Five Years After Recovery Act: Cleveland Homeless Better Off

This week was the anniversary of the American Recovery Act signed into law to clean up the mess that Wall Street made of our economy.  The lax regulations of big banks and the unregulated housing market corrupted the financial industry.  A lot of ink has been spilled to complain that the ACA was a giant boondoggle because we still have a relatively high unemployment rate.  I don't know about the other areas of the ACA, but I can say that it was a life saver for homeless people in Cleveland. 

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New Street Chronicle Available Now

Cleveland Street Chronicle Issue #21.1 is now on the streets.  The vendors are very happy because the Winter festival on West 25th St. is today.  They have new content to distribute to shoppers of the West Side Market and the businesses over on the Near West Side.  They have become a staple over there even appearing in the history book documenting the first 100 years of the institution.

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Permanent Supportive Housing Featured on WCPN

David C. Barnett had a nice story on WCPN yesterday regarding the new permanent supportive housing projects.  We appreciated hearing from a resident "Joan" who lived at one of the apartments.  We know many people who have been on the streets for years living in these properties.   We have a former vendor who has a huge issue with alcohol living in the Broadway neighborhood.   His former residence was a tent next to the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. 

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National Homeless Updates

Barb Poppe Stepping down at InterAgency Council
Our friend, Barb Poppe, from Columbus Ohio former shelter director and current US InterAgency Council on Homelessness has announced that she will step down next month.  She is the wife of COHHIO Director, Bill Faith and was the coordinator of funding in Columbus Ohio for years.  The InterAgency Council publishes reports on homelessness and was the first agency to push a housing first strategy.  They also have a really nice newsletter.  Barb put her stamp on the agency by focusing on the rise in family homelessness and beginning to talk about the problem of youth homelessness.  The InterAgency Council is supposed to work with all the federal departments (Social Security, HHS, HUD, Labor and others) that may have cross agency concerns with homeless people.

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A Few Quick Updates

CWRU Civic Engagement Conference and Learning Center along with the InterReligious Task Force on Central America had their 14th Annual Teach In conference on a cold snowy day in February.  I was one of the presenters regarding homelessness in Cleveland.  It was amazing how many students came out to participate.  Sarah Kalloch of Oxfam and Dr. Rhonda Williams of CWRU Social Justice Institute were the two keynote speakers for the conference.   100,000 Homes Campaign was featured on 60 Minutes on Sunday February 9.  It was a nice piece on the savings for the community in providing housing before wasting time with services.

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Social Security Administration Delays Changes

Since the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicle offices do not seem to have access to the internet or the E-verify system, we have no idea how they are going to deal with this problem of the Social Security Administration not providing a print out.  This is a huge problem for homeless people which are regularly having their important documents taken or they get lost with all the movement in and out of housing and shelter.  We are still waiting for a response from the Ohio BMV. 

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Housekeeping on the Website

On this cold wintry day in Cleveland, we have made some changes in the website.  We posted Don's message about the Street Voices program on the front of our website.  We moved the Homeless Memorial Video to the In Memoriam page of our website.   Brent has created a channel for NEOCH on You Tube here, which has four videos currently available.  We have added a gallery of pictures from the Homeless Stand Down 2014.  We know that over 1,400 people attended the Stand Down this year despite the horrible snow storm on January 25, 2014.

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Don Messitt Promotes Street Voices Program

Brent is going to post short promotional videos with our Street Voices presenters.  The first video is of long time speaker, Don Messitt, who talks about the value of this program to break stereotypes.   You can schedule a speaker by calling Ken at 432-0540 ext. 106 or by going to the Street Voices Section of our website.  We are hoping to schedule more engagements in the next year, and we will post all the videos on our website.

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People Seem to Be Sheltering in Place

Homeless people seem to be sheltering in place and not going outside.  Everything including some of the healthcare clinic sites and drop in centers are closed today, but most people are inside.  The brave and hearty outreach teams have gone around to campsites over the last 24 hours to make sure people were safe.  We have about 8 people who the local outreach teams are checking on regularly.   The students from John Carroll, St. Ignatius, and CWRU Labre projects are still going out to check on the people they have built a relationship with over the years.  The Frontline Services staff are covering the community and helping those with mental health issues or disabilities find safe places to live.  Jim Schlecht, Tim Walters, Carl Cook and the other staff from Metanoia are keeping their drop in center open in this extreme cold.  We are giving out handwarmers, thermal sleeping bags and thousands of blankets to keep people safe. 

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Added a Few Statistics to the Website

We have posted the 2013 statistics from the shelters.  These statistics show 8,300 people used the shelters in 2013 (Oct. 2012 to September 2013).   There were 6,000 single adults and 646 families who used the shelters in Cuyahoga County.   The average stay in an emergency shelter for a single adult is 18 days and for a family nearly 60 days.   69% of the shelter population leave the emergency shelter with some income (including non-cash income).   While only 15% of the single adults leaving the shelter have earned income.   Single individuals leave the shelter with 67% of the population go to a permanent destination. It is interesting that about 45% of the sheltered homeless have not experienced homelessness in the past.

