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About Us/Contact Us • Help Us End Homelessness • Resources • Solutions • Site Map |
Strategies to End Homelessness
by the Coalition for the Homeless
Contact Brian Davis at 216/432-0540 ext. 100 or neoch@neoch.org
These are areas of social justice that the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless will focus energy over the next five years. We need your help. All of these efforts need the support of the community. The Coalition was successful over the last 10 years in starting the Community Voice Mail program, Homeless Legal Assistance, the Community Hiring Hall, and we were instrumental in the advocacy to create two decent overflow shelters so that no one had to sleep on the streets.
Homeless Grapevine:
This is the street newspaper sold and partially written by homeless people. We would like to expand the paper so that the vendors have a uniform and are some competition to panhandlers. Trinity Cathedral helped to start the paper, and we could use help in keeping the paper growing. We are also looking for training opportunities to teach homeless people to be citizen journalists.
Monthly Advocacy Meetings:
The heart of the Coalition is advocacy/organizing, and we meet monthly with homeless people to listen to the issues that are most critical to the individuals looking for housing/jobs and health care help. We need help facilitating these meetings, planning, taking notes, and forwarding some of the agenda items that come up during the meetings.
Pay-to Stay Facility:
The Coalition is committed to providing alternatives to shelters for homeless people. We would like to work with community groups to find buildings and space for both dormitory and private spaces for homeless people to be able to pay for a safe place to live. We are envisioning a non-profit pay by the night facility that would offer a place for people to keep their valuables safe.
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Voter Registration and Mobilization: |
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Volunteers are needed to go to the shelters and service providers and sign people up to vote. Then during the few weeks before an election mobilizing people to make sure that they actually go to the polling places. |
Health Care Advocacy:
Volunteers are needed to assist with the Health Care for the Uninsured Advocacy Committee. This group is made up of front line providers and is developing their own agenda to organize and advocate for universal health care. This group needs help with coordination, distribution of notes, research, and public relations.
Housing Advocacy:
Every month, government, advocates, landlords, and social service providers meet to discuss potential troubled housing in the community. This group needs assistance with coordination, distribution of notes from the meeting, research, and publicity. The goal is for no further reductions in affordable housing in our community.
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Re-Entry for Homeless People: |
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The Coalition realizes that many people are homeless because of recent involvement with the criminal justice system. This often presents a barrier that is impossible to overcome. This problem is especially acute for those convicted of a sexually-based offense. The Coalition needs some assistance in assuring that the special needs of people re-entering from prison or incarceration are in front of politicians, the media, and the social service network. |
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Civil Rights Protections:
With other volunteers in the State of Ohio, the Coalition monitors and reports on violations of the civil rights of homeless people. We need help investigating reported hate crimes or municipal activities directed at homeless people in the state of Ohio. We also need help with a potential local shelter standards legislation that would protect the privacy of homeless people. This project could be adopted by a local faith community and their social justice committee. They could meet with NEOCH staff once per month and have the members work on various projects.
Economic Justice Protections:
The Coalition is committed to protecting the rights of very low income and homeless people with regard to exploitative employers especially temporary labor companies. In partnership with the Community Hiring Hall, we are trying to get legislation against exploitation passed locally. We are also working on other strategies to get the for-profit temp. companies to deal with lower income people in an honest and respectful manner. Contact Brian from NEOCH or Sarah from the Community Hiring Hall to help in this advocacy effort.
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Affordable Housing Website: |
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Volunteers are needed to go to the shelters and development corporations to advertise this valuable resource. We need volunteers to communicate with various providers to let people know about this new valuable resource that has 1,500 affordable housing units on the site. Volunteers need their own transportation. |
NEOCH works with a number of groups of homeless people, but we need to figure out a strategy so that these leaders take the next step in forming an organizational structure to speak on their own behalf. The Coalition needs help in organizing meetings, discussion groups and venues to move an agenda forward. There are shelters that need to develop some leadership structure as well, and volunteers could assist with this effort. We would also be interested in leadership training classes for homeless people.
Coordination of Outreach Efforts:
In an effort to assure that police are not the first entity to interact with homeless people who refuse to enter shelters, the Coalition for the Homeless would like to try to coordinate all local outreach efforts. This would involve advertising to City and County front line staff (Council members, CDCs, Community Relations staff, elected officials) to indicate to call NEOCH before calling the police. NEOCH will dispatch an outreach worker, and then follow up to assure that the person was provided some assistance. We could use volunteers to assist with this effort.
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State of Ohio Voice Mail: |
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Cleveland Community Voice Mail is such a valuable tool for homeless people. It allows homeless people to connect with social services, landlords and employers. We want to form a committee of concerned citizens to move this wonderful program throughout the State of Ohio including the development of a funding mechanism to make this happen. |
The Bridging the Gap program helps people move into housing. There is a need for faith-based organization to adopt families or individuals to assist them as they move through the system. This would involve a longer relationship with a household as they apply for housing, move into that housing and then keep in touch so that they do not get evicted. There is a new effort by the Cleveland Bridge Builders to re-create the Furniture Bank locally. This effort will need broad community support to remain affordable and operational.
Homeless Speakers/Face to Face:
The Coalition supports a program called Street Voices that brings speakers who have experience with homelessness to religious groups or civic organizations. This program needs assistance in finding congregations who want a speaker and assistance with transportation of the homeless individuals to a speaking engagement. The Face to Face display is an art project that provides features warm and professionally done photographs of homeless people. This display could be hung at a church, synagogue or mosque for a month and then a forum on homelessness could be conducted. We need volunteers to help with this effort to expand this program. The Coalition can also assist with constructing a salon or discussion group to talk about poverty issues and specifically poverty with materials and potential reading lists.
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The Faces of Homelessness: |
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The Coalition has a very comprehensive website on homelessness. We are looking for an expanded effort to put anecdotal information with a picture of the many faces of homelessness on our website. This would just feature basic information about a person and their struggles to get out of homelessness. |
Homelessness in the Suburbs:
In 2004, there were over 7,000 evictions outside of the City of Cleveland, but very few cities even think about homelessness. The Coalition would be interested in helping community groups outside of the City of Cleveland push their local government to develop policies to better serve homeless people, prevent evictions, and pass living wage ordinances in the suburbs.
