Final Statement for NEOCH Policy Issued January 2006

A Lack of Leadership Has Prevented Real Solutions to Homelessness: A decade of increasing numbers of homeless people and a decrease in affordable housing.

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless has witnessed a tremendous number of set backs in the last four years with regard to homeless services and programs which have negatively impacted the daily lives of homeless people.  NEOCH is calling for a change in bureaucratic leadership providing coordination and oversight in the local struggle to end homelessness.  We need the elected and civic leaders in Cleveland to intervene and renew their role in assuring that the current plan being developed will be carried out by and bold ideas will end the affordable housing and health care crisis locally. We feel that with a clean slate the City of Cleveland and the new Mayor would be able to influence local funding decisions and policy with regard to homelessness.

            NEOCH has struggled over the last seven years to make changes by serving on every advisory, policy and coordinating committee convened around homelessness.  We have presented recommendations and position papers in an effort to get the civic leadership to address homelessness.  Finally, board and staff have tried over the last two years to work with the County and City staff with little success.

            The City and County are now engaged in a strategic planning process, but NEOCH is concerned that the region does not have effective leadership in place to address this widening crisis of homelessness.  An office was created in 1993 to coordinate the shelters and service providers and work toward ending homelessness.  While there has yet to be developed any real assessment of progress in practical terms this government office has worked to obtain more federal dollars, but has not accomplished any of the other goals.  In fact, federal dollars increased in nearly every other community in the United States so it could be argued that Cleveland only got its share. 

            The broad signs of our failure to address homelessness include:

1. Homelessness increased every year in Cleveland for the last 20 years.
2. Rents have increased to the point that rental housing is out of reach for many, and Cleveland has lost thousands of affordable housing units.  Many were converted to vouchers, but that program is subject to the whims of Congress while physical units are more secure in the community.
3. While the County has taken the lead by hosting the Office of Homeless Services, there is not one publicly funded shelter outside of the City of Cleveland.  Very few cities within the County help address this crisis while sending many down to the shelters in Cleveland when they are evicted.  The County has done very little in the spirit of regionalism to bring additional resources and ideas from other cities to address this growing problem.
4. There are very few organizations qualified to run the shelters and services for homeless people.  This is evident in the hard time the County had in finding a replacement provider to run the Catholic Charities Women’s shelter, and settled on an organization with no experience in serving women with children.
5. The number of people moving from shelter to housing is below national averages.
6. Cleveland has a larger number of people who have been homeless for long periods of time than most other American cities according to the Cleveland State University Levin College study.  In fact in a study released of 40 American cities/counties in December 2005, found that Cleveland had the third highest percentage of homeless people who have found themselves in shelters or on the streets for one year.
7. The access to residential treatment by homeless people, comprehensive mental health services for homeless people, and homeless health care by local hospitals have all decreased over the last 10 years.
8. First Call for Help reports the single most unanswered request in our community is for rental assistance, forcing many into homelessness.

 Over the past three years, we have seen a tremendous number of setbacks within the community. 