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Don't Get Sick in Texas if you are Poor

The second most populous state in the union is not a good place to get sick if you are poor.  Texas has 17.9% of their population living below poverty and the state leaders have decided not to extend health coverage to poor people. That is 4.5 million people who do not have an ability to afford health care coverage.  They are too poor to afford health care through the Affordable Health Care Act, and will not have the ability to have 100% of their coverage paid by the federal government.  Some of those living in poverty are children or elderly and so already have health coverage.  Some are disabled or have health care coverage at a job that pays below the poverty rate, but none of the 4.5 million will be able to obtain Medicaid.

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Cold Weather Plans

The Metanoia Project plans to be open tonight, tomorrow and Thursday in addition to our regular week end hours.  We will open tonight and tomorrow in our regular space at St. Malach's at 2459 washington starting at 7pm staying open to about 7am.  Thursday we will open at St. Malachi Center moving over to our regular space later that evening as there are other activities from 7 to 9pm,  We will provide a light meal (at best) and our guests are encouraged to take advantage of regular meal sites for their evening meal.  I am sure that if you want to drop off hot food over the next couple of nights they would love the help.

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Martin Luther King Jr. was a True Revolutionary

I spent part of the day today reading a 1967 speech by Martin Luther King Jr. regarding his opposition to the conflict in Vietnam.   It is an amazing lengthy discussion of the merits of this war and the waste of blood and treasure on this conflict in Southeast Asia.  I was struck by how long and powerfully relevant this speech was for the time.  I cannot think of a venue today in which a non-politician would have opportunity to speak in such detail about a major issue of our time.  We have many 24 hour news channels that we did not have in 1967, and yet we never hear these long discussions of current events.  I would have loved to hear a similar speech by a community leader in 2007 about the War in Iraq or Afghanistan.  King was able to walk through the history of the conflict and the choices we were making in a "society gone mad on war." 

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Good News and Bad News for the Shelters

The budget compromise worked out in Congress over the last two weeks will allow funds going to homeless programs to increase by 9% for 2014.  The problem is that getting to that point will mean some tough choices, and those programs cannot be made whole in 2014.  This year and last we had to cut programs and reduce administrative costs.  Last year, every group took a 5% cut in funds.  Nationally, this is a $80 million above the pre Sequester level of $2.03 billion in 2013. This will mean an additional $2.16 million locally in 2014 for homeless and housing programs.  In the last month, the County decided to cut a number of programs and submit four projects that may or may not get funding. The rules do not allow going back and restoring the funds cut over the last few years, and a couple of projects will most likely have closed down over the last few years.

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Upcoming Events in Cleveland

IRTF's 14th Annual Social Justice Teach In
On Sunday February 9, 2014 the InterReligious Task Force on Central America will host their annual Social Justice Teach In from 11:30 am to 4 p.m. at the CWRU Thwing Center 11111 Euclid Ave., Cleveland Ohio on the campus of Case Western Reserve University.  $10 for the public and free to College and High School Students.  For more information call 961-0003 or go to www.irtfcleveland.org.

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Stand Down Coming Soon Here

January 25, 2014 at 9 a.m. at Public Hall--Everyone is welcome.
Stand Down Flyer was posted on the NEOCH Website here...
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Awful News Out of Orange County California

In 2011, two Fullerton California police officers beat to death a mentally ill homeless man named Kelly Thomas, 37.  The two officers were acquitted of all charges on Monday January 13 in an Orange County court room.  Thomas's mother was quoted in the Huffington Post as saying, "Part of me died that night...They got away with it."  Kelly's father, Ron, was a retired police officer who was devestated by his son's death especially with the release of the security videotape from a nearby building of the encounter with the police on that July evening.  (It is on the internet, but we will not provide a link. It is too gruesome to watch).

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Quick Takes

Everyday I drive by the former Ward Bakery construction site at East 47th and Chester and view the building going on to develop a new headquarters for the Third District Police and wonder will the new building be haunted by the ghosts of Edwardo and Chief.   If people don't remember we have a number of stories in our Grapevine archive about the property called "Camelot" by a group of homeless people who lived there in peace for a couple of years.  

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Sticking up for the Johnson's Poverty Effort

We had a nice story today in the Plain Dealer about activists wanting a new emphasis on poverty in the Plain Dealer.  Thanks to Larry at Organize!Ohio for putting together this event.   We also read about a press conference in Washington DC from Senator Marco Rubio bashing the "War on Poverty" and previewing the conservative response to the high poverty rates in the United States.  I would like to mark the 50th anniversary of the Lyndon Johnson announcement of the "War on Poverty" in January of 1964 as a big step forward for the United States. 

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Tough Day in Cleveland

We had a great plan.  We had so many people working to protect the poorest of our citizens in Cleveland.  We had safety forces, government, and social services all working together to help.  Yet we still lost someone due to the cold. Monday and Tuesday night and Tuesday during the day, we had many teams of workers and volunteers out working to protect people living on the streets.   We offered thermal sleeping gear, blankets, tents, handwarmers, shelter spaces and even nights in a hotel.  There were about a dozen people who refused to come inside no matter what we did.

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