history of employing some of the most caring and kind staff in the community. Helen Jones was always a strong advocate for her program and the struggle to find resources to serve poor people. She had a wonderful understanding of behavioral health issues in our community. She was one of those rare people in the community who if they had access to more resources, she could have solved many problems for our community. Instead she was forced to struggle to push papers and fill out forms in order to keep her agency moving forward. Under her leadership Recovery Resources grew and became the premier provider for alcohol services in Greater Cleveland.

It is my understanding that there was a United Way Director's quarterly meeting, and after the meeting Ms. Jones was taken to the hospital. Recovery Resources was slated to receive a 28% cut or around $57,500 in the next few years. There was some talk of the issue at the meeting. Evidently, she had a heart attack and was not able to be revived.

We will miss Helen Jones, and we will send our condolences to one of our partner agencies. This is a loss to the homeless community, and to Cleveland in general.

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

Foreclosure Report Issued by Policy Matters

Renters Innocent Victim in Foreclosure Crisis

(Photo by Grapevine Photography Project Artist, Cheryl Jones--prints of any of the photo class graduates are available through NEOCH.)

Policy Matters Ohio released a report on the impact of the foreclosures on renters in Cuyahoga County in June 2008. Zach Schiller, staff for Policy Matters Ohio, presented the report to the members of the Affordable Housing Alliance at the July 2008 meeting. Schiller reported that the cost of a move out for a family is $2,500 including the loss of security deposit with a foreclosure, and the loss of property during a sudden move out after foreclosure. The Collateral Damage report mentions both state (HB 440) and similar federal legislation that if enacted could protect tenants. There was a long discussion at CAHA about why the courts were not working in a more concerted effort to protect tenants from foreclosure. It is also a tough action for a lawyer to take since each tenant must make their own decisions about the best course of action while their owner is going through foreclosure. A lot of questions arise when a tenant finds out their landlord is in the struggling. Should they pay the rent? Do they risk having an eviction on their record? Should they begin the process of moving or wait until the bitter end when the new owner might pay them to relocate?

The study shows that 33% or more of those going through foreclosure also involve some tenants who become the innocent victim. They are usually caught off guard with very little time to relocate. They are typically the last to know that their landlord is in trouble. A landlord does not want them to stop paying the rent, so he or she is not going to inform the tenants. Also, it causes confusion in the ownership in that a landlord may be accepting rent after the sheriff sale and they are no longer the owner. The instability and uncertainty can lead to fraud and there is usually a noticeable decline in the upkeep of the building during the foreclosure. A tenant never knows what is going to happen, and can get caught with all their stuff locked and boarded up in a building that was sold at auction. We have seen where the owner will trash the building when a foreclosure is eminent to "punish" the mortgage company making the building unfit for human habitation and displacing the innocent tenant(s). The utilities can be shut off and the tenant can be forgotten and abandoned while the future of a property is debated in a courtroom in Downtown Cleveland.

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

75 Years of Minimum Wage

How About A Maximum Wage?

Not much attention toward this historic milestone in most major media. The New York Times was one of the only places to mark 75 years of the minimum wage. In June 1933, Franklin Roosevelt established a minimum wage in exchange for allowing companies to drive up prices in the height of the depression. Amazing that from such tainted beginnings this historic legislation has survived for so long. It was never indexed to anything, and thus has not kept pace with its original goals: those who work hard should be able to earn a decent standard of living. I believe that the guys at the temporary labor companies (making a minimum wage) work harder than 80% of the workers in Cleveland, but at the end of the day they do not earn enough to afford rent. This is a major flaw that needs corrected with regard to the minimum wage.

One of the other revolutionary concepts from the 1930s was that people should not be able to earn unlimited salaries and be taxed at the same rate as workers. How about a maximum wage in America? CEOs should not earn 400-500 times that of their workers. Mr. Ford is no more important than the guy who designs a gas-free auto or the guy who designed the most popular brand in Ford history: the F-150 pickup. Or, if you want to earn at obscene levels, the government will tax you at an 80-90% rate in order to build hospitals, roads, bridges, and provide for the national defense. Somehow, over the last 75 years we have lost the concept of community. Business leaders are out for themselves and hording as much wealth as possible. They have successfully eliminated the estate tax, and can take their wages to the grave with them. Our infrastructure is crumbling and our debts are mounting, and Leona Helmsley left her dog $2 million (originally $12 million.) Celebrate the 75th anniversary of the minimum wage with the push for a maximum wage.

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

Upcoming Anti-Violence March

Calling Attention to the Violence Against Homeless People

I have recently come in contact with a group over at the Original Harvest Missionary Baptist Church that is putting together a City-wide Youth & Unity March Against Violence. The march occurs at the church (7101 Kinsman Road) this Saturday, June 21. Registration begins at 11 AM and the march itself begins at noon.

With the dramatic rise in hate crimes committed against homeless people, especially with the growing number of kids that are video recording themselves committing these horrible violent acts and placing them on the internet, taking a stand against violence is very important to homeless advocates. Here in Cleveland, we have seen the effects of this violence within the homeless community. Back in April, a man was attacked by kids wielding a board with nails sticking out of it. Attacks tend to increase over the summer, so we’ve got to address this problem now.

NEOCH will be at the march and we recommend you show up as well. For more information on the march contact the Coalition at 216/432-0540.

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

United Way Winners and Losers

A New Direction for United Way?

This last week saw a great deal of media attention to the winners and losers in the struggle for United Way dollars. Frankly, I don't understand it. I mean I read in detail the list of winners and losers, and I cannot find any logic. I read every article in the Plain Dealer, and the spin does not seem to translate well for what priorities were actually funded. There were kids groups that lost out (Heights Youth Centers) and there were some that were winners (Voices of Ohio's Children). I have to wonder since there was no clear pattern if this was some comment on health and effectiveness of these organizations? A few quick takes:

• There were four new groups funded who are also funded by Community Shares. We shall see how this is going to work. Until now only the merged group of the Domestic Violence Agency was funded by both Shares and United Way.
• It was a strange comment in the PD from United Way officials discouraging designations to specific groups because they have all these experts on staff to direct donations. People don't like reading , "Hey, you are too stupid to know who to donate to. We are the experts; let us do it." That is why I like Shares so much. They do not think that donors are stupid.
  