1. The men’s shelter features an ever-expanding population of regularly 600 men every night with no solid plan for creative solutions or alleviation of this dangerous situation.  Cleveland has 150-200 people at Aviation High School, but this property is slated for other uses in Cleveland.  NEOCH presented a plan in March 2005, but no public official or member of the Office of Homeless Services has ever sat down to discuss this plan.
2. The women’s overflow shelter does not effectively serve families, which is the fastest growing population of homeless people.  There is very little involvement by City and County officials in the oversight of this facility, which has led to a large number of complaints and women being discharged from the shelter.  NEOCH is currently meeting with staff at the Women’s Shelter to resolve issues, but the OHS did not provide any assistance to resolve these issues.  The issue is that women who stay in the shelters have nowhere to go to complain about problems.  OHS is fully aware of the problem and never put forward a solution.
3. The Office committed in late 2003 to assuring that when a person enters a shelter they are offered a voter registration card to renew or change their address with the Board of Elections.  This has yet to happen.
4. Both the men’s and women’s overflow shelters are forced to take all the problem and difficult people in the community or those dumped by the other shelters, criminal justice system, hospitals, and mental health community.  There is no strong oversight of even the shelters that prevent them from diverting hard to serve individuals to the two overflow shelters. 
5. The staff of the Office of Homeless Services has consistently refused to sit down face to face and talk to homeless people about their problems.  They rely entirely on providers in the community, and in fact seem to feel homeless people consistently lie and deceive advocates. 
6. Some shelters are still refusing access to 13 year old or older boys contrary to State of Ohio rules against age discrimination.   The age discrimination rules were announced three years ago, but the Office has no ability to enforce the rules.  There were still reports of violations of this rule in 2005 forcing some women to split up their families.
7. Many programs continue to struggle with finding revenue streams and there is no local leadership to assist these programs.  It is difficult to provide services to homeless people, but to also struggle in competition with other programs is a significant drain on community resources.  Programs that are out of the mainstream like Community Voice Mail, Homeless Legal Assistance, Interfaith Hospitality Network, Microenterprise revenue generation projects for homeless people, Eviction Diversion, or the Homeless Furniture Bank are not provided much help with regard to funding.
8. NEOCH staff are repeatedly banned from shelters, which always raises a red flag as to what the staff are trying to hide. The Office has continued to ignore this situation throughout the last three years.  Now, one shelter that banned NEOCH staff is on the verge of closing after staff and board have disintegrated.
9. Neighborhoods in Tremont, Midtown, St. Clair/Superior, Ohio City all rose up in opposition to homeless programs.  There was no coordinated effort to dispel some of the myths and confront the Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) mentality locally.  There is no coordinated effort to counter neighborhood opposition to homeless services.
10. There is very little coordination of resources or service delivery locally.  Programs struggle in isolation to address the growing number of people who are in need of help.  Competition for dollars makes collaboration even more difficult.  There is no plan to fund the projects that make the greatest impact in moving people into housing for the least amount of resources.  In 2006 or 2007, based on current funding, levels which have remained constant or been reduced for the past five years, Cuyahoga County will need to begin eliminating programs from funding locally.
11. There is no plan on the horizon to get homeless people into housing or to get programs started outside of the City of Cleveland.  This is unusual since the Office of Homeless Services is a project located within the County structure.
12. There is no place in the city to go to get referral information or a place that provides housing, shelter or social service information, which was one of the goals of the Office of Homeless Services.  Ask any homeless person and they will say that most information is gathered through word of mouth on the streets.
13. The County has not voiced its concern over the large number of unfunded mandates at the federal level passed onto the local community.  These include the Homeless computer tracking system required by the federal government for every city by 2004, and the requirement that 30% of the federal dollars used in a community go toward permanent housing.  Neither of these mandates resulted in more funding or forced scarce resources to be used for programs considered a lower priority by the community.
14. Cleveland officials have yet to empower homeless people to become a full partner in managing the services, administering funds, and forwarding a plan developed by homeless people to end homelessness as was stated in the original goals for the Office of Homeless Services.
15. Cuyahoga County officials have yet to follow other cities in converting our response to homelessness largely from an emergency outpouring of resources and services to a prevention and permanent housing model as was stated in the original goals of the Office of Homeless Services.
16. NEOCH has brought forth many complaints about shelter conditions and treatment by staff, which are usually dismissed by the Office of Homeless Services.
17. The new supportive housing projects being developed have no involvement by homeless people or their advocates.  There is no discussion on strategy, population served, or location of possible development projects.
18. The 2002-3 proposal, coordinated by OHS, to fill up the near vacant north tower of Riverview with homeless people was dropped because of community opposition.  Poor planning and a lack of broad community involvement resulted in another missed opportunity. 
19. NEOCH receives at least one call per week from religious and civic organizations looking to help homeless people.  There is no effective training program locally to get all these big hearted people into providing help to homeless people.  If we could marshal all of these resources, we could solve this issue of homelessness, and we would not have inexperienced providers operating the Community Women’s Shelter.
20. The big issues facing homeless people are never discussed by the Office of Homeless Services staff.  The inability to find transportation resources to get to appointments, jobs or housing, and the reality that there are no storage facilities in our community for homeless people. 
21. There is an incredible amount of secrecy surrounding the work of the Office of Homeless Services.  Repeated attempts to get homeless people involved in the work of the OHS have led nowhere.  Staff of OHS rarely meet or hear from the constituency using the services set up for homeless people. 

The Office of Homeless Services was created 12 years ago, and has failed to deliver on almost all of the original goals.  NEOCH is supporting elected and community leaders to develop a plan with specific goals and revenue needed to end homelessness.  We are asking for the creation of a specific body to implement this plan with real authority and a strong involvement by the homeless community.  Since the current planning and oversight has not resulted in better delivery of services or a decrease in homelessness, we should develop a different strategy.  We believe that OHS should have a much reduced role in the community with a separate body convened to do planning, oversee fund development, and coordinate services.  OHS should only coordinate government funds and assure compliance with government mandates.  The local effort to end homelessness has failed miserably, and we need to think about a new approach to stop the huge flow of people with unstable or no housing.

 NEOCH believes that the new City government needs to ask that the Office of Homeless Services select new leadership. We believe that the City, County, and homeless people need to be involved in the selection of dynamic new leadership who can turn around the 20 years of increases in homelessness.  We cannot afford to continue along the path we have followed for the last 10 years.  Homelessness has more than doubled, and we are now spending 6 to 8 times the amount of money on overflow shelter than we were spending 10 years ago.  The current leadership will bankrupt the local government or will force more homeless people to sleep on the streets because of a lack of space at the shelters.  We appreciate the hard work and passion of the current leadership team, but we need bold ideas, strong leadership and a sense of urgency in solving problems.  It is time for a change at the Office of Homeless Services.

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