Early Voting Has Begun

For homeless people the easiest way to vote is in person at the Board of Elections for early voting. NEOCH encourages homeless people to vote in person at the Board of Elections early.   To request an early voting ballot by mail click here.  It is much easier because just like voting by mail you do not have to show identification.  The hours for early voting are:

• 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday, October 7, 2013, through Friday, November 1, 2013;
• 9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., Saturday, November 2, 2013;
• 12:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., Sunday, November 3, 2013;
• 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday, November 4, 2013.
 
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More Impacts of Government Shutdown on the Local Housing Programs

Yesterday at the Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance Meeting we learned a little more about the impact of the Federal Government shutdown on housing and homeless programs.   The FHA is still in business doing verification of home loans, unfortunately, the IRS is not in business to verify income.  This will grind the home sales market to a standstill eventually.   No one is working at HUD to sign off on projects currently under construction.  It makes it difficult to pay construction and tradesmen working on subsidized housing projects locally. Contrary to popular belief there are affordable housing projects being developed locally.   There are permanent supportive housing projects that are supposed to open this winter, but there is no one at HUD to sign off on the work. 

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Library Looking at Homeless Patrons

The largest drop in shelter in the community is the Public Library system.  Many homeless are dismissed from the shelters in the morning and then are not allowed to claim a bed until the late afternoon.  Those who do not work or are not following up on medical appointments hang out at the library.   They are reading the paper, using the computer to look for jobs or just utilizing the people's university by reading.  The shelters have for years operated on a strategy that homeless people need to be out during the day looking for jobs and housing.  Over the last few years, the county has pushed to reduce services in the shelters, and asking instead that the staff work on housing issues.   They want services to be delivered when the person gets into housing and not when they are in an emergency situation.

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Strategic Plan Posted on the NEOCH Website

This summer the Board and staff of the Coalition put together a plan for the next four years.  They gathered surveys from homeless people, advocates and members of the Coalition to develop priorities.  It was decided not to change the mission of the Coalition, and we set out some values for the Coalition to guide our planning.  Finally and most importantly, we set down five strategic objectives.  All of these are published on our website here.  Internally, now staff will use these broad concepts to come up with specific goals for the agency.  We will figure out a way to accomplish these five strategic objectives.

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Impact of Government Shut Down on Homeless

The National Low Income Housing Coalition has done a good job of summarizing the impact of the shutdown on homeless and housing programs.   Locally, the HUD office is shut down and no staff will be attending the next CAHA meeting if the shutdown continues.  The next Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance meeting is Monday October 7 in the lower level of the US Bank Building with Lou Tisler of Neighborhood Housing Services and Bill Whitney of the Cuyahoga County Land Bank.  Here are the comments from the National Low Income Housing Coalition:

On Monday September 30, Congress failed to provide FY14 funding for the federal government to operate, which caused the government to shut down beginning at midnight on October 1. The House refused to pass a “clean” continuing resolution (CR) and the Senate refused to pass a CR that made funding contingent on modifying the Affordable Care Act, leaving the two chambers at an impasse.

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Unpublished letter to the editor resonse to hateful commentary

This letter that I penned was never published in the Plain Dealer, but the original letter should be corrected with facts and in my opinion should have never been published because it is hate speech.  There is a link to the original letter, but I would avoid reading it if you have high blood pressure.
Dear Plain Dealer Editor:

I was surprised to read the letter from Carmen Melillo Sr. in the Plain Dealer on September 6, because I was unaware that editorial policy had changed to allow grossly inaccurate and stereotypical information to be published without any clarification.  I have never understood why a paper allows anonymous hateful and incorrect comments on their electronic platform, but did not realize that the paper had decided to allow blatantly false claims in the letter’s section.