• The Neighborhood groups were split with four winners and four losers. Again, no clear pattern.
• Homeless groups were by far winners with 13 homeless direct service providers and four losers.
  
• I thought Dan Joyce's comments in the Plain Dealer were especially poignant and honest.
  
• The United Way is claiming these decisions were made by 200 volunteers. Are there really 200 experts on non-profits in our community or are these individuals who were touched by one or two groups? I guess this is some kind of representative democracy?
  
• It does not seem that self-sufficiency was the over-riding strategy or United Labor Agency which retrains workers and Recovery Resources which helps people with treatment issues would not have come up with fewer resources. They are both teaching people to get back on their feet.
  
• It does not seem advocacy/solving community problems was a big focus since the Center for Community Solutions and the Long Term Care Ombudsman were among the groups that saw a reduction.
  
• I have no sympathy for Red Cross of Cleveland, and I am glad they got fewer resources. They have stepped away from assisting in ending homelessness, and do not seem to care much about poverty anymore.
  
• I was not happy to see the Girl Scouts get less money (85% decrease) while the Boy Scouts and their homophobic policies got more money (39% increase). But I am biased in that I have two girls in the Girl Scouts.
• I had no problem with the Ombudsman being dropped by United Way, because they long ago stepped away from assisting homeless people. I was sad that the Empowerment Center got dropped, and I am worried what this will mean for the first Welfare Rights group in the United States.
  
• It was good to see the Free Clinic was finally recognized by both Shares and United Way for the value they provide to the community. Then there were also a bunch of groups added to United Way's roster that I have never heard from before.
  

Anyway, I am sure that there are many emergency Board meetings taking place this week. I have to wonder if there were too many cooks in the United Way kitchen that resulted in no clear direction. Some of our close friends like West Side Catholic, Cleveland Tenants Organization and Lutheran Metro Ministry received more money, and that is a plus. So far, I have only seen the Red Cross respond formally and with anger. They are asking for help from the community to make up the difference. Get cut by United Way--respond with anger-- and turn that into a fund raising opportunity does not make sense to me. NEOCH was not asked to participate, and we do not have much direct service left so that is not surprising. Anything that shakes up the non-profit world is most likely a positive. Some of these groups may suddenly awaken to the new reality that they must think outside their small world and start addressing the needs of consumers. More of our partner agencies were winners than were losers in the United Way reshuffling, which is a good thing. Bottom line: I think that the United Way transition is probably a beneficial to the community, and will re-order the priorities in our community. We shall see.

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

National Coalition for the Homeless Updates

What is Happening Around the Country?

I attended the National Coalition for the Homeless Executive Committee meeting last week. It looks like both convention sites are doing all they can to protect homeless people. We just hope that the National Secret Service does not come into Denver and St. Paul and mess everything up. It was announced that the Dorothy Day Center will remain open during the Republican Convention in August. The Day Center is basically across the street from the Convention Center in St. Paul. That means that homeless people will be closer to the convention than the protesters in the Orwellian named "free speech zone." Denver has a pre-convention planned breakfast for those attending the convention to explain what is happening in America to homeless families. I wish that I could attend. Each city will have a homeless voter registration drive, and we will post more details in the near future.

Other things happening around the United States:

• Minnesota is looking at developing rules to restrict the invasive computer tracking system for homeless programs.
• New shelter in Dallas was created for 200 people and 550 showed up the day it opened. They have set up mats on the floor for the rest.
• Houston is doing a survey of panhandlers, and paying a pretty penny.
• Colorado trying to develop and expand state funding for affordable housing.
• City is focusing resources on a program called "Project 50" to provide housing to 50 people on Skid Row. This is similar to removing a bucket of water from the Cuyahoga River in an effort to change the flow of the river. The state proposition to overturn rent control lost fortunately. LA Coalition is publishing a manual for mainstream programs to restrict discharges to homelessness.
  
• Things are bad in the South for affordable housing/homelessness. The local trust funds in South Carolina and block grant money are reserved for loans not the development of affordable housing. Additional health care dollars were vetoed by the governor in South Carolina, because they raised taxes on cigarettes.
  

We worked on internal controls for the agency, and worked on some budget issues for the National Coalition. Things are better for the organization since they weathered the storm of the early 2000s. They are setting plans for the future and a new administration in DC.

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.

Another Attack on the Lowest Income

A Website Dedicated to Bad Tenants

There was a story this week on WEWS “newschannel5” about a national registry of bad tenants. An aside: why is Channel 5 called “news channel” when they don’t even have the most local news of the four local channels in Cleveland? Anyway, this was surprisingly a good local news story about this new front in the war between rich and poor, which will certainly keep people homeless for a longer period of time. This is a horrible trend, and I hope that activists sue the pants off the creators of this site in order to shut it down. In the alternative, there must be some industrious young tenants with some time to create a website of bad landlords.

It sounds like a good idea on its face--a place where landlords can prevent a “Pacific Heights” type tenant from reeking havoc around the community. Some tenants may even be thankful that this site may weed out a few bad neighbors. We understand landlords trying to protect themselves against financial ruin, but this is the wrong approach. There is no ability to appeal a listing on this website. There is no verification that the information is accurate. For landlords there are background checks that can be done that provide more objective information. There is a fee to view the list of bad tenants, but anyone can enter the name, social security or date of birth for bad tenants. Didn’t those credit score websites get in trouble for listing credit scores without having the ability for the owner of those scores to correct inaccurate data? Is it legal to have a person’s social security number listed and so readily available on a website? All it takes is a small fee, and you could have access to hundreds of social security numbers to select a new identity. These tenants never gave permission for the landlord to post their personal information on a public website. There must be some industrious young lawyers out there who would want to challenge the legality of this website or some lawmaker who wants to standup for the little guy.

