Cleveland Endorses National Housing Trust

At the May 13, Cleveland City Council meeting the members passed a resolution in support of HR 1213, the Common Sense Housing Investment Act of 2013.  The goal is to get all of our local Congressional members to endorse this campaign.  The United for Homes campaign under the direction of the National Low Income Housing Coalition worked over the last few years to develop a strategy to fund the National Housing Trust.  Congress created the trust, but the funding source collapsed as the 2008 housing bubble burst.  They put their heads together and proposed a reform of the mortgage interest deduction so that some of the proceeds go to develop affordable housing.

Congressman Ellison of Minnesota proposed a law to reform the mortgage deduction and his bill would expand funding to CMHA, the Housing Choice Voucher program, the National Housing Trust, and expand the tax credit program.  We have posted a copy of the City of Cleveland resolution on our website under May 2013 in our advocacy section (just click on the pdf to circulate or view the resolution.)  We hope that Congresswomen Fudge and Kaptur will sign on to the resolution.  We hope that Cuyahoga County will pass a similar resolution. 

PS: We have to thank Rachel, staff of Councilman Joe Cimperman, for quickly getting this to the Council.  Also, Councilman Cimperman was very gracious in moving this to the floor for a vote before the summer vacation.

Brian Davis

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New Almanac of Family Homelessness Published

We received a beautiful and comprehensive American Almanac of Family Homelessness published by the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness. 

This is a huge book in the style of a coffee table book from the 1970s.  Every page has some wonderful charts or graphs. For policy wonks this book is not to miss.  There is a page dedicated to each state with statistics on the major cities within those states.  These stats are based on flawed Annual counts, which dramatically undercounts families.  (We will print in the next Street Newspaper).  The annual count gives a good overview of homelessness demographics and can provide some interesting comparisons.  They are not accurate, but they are interesting comparisons.  For example, there is no way that there are more families in Hamilton County then there are in Cuyahoga County, but that is what the stats say. This is a reflection of the number of shelter beds counted in Cincinnati compared to Cleveland, but it has no greater meaning. Not all of our family shelters report their numbers while every shelter reports in Hamilton County.

The other nice aspect of this Almanac is that they go through issues that are impacting family homelessness in America.   They discuss causes of family homelessness, foreclosures, and family homeless sub populations.  They go into great detail about the unfortunate destruction of transitional shelters in America.  They look at homeless youth, Head Start, Food stamps, and Social Security Disability.   The Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness looks at minorities and homelessness, those who live in rural communities, and federal aid for homeless students.  You can read the almanac directly from their website, but it does not do it justice until you see it.  I would recommend policy agencies purchasing a copy of the book.  

The final section has a brief look at positive programs that are making a difference in the United States to improve the lives of homeless families.  There are no programs mentioned in Ohio which is unfortunate, but there are some interesting ideas.  There are some clunkers in the list like the Denver Donation Meter Program which we are never big on programs that single out one population (panhandlers) for shame and derision.  While others seem interesting like the Minneapolis Family Housing Fund that has built 26,000 units of affordable housing or the Chicago Hopes program to engage homeless children in enrichment activities while in the shelters. 

Brian Davis

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A Much Needed Improvement for Missing Persons

Back in 2009, NEOCH wrote about the gruesome discovery of 11 women in the home of a serial killer.  These women were in effect homeless women who made the fateful decision to reject shelter and instead found a home with a predator.  Then in 2011, a report was issued by the City of Cleveland in response to the perception that the City dropped the ball on preventing the deaths of 11 women on Imperial Ave.  The missing persons report (click on the pdf in the middle of the page) provided a series of recommendations for improving missing persons searches.  Now, in the wake of the Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, and Gina DeJesus being lost for 10 to 12 years, advocates are second guessing the effectiveness of that report.  Cuyahoga County announced this week a new website to track missing persons county wide and the appointment of three staff to work the issue. 

NEOCH was critical of the original report, and we wrote to the City asking for additional steps operated by a non-profit to coordinate all these activities  We even met with the police chief to offer our assistance in 2011, but the City went their own way.  There is a limited website currently available by the City of Cleveland, but it has very little information.  The big problem right now is that if the last known residence of an individual is in Woodland then that police force is the one that takes the lead on investigating their disappearance. They may not have the expertise or skills to understand the difference between a runaway, a homeless person and a missing person, but that is the way it works in Ohio.  If Cuyahoga County Sheriff is going to step forward to take the lead on these cases that would be a big improvement.  All the steps that have been taken are good, but there is much more that needs to be done.  Our recommendations:

1.  The new County website needs to have much more information when compared to the City of Cleveland missing persons online database. They need many more pictures and detailed information about the missing person.  Since most people do not use their name when they are trying to disappear, how is just a name and age useful to the public?  It should also have the ability for trusted users to login to find out additional information and submit additional information.  This would allow family members to submit non-public information and social workers to find information.  There was a nice model that the people at Microsoft set up after Hurricane Katrina.  There are some people who just don't want to have contact with their family and are not really missing.  Right now we have no ability to separate those people from the missing. Families who suspect with credible evidence that their family member relocated to Cleveland should be able to list their family members as missing in a venue seen by Clevelanders.