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60 Minutes Piece on Mentally Ill and Jails

There was an eye-opening piece on 60 Minutes on Sunday regarding the treatment of the mentally ill in America.   This is what Congress should be debating today instead of a four year old health care passed law. They focused on the Cook County jail labelling it the largest insane asylum in America.  I think that the Los Angeles jail could make a legitimate claim on that title, but I am not sure it is a fight that either city would want to engage in.  The reality is that mentally ill people run into problems with the law often because they have a hard time finding help.  The Justice Center downtown has a significant number of mentally ill people.   This was a good hard look at the failing mental health system, and the relationship with the mass shootings in Aurora, Navy Yard, Tucson, Newtown, and Virginia Tech.   We have seen this play out locally in East Cleveland and on Imperial Ave.

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Voting Decision Posted on the NEOCH Website

Back at the beginning of August, Federal Judge Alegenon Marbley decided in our favor to extend the agreement between NEOCH and the State of Ohio until 2016.   This will standardize how provisional ballots are counted and will assist homeless people to vote in the upcoming Presidential election in person on Election Day.  We posted the entire decision here.  It is good reading because Judge Marbley has some wonderful language defending his decision. 

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NEOCH Endorses Issue 1 Human Services Levy

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless Board of Trustees debated the merits of the replacement human services levy on the November ballot and decided to support Issue 1.  For those who do not know, the County has placed a replacement levy on the ballot for November 5 to support Health and Human Services locally.  This is the first time there will be a vote in an odd year when there are typically only local municipal issues on the ballot.  This became necessary because of huge cuts in the last two budgets from the State of Ohio to local governments and the hostility toward expanding Medicaid to serve our population. 

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Updated the list of School Liaisons on the NEOCH Website

 It is state and federal law that every school district assign one staff person to interact with children and young people struggling with their housing.  These homeless liaisons will help to keep a child from having their school disrupted if their family losing their housing during the school year.  They will find the best placement for the child either in their school of origin or in a new school if there are domestic violence issues.  These liaisons will make every effort to provide transportation and a safe return to school as soon as possible for the child. We have an updated list on our website here.

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New Facebook Page on the Hand Up Gala

As we prepare for the upcoming fund raiser, the Hand Up Gala, we have created a Facebook page just for the event.  Thanks to our friend Kim, we have a page dedicated to this unique event.  We are sending out the invitations this week to previous supporters of the event.  We will send out another mailing next week to some of our friends in the community.  In case you have not seen, the Hand Up Gala is a fine dining meal we serve to homeless and hungry in Cleveland as an alternative to the silent auction dinners we had in the past.  We had some nice events for our members in the past at Massimos, and a couple of homeless people would get to enjoy the evening.  We decided for all the staff and volunteer time, we should design an event in which our most important constituents (the people we serve) can have a special time.  Three years ago, we partnered with the Cosgrove Center to host a day for homeless people to enjoy music, table cloths, floral arrangements and a wonderful meal.

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Next CAHA Meeting focuses on Foreclosures and the Land Bank

The next meeting of the Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance is October 7 at 1:30 and will feature Bill Whitney of the Cuyahoga Land Bank and Lou Tisler of Neighborhood Housing Services.  Bill will give his regular update on the clean up of the foreclosure crisis in Cleveland.  The land bank is taking down shells of housing so that the land can be re-developed into parks, farm, or housing.  They are also working with a few community groups on creative solutions to the protect Cleveland neighborhoods going forward.  Recently, they were granted permission to use some of the foreclosure assistance money to take down more abandoned properties when the Treasury Department decided to allow the hardest hit fund to go to demolish housing.  This had been used to save people's homes and now it will be to wipe away abandoned housing.   Someday at CAHA after the foreclosure crisis is over we will have to discuss if the American dream of homeownership is now dead for millions of lower income families now that the housing bubble has burst and we taken down thousands of units of housing.  