What happened to forgiveness? How long do these stay up? Is it fair to list a problem tenant from 10 years ago? Since no one screens these can others list untrustworthy people? I mean if I were a landlord I would never rent to former Senator Phil Gramm or Vice President Cheney. I would never allow Tom Delay or former Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann to bring his partying lifestyle to my apartment building. There are many public officials who routinely lie, and may not be the most upstanding tenants. I can think of hundreds of people that I would be worried every month that they may not be good for the rent. Anybody got the social security number and date of birth for former HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson?

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

A Lack of Collaboration

Unhelpful Websites

I was doing some searching various websites to see if there are negative or positive stories about the Coalition, and I noticed a few strange things. By looking at the websites it is clear that there is very little collaboration among the homeless service providers. One rare exception was not even a homeless service provider at all. We do not always see eye to eye with Downtown Cleveland Alliance, but at least they have the courtesy to put a link to the NEOCH website on their website about homelessness.

On the opposite extreme, I checked many of the other homeless social service providers in the community and I could not find one that linked to NEOCH. The worst was the County Office of Homeless Services barely mentions NEOCH (1 time), and never provides a link to our website. site. OHS does not provide a link to the housing website or the United Way First Call for Help website. There is very little helpful information on any of the homeless social services websites especially anything that might be useful to homeless people.

The Downtown Alliance talks about the Grapevine and provides a link to NEOCH on their Homeless Education Page. The County Office of Homeless Services did a complete change of their website (no link--go find it yourself), and did not include one mention of the NEOCH website. This is strange since we coordinate the outreach for the community, we produce the Street Card--one page guide to homeless people on available services, and we have our most popular part of the website--the schedule of where lawyers are staffing clinics in the shelters. We are five of the top 10 search results for "cleveland homeless" on Google, and have 3,000 unique users a month to our website. NEOCH staff and board regularly complain and criticize the County for their slow response to the problems faced by homeless people, but why not provide a link so that homeless people can get off the streets?

I checked Hitchcock Center, Volunteers of America, Y-Haven, West Side Catholic, Salvation Army, and Mental Health Services websites. On all of those site there were only two mentions of the Coalition and no links. We all think that what we do is the most important thing in the community, but the Street Card lists every service available to homeless people and is updated every year. It seems that the providers would want to provide access to a one page guide to homelessness. Since the public libraries are busiest drop in centers for homeless people in our community, there are a great many web surfing homeless people. Most of the emergency shelters kick people out during the day and a large number of the 1,200 homeless people sleeping in the emergency shelters go to the air conditioned, comfortable libraries in our community.

Of course one of the best resources in the community is the 211/First Call for Help website. You can find every homeless service provider, and nearly every social service provider in the community on those sites. The 211 website combined with the Housing Cleveland website provide all the information that anyone might need to get off the streets. It is a shame that the County does not support these two valuable resources with all that they need, and they do not even provide a link from their Office of Homeless Services website.

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.

Question About Blog Ethics

We Got a Call from Tom Meyer

Two weeks ago, WKYC broadcast a terribly distorted "investigation" about EMS runs to 2100 Lakeside Shelter. We took Tom Meyer's to task for exaggerating the importance of this story and the offensive mention of sexually based offenders for no apparent reason. We also sent a note to the News Director of WKYC. Now for the ethical quandary--Tom Meyers called to respond. Do we print what Meyer said on with his call in the blog if we did not discuss publicizing his call? The broadcast was public, and our concern was public, so do people have a right to know about Tom Meyer's reply since the station has decided not to issue a correction? He has to know that NEOCH publishes the Homeless Grapevine, and he never said that his call was off the record. If the reporter code is you must tell a reporter in advance that your comments are "off the record," and the reporter must accept those terms, does that code apply to anytime a reporter talks to you? Besides, we are the homeless advocacy organization in Cleveland, and he never gave us a chance to respond to his one-sided story.

So, I will go ahead, and if he complains we can take this down or apologize. Needless to say, Meyer did not see my point of view. He said that he stood by the story and since I was the only one to complain he was not going to apologize. He specifically said that he was not doing stories just to please me. Thank God, since I do not watch any local news. I was told by a colleague that there was a "hit piece" on Channel 3 the night before. Thanks to the marvels of the internet I could watch this story online. Meyer was concerned that we had not written the note to him first instead of involving his boss. Why would we reach out to the reporter who did not reach out to us?

Meyer said that the number of sexually based offenders was a fact, and so it was correct to put it in the story. He did not seem to understand my point that it was also a fact that one-third of the men are veterans or that 40% work regular jobs. Those are facts that he could have presented had he talked to the shelter staff. Meyer felt that the two sides of the story were both represented and they included EMS on one side and the City of Cleveland on the other. He did not think it was a good idea to shove a microphone in front of the shelter staff. I guess that the staff and shelter residents were just causalities caught in the crossfire. Meyer was proud that he had made it clear on camera that he was not saying that homeless people did not deserve health care or ambulance assistance, and felt that the story was relevant. He did not say why he had not mentioned the statistics for EMS runs or the on-going contract dispute.

Homeless people will not get an apology, and local news continues to slip in the abyss of fake news and ratings. I am so happy that sweeps week is over for a couple of months.

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

Youth Issues Discussed at NEOCH

Teach In -- Thursday of this Week

You can RSVP for a 3 hour discussion on homeless children and youth in the Cleveland area. This photo is from the last teach in, when we talked about homeless outreach efforts. We will meet at NEOCH at 5:30 p.m. on May 22, 2008 at the Coalition offices to participate in this forum. There is a presentation by a group of current or formerly homeless people, and presentations by a few agencies who serve homeless people.

You can call NEOCH or go to the website under Programs to reserve a space (www.neoch.org).

Brian
216/432-0540
3631 Perkins Ave. Third Floor
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.