2.  Agencies that deal with new people on a regular basis should receive a weekly report of people declared missing from the county.  Right now we get a weekly update of the 800 person list of everyone missing.  They do not separate the new from the old.   We could then look out for people missing in our community, and encourage those individuals to get their names off the missing persons database.   The social service providers would not violate the privacy of their clients, but just try to get the "missing" individual to put their family members at ease if they were searching for them.   We have found many people who family has been looking for, and if they had known the individual was homeless they would have stepped forward to help.  Unfortunately, many don't find their loved ones until they appear on our homeless memorial list.

3. The County Sheriff needs to start doing work with the homeless groups, the rape crisis center, youth outreach teams, mental health agencies, and alcohol and drug treatment centers if they are going to be leading the effort to find missing people.   They need to start building trusting relationships with community groups in order to help re-unite families and find missing people.

4.  We would like many more details from the County and some input on the development of this new resource.   We want the women of Imperial Avenue support group to have some input and the families of missing adults to be involved.  We could have a top notch system for finding people, and we could actually make something meaningful if we just listen to the experts.

Brian Davis

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Local Reports from the National Coalition

One of the best part of the meeting of the National Coalition for the Homeless meeting is hearing the local updates from around the United States.  It is good to hear that the struggles in Cleveland are nothing compared to some of the other areas of the country.   Every once in a while there are victories that we could all learn to replicate locally. 

South Dakota

Has decided not to expand Medicaid.  Worked to establish a state Housing Trust Fund in March 2013, and part of the fund goes to economic development.

Washington State

They are experiencing such a rough time with the budget that there is a proposal to cut homeless assistance by half.  Advocates are rallying to push for "closing loopholes" in taxes to prevent the cuts to human services. 

New York

They have had record numbers in the shelters with 50,000 reached last month a new record.  That marks a 61% increase in shelter during the Bloomberg administration and a 20% increase in one year.  The point in time count released by HUD is highly inaccurate, but it the numbers show that 1 in 4 homeless people live in New York City.  One of the big issues is the loss of targeted housing vouchers for homeless families that the Mayor cancelled.  There are regular fights with the administration over access to shelter.  Advocates have been fighting over the "diversion"  rules in court.  They hope to delay the implementation until a new Mayor can make the final decision.  They are still dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy with many still in temporary locations.  There have been protests and efforts to extend the time people have to find housing. The plan to house everyone who lost their housing in the hurricane is still not in place, but the City continues to set arbitrary deadlines.

New Orleans

The Public Housing Authority has been successful in replacing as many as 2,400 units which has helped to keep the homeless population down.

Mississippi

They have put together a plan to end homelessness with a focus on children and families.

California

Advocates are working on a Homeless Bill of Rights.  There was an attempt to weaken the legislation to make it largely symbolic.  This was successfully beaten back, but there is no guarantee that the Governor will sign the legislation. They have a Housing Trust fund without money, and there is an attempt to find a revenue source.   There have been stories in the local paper of individuals being transported from Nevada to California and dumped.   There is great concern for the local housing authorities having to evict people beginning this summer because of federal budget cuts and sequestration. 

South Carolina

There was a anti-camping ordinance passed that allows homeless people to live under a bridge for 48 hours before they have to move on.  There are no resources to help people in South Carolina and a tangible fear and loathing of single homeless males and lower income citizens. 

Ft. Lauderdale

They have expanded their drop in center to serve larger numbers.  There is an expanded health care for the homeless clinic operating in the community.  The entire state has a large number of attacks, brutal treatment of those living outside and massive numbers of arrests.  It is a rough place for homeless people to live.

Denver

The anti-camping ban passed and they are still dealing with the results.  People are feeling less safe and feel constantly under threat for arrest. While there have not been arrests using the anti-camping it is an opening to do a background check and arrest for some other reason.  They are trying to renovate  an old VA hospital as a transitional housing facility and rehab center.  There is concern that HUD will not allow congregate living arrangements after a controversial court decision that attempts to de-concentrate disabled populations.  The problem is that the only way to make these projects work is to have larger scale facilities with over 100 people living together.  It is a problem that Congress or HUD need to resolve this issue.   They continue to develop 100 Permanent Supportive Housing units a year and the latest property increased the size of the Denver Health Care for the Homeless clinic. 

Brian

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Pancake Breakfast a Success

The National Honor Society Members of St. Josephs Academy organized a Pancake Breakfast last Saturday to raise money for NEOCH.  These future leaders of Cleveland took a Saturday to help out homeless families in Cleveland.   They found donations of food and coffee for the breakfast.  They raised $1,250 to help us publish the Family Street Card, and continue to organize around the effort to meet the overflow demand of Moms and Kids that we know will show up at the shelters this summer.  These funds will help us staff the partnership to bring religious organizations to the table to assist MHS keep families together this summer.   We have to thank John Lesko, the NHS advisory at St. Josephs Academy, for all his help organizing this event.  We also have to thank Care Source for supporting the breakfast and providing the funds to buy the food, juice and coffee.   We especially enjoyed the enthusiastic young women out on Rocky River Blvd urging people to attend and the songs that the servers made up in between flipping pancakes.  It was a very nice event on the campus of a hidden gem in Cleveland.

Brian Davis

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