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About Us/Contact Us • Help Us End Homelessness • Resources • Solutions • Site Map |
What is
Homeless Organizing?
Why did
this program develop?
Making Contact
As a continuation of the Creating Positive Solutions discussion, NEOCH attempts to meet with different populations of homeless people every month to talk about the issues, the gaps in services, and possible solutions. Through this effort we have tried to concentrate our energies in filling some of the gaps by those with homeless experience. Currently, we are working on a central referral center so that a homeless person can go to one place and find information about jobs, housing, shelter, and education. They can talk to a referral specialist and can use a computer to find resources and improve their skills. We are also working on the problems associated with the temporary labor agencies including the low pay rate and dead end nature of the jobs.
We have tried at various time to establish a homeless leadership union to work in cooperation with NEOCH to carry out a solution orientated agenda and lobby the government. This has had various levels of success because of the transient nature of the population.
Other organizing projects include voter registration drives to get homeless people registered and assisting them to go to the voting booth. NEOCH has also worked to assure that homeless people are represented on various boards and serve on advisory committees. NEOCH has assisted squatters attempting to preserve the building that they were using for a shelter. NEOCH has also begun organizing Coalitions of homeless people throughout the state of Ohio.
The Coalition was founded on the principle of providing advocacy to Greater Cleveland around the issues of homelessness. We realized quickly that the only way to accomplish this goal in the long term is to energize the population with the confidence to make dramatic changes in their own community. This means empowering homeless people into a community or returning power to those long since disenfranchised. In everything we do, we attempt to amply the voice of homeless people and take direction from those who have lived through homelessness.
If you would like to assist with this project, go to the volunteer opportunities section. We need people who want to help organize people who are homeless. We want to again hold leadership meetings and get people to begin to shake off the sense of powerless that so often prolongs a persons stay on the street. Please contact NEOCH for more information.
3631 Perkins Ave., #3A-3
Cleveland, Ohio 44114
216-432-0540
Contact: Brian Davis