Homeless Book Club Meets

How is Your Government Handling Homelessness: TALK!

The poorly named "advisory" board of the Office of Homeless Services met this last week. This group has all the right people at the table, but they advise no one. They talk a great deal about homelessness, but rarely act. It is a good chance to get together every other month and talk about homelessness similar to homeless book club. Can you believe that your government convenes a meeting only every 60 days to address homelessness? If it is any comfort to you they do meet for two hours every 60 days.

Again, nothing was decided, but we did get to hear a few updates. They are moving closer to having all the big shelters in the database so that those numbers will actually make sense. Right now the numbers are useless, but that does not stop the Federal government from publishing the results and using those numbers to tell us that they are "solving" homelessness. We heard a misguided presentation by the State Disability advocates and their "Home For Good" campaign to find service dollars for the permanent supportive housing programs. We have discussed how supportive housing is oversold and a Hummer of a program when the community needs many Ford Festivas instead. It took real courage for the group to accept the recommendation to renew the funding for all the existing programs currently funded by the federal government.

There was some discussion of working on a Central Intake point, but this is a concept we can expect to see in 2018 since the County is in charge. We heard about the plans around hospital discharge--no mention of the horrible Channel 3 story. The most interesting part of the meeting was the update on North Point Transitional Shelter. Remember this was the facility opened January 15, 2008 because Aviation was closing. The experiment is now five months old with only one month left for the 160 residents who opened the place. Here are the numbers:

The demographics of the North Point population:

• Only one-third of the men had one year of homelessness or more.
• 66% were addicted
• 55% had recent experience with the criminal justice system.
• 25% had un-addressed child support issues.
• Only 14% are veterans
  

Currently here are the statistics:

• 71% are now working.
• 14 are determined not to be able to work, and the shelter is looking to transfer them.
• 5 have moved into housing
• 16 were discharged mostly for violating rules.
• 19 left on their own.
• 15 have not been able to find a job.
• Average income at this time is $8.75 (below the housing wage and the living wage).
• They guess that 20-25 went back to Lakeside Shelter

What does this all mean? It is hard to find affordable housing even with a job. There are a number of people who were screened out of the program and they were kicked out or left on their own. This might have been because they had to select so many people in such a short period of time. The men are not finding jobs that will make it easy to find housing, and a lot of people will have to leave in June or ask for an extension. The one good piece of news is that the County agreed to give the men a year grace period in collecting child support payments while they get back on their feet.

The average number at Lakeside shelter was only 370 in April, down from 401 in March. The County hopes that a large number will be moving out of North Point in the next month so that there is no need for overflow at Lakeside. We shall see.

Brian
Update: East Side Catholic closed in December, and the Catholics turned off the heat, but not the water. So the pipes burst and the building is no longer usable. There are a few providers looking at filling the hole left by the East Side Catholic shelter serving 30 families, and now they will have to find a new building.

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

Take A Minute to Do a Survey

Homeless Coalition Wants Your Opinion

As you are aware, the Coalition nearly went out of business last year. We have recovered, but are working to figure out our role in the community with the help of a consultant. We want to make sure that we are positioned to find stable and reliable funding for the next five years while we work on addressing homelessness.

Dear NEOCH Friends:

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH) is undergoing a planning process to develop a strong roadmap for the future of the organization. In order to best serve the community in the months and years ahead, we would appreciate your input into the planning process. We ask that you take a few minutes to complete a brief survey by June 3, 2008. To access the survey please copy and paste the following link into your browser or just click on this:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx\?sm=2qKjGMMzuavZTna_2b6tcoBw_3d_3d.

Most sincere thanks,

Janus Small, Janus Small Associates
NEOCH Planning Facilitator

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

Laugh In Writer Passes

Jack Hanrahan, writer and harmonica player, stayed at Lakeside Shelter

Jack Hanrahan, quite a notable homeless person from the streets of Cleveland, passed away a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been ashamedly busy to make note of it on here until now. However, I knew Jack Hanrahan a little, and I wanted to talk about his passing here so perhaps others can get to know him a little. Like I said, I didn’t know him well, but I really enjoyed the little time we spent together.

When I first met Jack Hanrahan, I was performing at the 2100 Lakeside Men’s Shelter. He asked if he could play harmonica with me while I played guitar, and I let him. He played really well and I stopped to talk with him for a little while after the show.

When he first told me his name, I thought he said his name was Jack Hammerhand. I was thoroughly impressed with such a barbaric moniker and knew that at least the name would make him unforgettable if not his harmonica playing. However, this character turned out to be filled with more depth than I would have a chance to explore.

He told me he used to write for the Care Bears cartoon show, and I humored him. I meet lots of people in my line of work, and I occasionally come across people who make various preposterous claims. I figured, who am I to judge? If I said, “You’re lying!” and it turned out he did write for the Care Bears cartoon show, I would look like a fool.

Well, I would’ve been quite the fool, because it turned out I was making music with one of the writers on the Care Bears cartoon show. On top of that, he was a writer for Laugh-In, Heathcliff, Get Smart, Inspector Gadget, Snorks, Tom and Jerry, Sonny and Cher, Captain N, and the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. I stood face to face with the architect of my treasured childhood memories and I didn’t even realize it.

All notoriety aside, he was a wonderful man to talk with and get a good raspy laugh out of. He said he would make me famous and that he still had connections in Hollywood, but I never took him up on it. I’m not so sure if he really could’ve made myself or anyone famous, but honestly, nothing about that man would ever surprise me now. He was the hypnotist on Repossessed, a not very remarkable Leslie Nielson vehicle that I used to watch religiously in my youth, and I couldn’t see through the weary world scars to that character that sits in some pleasant valley in my memory bank. If you told me he was the one who introduced Aerosmith to Run DMC, not the least mark of surprise would cross my face.

Anyways, I just wanted to thank the man for filling my youth with television characters and moments that are the very essence of nostalgia. Few things move me like nostalgia, and little did I know that in my 29^th year I would meet the very chimney that sent my childhood nostalgia along the wind and into the world.