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The Future of the Cuyahoga Affordable Housing Alliance Meetings

The last CAHA meeting was about the future of HUD in Ohio.  In a cost saving move HUD will be closing nearly all of the HUD multifamily field offices in the United States. These are the offices that oversee private landlords who serve low income families (Lupica, Rainbow Terrace, Emeritus House).  Every resident in the building gets a subsidy from the federal government.  HUD monitors the quality of these buildings, assures compliance with federal rules and is the government watchdog to make sure that the buildings maintain occupancy rates.  The Cincinnati office has already closed with Columbus and Cleveland closing their multifamily offices in 2014.   They are moving staff to DETROIT?? and Chicago.  Does anyone find it ironic that HUD multifamily staff will be located in a bankrupt city with a similar number of abandoned properties as the area around Chernobyl in the Ukraine?

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South Carolina Reverses Criminalization of Homeless

We posted two blog entries about the absurd Columbia South Carolina law that would require homeless people to seek shelter or go to jail.  With all the national attention and pressure put on the City from national groups like the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center, the petitions on Change.org and the national media stories was too much for the City Council.  They backed away from the law and will go in a different direction.  It is amazing to me that they did not have the backing of their own police, and that not one council member saw the potential problems associated with this legislation to vote against it. 

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Strange Article in the Plain Dealer About Housing

There was a strange and long article in the Plain Dealer last week from Stephen Koff regarding "social engineering"  at the Department of Housing and Urban Development that you might have missed.  The article suggests that enforcing a Civil Rights era law could be "social engineering."  Then a letter was published on Friday that shows the fear and mythology that has developed around the Housing Choice voucher program and Public Housing in our community.  First, the letter was highly offensive and incorrect, and should not have been printed in the paper.  Ms. Melillo has no proof that "incoming section 8 people bring their bad habits and culture with them--violence, drugs, prostitution, deterioration and loud music..."

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Even Police Oppose South Carolina Forced Shelter Law

We wrote about this "crazy South Carolina law"  in the last two week, but it turns out that not even the police agree with the scope of this law.  Huffington Post printed an article on August 28, detailing Columbia Interim Police Chief Ruben Santiago's opposition to the new law.  The National Law Center has been raising concerns about this issue and staff appeared on MSNBC last week.  The Huffington Post quoted the acting police chief saying, " We can't just take people to somewhere they don't want to go.  I can't do that. I won't do that." 

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Marcia Leaving the Board

Our former Board and staff member, Marcia Bufford has left the city.  She was currently serving as Board Treasurer after retiring from three years as Board President.  She started out in 1997 as a volunteer with the Homeless Stand Down recruiting and training other volunteers. She then took a turn as an Americorps*VISTA with CTO and with NEOCH.  She did tenant and community organizing for the two organizations.  She leaves today for greener pastures in another state.  She could not find a job here after working with homeless people and children for over a decade.

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Hand Up Gala Date Announced

One of the most unique events in the community is a collaboration between Catholic Charities and the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless called the Hand Up Gala.  The 2013 event is set for October 18, 2013 at the Bishop Cosgrove Center on Superior.  Most of the non-profit agencies in Cleveland have a once a year dinner and silent auction.  This event turns that concept on its head.  The main beneficiaries are homeless and hungry people in Cleveland Ohio.  We have a chef prepare a four star meal and we provide all the atmosphere of a high end restaurant.  

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Promissory Note Still Comes Up Short for Housing

50 years ago, African American leaders gathered in DC to seek justice and equality.  Most remember Martin Luther King Jr. delivering  the single best oratory speech since the Gettysburg Address, but John Lewis, A. Phillip Randolph and Roy Wilkins also gave powerful speeches.  Just focusing on the world of housing which was a critical plank in the push for jobs and freedom in 1963 there have been strides, but the United States has a long way to go to repay the debt.  We have seen poverty and homelessness disproportionately impact African Americans for 150 years.

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Satire: Do We Need Early Voting At All?

Thank you, Ohio legislators for protecting us from having to get up from our Playstations on the weekend to go vote!  We are so glad that you are saving us from President Obama who spent time and resources in Ohio to open up weekend voting so that we will have less time to spend with our families on that weekend before the election in 2014.   We "support" State Representative John Becker's effort to cut down on early voting because 35 days is just too tempting to try to vote multiple times with so many days available. Ohioans may vote the first week in October and then forget and try to vote again on Election Day.

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