Thank you, Jack. You used the world as your canvas for a short time, and many including myself are the better for it. You will be missed.

Joshua Kanary

Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board

PS: There was a memorial for Hanrahan this past weekend organized by his friends.

Another Good CAHA Meeting

Good Information About the State of Cleveland

The Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance Meeting from last week was one of the better meetings. We had David Cooper from the Cleveland Department of Building and Housing, who went through the gruesome details facing the city. Cooper talked about the City's efforts to manage this crisis by taking down 950 buildings last year compared to 220 in 2006. The City is estimating 8,000 to 10,000 structures abandoned. They are working on search warrants in order to enter houses with questionable ownership to determine who is responsible for maintaining these properties. The City has put up another $6 million for this year. Last year, with the assistance of Cuyahoga County, the City of Cleveland spent $9 million to take down houses. The Department has created an Operation Efficiency Task force to make sure that they are boarding and taking down properties in an efficient manner with coordination of all other City Departments. The City has boarded up 1,860 properties in the first four months of this year.

The City Department of Building and Housing averages $8,500 to demolish a building. The one benefit of the crisis is that Cleveland is getting a pretty good deal to demolish a house. Simple economic theory says that with volume comes economies of scale, and cheaper prices to take down these homes. Wards 5, 12, 10, and 14 are the hardest hit.

CMHA also gave a presentation on the state of affairs when they are being funded at 83% of what everyone agrees is the cost of running the agency. They have 8,700 units occupied, which is the highest number since 1989. CMHA has about 1,500 move outs every year and 6,700 people on the waiting list. 60% of those waiting are waiting for a one bed room apartment, because the housing authority has designated 29% of their units for those 50 and over. With welfare reform, now only 4% of the total CMHA households receive cash assistance as their main source of income. 20% are employed and 21% receive a disability check as their primary income. 23% have no income at all. There are 17,000 total people living in a CMHA properties throughout the community. The Housing Authority was represented by Scott Pollack who went through all the current modernization development projects to keep their units in good working order. The Housing Authority gets knocked, but they actually perform a vital function as a key agency in preserving our critical infrastructure. I wish that they would get rid of their senior only (50 and over) housing, but otherwise they do a good job with shrinking resources. We should all make this a high priority to restore CMHA funding for next year.

Finally, Steve Wertheim came to report on final results from 2007. There were 148,100 calls made in Cuyahoga County to First Call for Help. The two biggest reasons for calling were requests for help with utility bills at 14,900 calls and information about the local food pantry at 14,600 calls. Homeless shelters (11,100 calls) and foreclosure assistance (7,900 calls) were the next largest number of calls. Home rental listings rounded out the top five with 5,700 calls and job finding assistance was close behind with 4,300 calls.

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

WKYC Slams Lakeside Shelter

Tom Meyer Presents One-Side of the Story

WKYC-TV, normally a decent local television news program, presented a one-sided story last night about homeless people. I know that local television news are only out for ratings and focus their energy on sex, blood, violence, and scandals so what should we expect? My experience is that WKYC is usually a step above the low bar set by television news, but last night was a low point for these guys. What happened to presenting the other side of the story? What happened to talking to homeless people or homeless advocates or even the shelter directors that you have defamed? What happened to journalistic standards? Tom Meyer should be ashamed of himself for presenting such a distorted fairy tale.

For background, the story was about the large number of EMS runs to the Lakeside Shelter. This is a problem, and we all recognize that there is an issue. This is too complicated of a story to put into a nice sound byte, but that does not stop "the investigators" from trying. Here is the laundry list of problems with Mr. Meyers distortion of the news:

1. Why didn't the shelter get to comment?!!!
2. What the hell does the number of sexually based offenders have to do with this story? Why was this even mentioned except to enrage the viewer? Did Mr. Meyer bring this up to say that sexually based offenders who have completed their jail time do not deserve an ambulance? or health care? or to live in our society?
   
3. $145,000 to $545,000 for public safety runs to the shelter seems cheap to me. If we are willing to buy for millions of dollars a vacant building in this community clean it of asbestos and then sell it again for a loss or pay millions every year for a few sports teams to have beautiful houses in order to make money with ticket sales than the least we can do is pay a half million to keep homeless people alive and safe at the shelters. We waste so much money in this community, and you begrudge homeless people the right to 215 calls to EMS?
   
4. Homelessness is not fun and there is nothing enjoyable about staying at a shelter so calling the fictional story "2100 Club" is just offensive.
   
5. What do you expect, Mr. Meyer? Until we have universal health care in the United States, hospital emergency rooms will become the primary care facilities for the poorest among us. Any collection of 450 disparately poor people in the same place will require large scale and expensive supportive services with food, health care, and counseling.
   
6. Even the lead in to the story was wrong... Tim White said, "Most of those emergency calls can be traced to one location." Are they saying that the majority of calls come from Lakeside? This is factually incorrect. If there were 1,018 Safety calls in one year to Lakeside, that would mean that there are less than 2,040 total calls in the City of Cleveland for all three safety forces. In fact, EMS alone handles over 85,000 calls a year. Lakeside is a drop in the bucket at 215 calls. I am willing to bet that calls to the jail and some of the larger subsidized housing properties exceed 215 EMS calls in a year.
   
7. Insurance requirements dictate that only a health care professional can say if a call is serious enough for an ambulance within the shelters. Shelter staff are not qualified to make a decision about the seriousness of a health care need. No staff want to have a guy die because they refused to call the ambulance. Put a doctor at the shelter in the day and evening (more than $545,000 a year) and you would cut the number of calls way down.
   
8. This is a battle taking place between City Hall and EMS and Fire officials. Why do you have to put homeless people in the middle of this battle? At least identify the contract dispute taking place and be honest that EMS is using our airwaves to try to get a better contract.

I suggest the shelter call down to WKYC to make sure that it is acceptable to call EMS each time they think about calling 9-1-1. Since they are so close to the shelter the guys at Lakeside shelter should stop into the clean, beautiful lobby of WKYC and thank Mr. Meyer for such a fine example of journalistic ethics. I am sure that they would not mind if the residents wait in the lobby until Mr. Meyer has time to accept the thank you of all 400 guys.

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

Ohio Needs a Homeless Hate Crimes Bill

Hate Crime Against Homeless Report released today

Rep. Foley's bill made national news today in the USA Today. The national hate crimes report was released today and can be downloaded from the National Coalition for the Homeless website. NEOCH helped put this report together, which showed Ohio is the fourth most dangerous state in the United States for homeless people. Please do not read it cover to cover. The brutality and depravity of some of our nation's young people will turn your stomach. We hope this is a call to action for Ohio state legislators to add homeless people to the state hate crimes statute and pass Foley's bill. We hope that the County prosecutors drop their opposition to this bill. If any other minority or religious group was being targeted at this level, there would be a national outcry and immediate legislation passed at a national level.

There was also a nice profile of a local homeless individual, Eugene Clemons, targeted two weeks ago by a group of thugs on the East Side of Cleveland in today's Plain Dealer. I have a hard time understanding how a veteran who served his country and worked a full day of work is beaten to the point of being hospitalized by a group of young people. We did not identify this gentleman in this blog because he did not give us permission. I have been looking for him for a couple of weeks. I am glad that the Plain Dealer caught up with him. The Cleveland Police Chief did respond to our letter complaining about the police not taking a report. Summer is the worst time for hate crimes against homeless people, and we need to meet with the new Third District (old fifth district) commander to talk about this disturbing trend.

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

Mike Foley to Headline NEOCH Dinner

State Representative Foley is Keynote Speaker of NEOCH Dinner and Auction on May 2, 2008

Mike Foley, former director of the Cleveland Tenants Organization will be the Keynote speaker for the May 2, 2008 Dinner: "Partnering to End Homelessness." The Auction and Dinner are at GESU Family Center at 6:30 p.m. at 2490 Miramar Boulevard across from John Carroll. You can RSVP through our website, and even pay for your tickets online. We will give out the Ione Biggs Award for Social Justice as well as announce the winner of the fourth annual poetry contest winners. There are some fantastic items donated by local businesses and non-profits to be auctioned off at our seventh annual dinner and auction. We hope that you can join us.

If you have any questions, call Teri' Horne at 216/432-0540 ext. 101.
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.

Community Meeting: Housing Trust Fund

Mary Brooks Comes to Cleveland to Talk About Developing a Housing Trust Fund

On May 8, 2008 at 3 p.m. a the NEOCH/CTO conference room, we will have invited guest Mary Brooks from the Center for Community Change in Washington DC. She is an expert on the development and use of Housing Trust Funds, and has assisted communities like Franklin County and the State of Ohio with the development of a dedicated revenue source to build affordable housing. We are having a meeting earlier in the day with the County Commissioners. This meeting will set a time line and assign tasks to bring on additional allies. All are welcome to attend this critical meeting to work toward a $10 million resource to build additional housing in the community.

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

Foreclosure to Homelessness

National Homeless Report Calls For ACTION to Break the Foreclosure to Homelessness Cycle

Washington, DC – The National Coalition for the Homeless released a report today forecasting an increase in homelessness due to the foreclosure crisis. The report, Foreclosure to Homelessness: the Forgotten Victims of the Subprime Crisis, summarizes the findings of a national survey of state and local homeless coalitions conducted in winter 2008 to ascertain whether their communities were seeing an increase in homelessness due to the foreclosure crisis.

Among the survey findings:

• 61 percent of survey respondents reported an increase in homelessness in their communities since the foreclosure crisis began in 2007.
• Respondents reported a variety of living arrangements among the newly homeless victims of the foreclosure crisis, including stays with family and friends, in emergency shelters, and on the streets.

The report criticizes state legislatures and Congress for their inattention to homelessness prevention initiatives in their response to the foreclosure crisis. “Nearly forgotten in the foreclosure crisis are the thousands of homeowners and renters who have become homeless once their equity is exhausted,” said Bob Erlenbusch, President of the National Coalition for the Homeless. ”We hope this report will sound an alarm and inspire policymakers to take proactive measures that prevent more Americans from falling from foreclosure to homelessness.” The Cleveland Metropolitan School District is reporting a 40% increase from 2006 to 2007 in the number of homeless children seeking help from the Homeless Children and Youth Program, and they are attributing part of this increase to the foreclosure crisis.

Among the policy recommendations offered by NCH to break the foreclosure to homelessness cycle is an infusion of funds into the federal Emergency Food and Shelter Program, a highly effective program already in place to provide rental and mortgage assistance to persons at risk of homelessness. At the request of NCH and other organizations, Congress is now considering action on this recommendation as part of foreclosure relief measures.

Foreclosure to Homelessness: the Forgotten Victims of the Subprime Crisis, is available on the NCH web site at www.nationalhomeless.org on the front page.

The National Coalition for the Homeless is the oldest national organization advocating with and on behalf of persons experiencing homelessness. Our mission is to end homelessness. The National Coalition for the Homeless engages in public education, policy advocacy, and grassroots organizing. We focus our work in the areas of housing justice, economic justice, health care justice, and civil rights. Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is a Cleveland area advocacy organization working to amplify the voice of homeless people.

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

Are We Creating Angry Machines?

How Long Will We Pay for Iraq?

While I was in DC, I talked to a Vietnam veteran who was trying to get people to listen to his warnings about what we all need to be prepared for with the returning Iraq War veterans. He said that his one year tour of duty in Vietnam messed him up for a couple of years after he came home, and he became homeless for a period of time in the 1970s. The blood, the life-and-death decisions, the tension, the sleep deprivation, the pressure, the explosions, the horror of war are overwhelming to one's mind.

This war with many of the same issues as Vietnam, an insurgency using any means necessary to defend their home against outside aggressors, is certain to screw up many of our soldiers. The difference is that we no longer have one-year tours. We have 15 month tours and the stop loss program can send people back into the theater repeatedly. Has anyone planned for the cost of mental health, housing, and health care for the these soldiers? My friend in DC worried that we were creating "monsters" who will not be able to function in society. Every car backfiring or hostile driver, or family conflict is a potential explosive situation. Already, we have had veterans murdering their spouses and veterans crawling into drain pipes to die. How many will become homeless because of the extended tours of duty? How many will need lifelong mental health counselling because of the stop loss? I fear that this war and its consequences will make the aftermath of Vietnam look like a cake walk.

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

Hate Crime Against Homeless in Cleveland

System Failed One Homeless Man

Last Saturday, a homeless guy was sitting near the freeway overpass on Superior Ave. on a milk crate. He was not bothering anyone, just enjoying the first nice weekend of the year in Cleveland. He was attacked by a group of young people who beat him for five minutes with a board with nails in it. He stumbled over to the Lakeside Shelter, and collapsed.

The worst part is how this homeless guy was mistreated by the system. The Police refused to take a report because the guy did not know his attackers. MetroHealth treated his broken wrist, but not the leg wounds from the nails. He was discharged almost immediately despite his open wounds. Those wounds are now infected and he needs almost round-the-clock care. Beaten by a group of disturbed individuals, then violated by the police and finally kicked to the curb by the hospital. A day in the life.

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

Is it Charitable to Make People Suffer?

Change of Fortune… FOR THE WORSE!

For those of you unaware of the situation, we here at NEOCH have run afoul of a “charitable” organization known as Change of Fortune Foundation. This foundation is a program of Skyline Financial Group based in sunny LA, an investment and MORTGAGE COMPANY. The beginnings are outlined in this Free Times article from June 29, 2007 (scroll down to “Help From Above”):

If you don’t feel like reading it, the short version is these big wigs from California showed up in little old Cleveland to buy up homes and give them to homeless families rent-free so they can get back up on their feet. They had bought four houses for four families and planned to have 10 families moved in by the end of 2007. In addition, the families would receive free investment, financial, and job training.

However, that article was written in June 29, 2007, and could therefore only report on what the Change of Fortune Foundation said they were going to do. What they actually did, after they were out of sight of the cameras and reporters, was give keys to only three families. Here’s how this worked out:

• The first family, LaTosha Hanna’s family, was given keys to a home with a broken furnace, missing windows, and broken locks.
• The second family was given keys to an unlivable house with a broken furnace, busted water pipes, and missing windows. This family NEVER MOVED IN to the house due to the problems and wound up finding housing on their own.
• The third family we don’t know much about, but we do know this:
• the third family to receive keys was not the homeless family that was selected by the mayor’s office to live there, and
• the third family is PAYING RENT.

Luckily, the Free Times revisited the situation recently and published a new article about the goings-on. Please check it out here (scroll down to “No Good Deed”):

Anyways, now that you’re caught up, I wanted to offer some response to Skyline’s remarks in the article as well as some personal insight into the Big Wigs of foundation who are acting more like the Three Stooges.

The rent-free window is supposed to pad savings, [Ken Miller of Change of Fortune] says, allowing tenants to build the financial wherewithal to fix credit problems [Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

That’s funny, didn’t you say you were going to provide help in fixing credit and financial problems originally?

[Change of Fortune CEO Gene Parker] also is commited [sic] to helping [the families] get back into the game of life with; job training, credit repair, investing. [Change of Fortune Press Release, June 18, 2007]

Whoops. It looks like you did make that promise, albeit in a grammatically incorrect way. In Change of Fortune’s defense, they aren’t very savvy in the ways of the normal world.

So, why aren’t they doing anything? Well, they respond to that with:

Change of Fortune had hoped that minor problems with the houses would be covered by the new tenants. [Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

I was taken aback by this, because when I asked them why they were not making repairs, they informed me that I was a clown. They seem to have taken a different strategy in responding to that question when speaking with a member of the press, which, in retrospect, is probably a wise decision.

However, we’ve been asking Change of Fortune for months about making these repairs, and not once did they say, “We were hoping LaTosha would take care of it.” Instead, they usually told us, “We’ll get on it… let me get back to you… we’re sending someone out right now to take care of it.” Not that expecting a struggling homeless single mother with a sick child to make repairs that they should’ve made before they gave it to her is admirable, but at least letting us know that they expected Ms. Hanna to make the repairs instead of giving her false hope that "Change of Fortune" staff were about to make those repairs any moment now would’ve probably been a better strategy.

"Some people, they want a big screen and not just a TV," Miller says. [Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

LaTosha never asked for any TV, let alone a big screen TV.

“They want a mansion and not just a house.” [Ken Miller, Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

LaTosha never asked for a mansion, just someone to keep his word.

“We've bent over backwards to make sure LaTosha had a home.” [Ken Miller, Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

Here is their definition of bending over backwards:

• October 28 – November 10
• Ken Miller received a phone call almost every day letting him know LaTosha Hanna’s furnace was not working and that the water company is going to shut off Ms. Hanna’s water because of a past due bill from before she moved in. He did not return these calls.
• November 16
• Change of Fortune pays some of the past due water bill, but not all.
• Ken Miller is informed that LaTosha found someone on her own to fix the furnace.
• November 17
• Change of Fortune arrives at LaTosha’s home in order to see what needed to be fixed. Nothing is fixed, but they do make the following promises:
• the windows will be fixed,
• the locks will be fixed,
• a screen door will be installed
• a motion light for the backyard will be installed.
• November 18 – January 20
• Nothing is done.
• January 21
• LaTosha’s lawyer sends a letter to Change of Fortune demanding the repairs to be made in 30 days.
• January 22 – February 19
• Nothing is done.
• February 20
• Change of Fortune shows up at LaTosha’s house and tell her they will find someone to make the repairs.
• February 21 –
• Nothing is done.

Perhaps I’m a little “old school”, but where I come from, “bending over backwards” for somebody implies that you actually do something. Saying you’re going to do something does not actually get that thing done. You don’t just make declarations, there’s a whole process involved after you declare what you’re going to do, and it usually involves doing what you declare. Really, you can do almost anything, just as long as what you’re doing isn’t nothing. If you’re doing nothing, you’re doing it wrong.

“Very seldom do I get a call and it's like, ‘Hey, thanks, I'm going to school now.'” [Ken Miller, Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

You didn’t get that call because LaTosha isn’t going to school now, nor has she received any help from Change of Fortune in her attempts to return to school. Do people usually call you and thank you for things you had nothing to do with? If so, I can understand why you’re so disappointed no one’s called you about returning to school. I never get a call from anyone about school, either. I understand your pain.

“It's, ‘Hey, there's a knob that needs to be fixed' or something.” [Ken Miller, Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

All the knobs in the house work fine. Do you even listen to us when we call? We have never said anything about broken knobs.

"What happened is, all the resources under Change of Fortune, with all the repairs that had to be made, had become exhausted," Miller says. [Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

So, all the resources of a self described “financial empire” [Change of Fortune Press Release, June 18, 2007], all the resources that were intended to be used to house 10 families by the end of 2007, were exhausted half-repairing one house for one family. I would love to see an itemized list of expenses next to the moneys they set aside for rehabilitating 10 houses for 10 families for 2 years. Either they were building these houses from the ground up out of solid gold wood or they just set aside a shot glass of dollars out of the bathtub of moonshine that is their financial empire.

"We went to get other nonprofits involved to assist us to make this work, but they didn't want to help." [Ken Miller, Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

You needed money and you went to nonprofits? A MORTGAGE COMPANY needed money, so they went to not just any nonprofits, but nonprofits in Cuyahoga County, the foreclosure capital of the nation and one of the poorest communities in the US? Of course they didn’t help. If I walked down to LMM’s 2100 Lakeside Men’s Shelter and said, “Hey, Duane [the director], I’m gonna give free homes to all your clients, but I don’t have any money, so can you give me money to do it?” of course he is gonna say no. If we had the money to put homeless people in houses, we’d be doing it already.

"But we'll do a better job during the selection process from now on," [Ken Miller] adds [Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008]

You didn’t have anything to do with the selection process. The clients were chosen by Bridging the Gap and the City of Cleveland. Perhaps instead of “we’ll do a better job during the selection process” you should reword it to “we’ll do the selection process.”

and yes, that's a dig at Hanna, whom [Ken Miller] says has "just been totally unreasonable" [Cleveland Free Times, April 9, 2008].

Change of Fortune apparently defines totally unreasonable as a single mother living alone with her young daughter asking to have locks on her home. A group that said, “It is unconscionable that men, women and children are living in shelters,” [Change of Fortune Press Release, June 18, 2007] also finds it unreasonable that homeless families should live somewhere safe.

These guys really irk me. It’s not enough that they’re totally taking advantage of a vulnerable single mother, but they have to have really annoying personalities to boot. Whenever I listen to them talk, I feel like I’m at a medicine show. They flew in with free gifts, and we accepted the gifts on behalf of our client and expected that these businessmen would live up to their words.

In the end, all that’s important is that these repairs get made so LaTosha and her daughters can move on and begin to get their lives back in order. If anyone out there in cyberland wants to help out, the number for Skyline Financial Group, the parent organization of Change of Fortune, is 818.716.3610.

The CEO is Gene Parker III. He’s the one who signed LaTosha’s lease. Please call and remind him that LaTosha Hanna still needs locks and her windows fixed. He doesn’t respond to either myself or LaTosha, so maybe you’ll have some luck. Also, ask him if he switched the water bill into Change of Fortune’s name like he’s supposed to. I know he said he was going to, but he said a lot of things. Finally, ask him to keep his promises on all the City of Cleveland by offering free housing to homeless people.

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

No COHHIO Conference for Me

Researchers Lead Us Down the Wrong Path

There is such a limited amount of research about homelessness in the United States that a few good papers will get you a long distance on the public dole. Dennis Culhane from the University of Pennsylvania is one of those researchers who actually took the time to figure out where homeless people were coming from and how long they stayed homeless. This was very useful information, but the conclusions drawn by Mr. Culhane were far off base. Culhane did research in NYC and Philly, two cities that have very little in common with Cleveland or Toledo, and nothing in common with Lorain or Sandusky, Ohio. He has parlayed this research into regular gigs with federal agencies and speaking engagements around the country. All of us in the field have to pay for his sketchy science.

Every agency funded by the federal government now has to try to count homeless people coming in the door no matter how bad the undercount or the infringement on the privacy rights of our clients. We have to do a one day count that has no basis in reality. Think of the the "guess the jellybeans in the jar" game. We have to bear the bulk of the costs of all these distractions taking us away from actually getting people housing at the local level. The Culhane research brought us the terribly expensive Permanent supportive housing option, which we talked about in December and NEOCH has a policy paper that the Coalition published about the problems with supportive housing. In the end, we are no closer to ending homelessness in America then we were 20 years ago.

The basis of the Culhane theory is that by removing those who have been homeless for long periods of time, the community can save 60-80% of their resources. This is a great theory on paper, but in real life it does not work. If we could just save the excess water dumped on Northwest Ohio and transfer it to drought stricken Atlanta, all would be right with America. This theory does not work with weather and it will never work for people. But Culhane is milking this theory for all it is worth. How does this play out in the local community? Our shelters are starved of cash to the point that they are all closing. Public housing has had to cut all of their supportive services and has no money to renovate their buildings for years. There is no money to house poor people or families because all of our resources go to those disabled individuals who have been homeless for years.

I will not be attending the COHHIO conference featuring the ivory tower theories of Dennis Culhane. We slog through every day trying to clean up the messes made by researchers living 1 million miles from the streets of Cleveland.

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