That said, the women aren’t holding their breath over this bid.
FrontLine Services, formerly known as Mental Health Services, has run the shelter for more than a decade. Once the county published its recent request for proposals, that group filed its paperwork to continue its contract. The other bidder, the apparent representative of change for so many women living at Norma Herr, is the West Side Catholic Center. (Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, which runs the 2100 Lakeside men’s shelter, has agreed to partner with FrontLine if that group is successful in its bid.)
This is the first time a competitive bidder has jumped into the Norma Herr operations ring since at least the late 1990s, Brian Davis, director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition of the Homeless, told Scene.
For now, the two proposals are being reviewed by an ad-hoc county committee, which will parse through the differences between the long-standing operator and the newcomer, West Side Catholic, and will assess scores in individual categories. The latter is a well known local organization that operates a homeless shelter in Ohio City.
The ad-hoc committee includes two reps from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services; and one rep each from United Way, the O’Neil Foundation, the ADAMHS Board staff and the child welfare program. It was pointed out with gusto from the women at Norma Herr that there is no person in that review group who had been or was homeless. (Debate ensued over whether that would introduce a pronounced bias. It was pointed out later by Ruth Gillett, the county’s director of homeless services, and county spokesperson Mary Louise Madigan that, for instance, NEOCH “is a party” to West Side Catholic’s bid.)
Gillet said that the group is meeting this week. A recommendation on the preferred proposal is due to County Council before the end of the month.
“I know there’s a lot of anxiety on this issue,” Davis said during a recent meeting of the Homeless Congress in downtown Cleveland. “But it’s a big step that this was offered to us – an opportunity to make the contract available so that other operators could bid on it.” (The last request for proposals on Norma Herr by the county was in 2014.)
Most women think the open-bid process is little more than a dog-and-pony show, a carefully manicured performance that will result in no change to the operations at Norma Herr.
LaTonya Murray, director of FrontLine’s emergency housing services, says that FrontLine has responded to its residents’ grievances.
During a meeting of the Homeless Congress on Feb. 9, however, multiple women told Scene that things have only grown worse in 2016 and 2017. “EMS basically lives at Norma Herr,” resident Felicia Davis told us.
Women were suggesting simple amenities like a few public computers and Wi-Fi capabilities. With the path to employment and housing now almost entirely dependent on Internet access, the women pointed out the compounding disadvantages levied against them by a shelter operator that refuses to offer even basic wireless Internet. (“The world is changing,” one woman said.)
“That’s a good suggestion,” Gillett said.
Gillett spoke to the room at length, also leading a conversation over whether to cap the time allowed at the shelter for individual women, the idea being that it’s better to get people into housing than into a shelter — “emergency housing.” (The county works with the shelter’s operator to set policy like that.)
NEOCH has been vocally opposed to time-limited shelters for at least 12 years, according to public statements made by the coalition. Gillett said that she was unaware of that position, and continued to seek input from the women on how long they should be allowed to stay at the shelter. “We want to make the time-frame useful,” she said.
Part of the problem, many women told Scene, is that, say, a 45-day ceiling on women’s time at the shelter might come to a close before they can get in contact with a helpful social worker. Sometimes, they said, that process can take six months or so.
“When you are a homeless person, people think that you have no home and no job, so you have all the time in the world and you’ll wait,” one lady told Scene. Presently, there’s no time limit set for homeless women at Norma Herr. The shelter also has a policy of accepting anyone who’s found eligible in their intake process.
Last year, we sent a Scene contributor to spend the night at Norma Herr. She verified many of the complaints that we had been reading from women who’ve stayed there. While FrontLine currently has 162 beds on-site, and 40 mats, according to Murray, our writer reported that more than 100 women were sleeping around her on the floor. (“There are reasons for people who choose to sleep on the floor,” Murray says. “We ensure that everyone has a place to stay each night. We try to ensure that it is safe as possible.”) A recent WEWS news story reiterated those claims that the shelter is overcrowded.
After a lengthy intake interview, our writer arrived at Norma Herr right as dinner was ending. Most of the long, laminate tables had been propped up against the wall, and women were already beginning to stake their sleeping locations for the night with blue mats thrown onto the floor. Others were still finishing their meals, seated on the cold tile or leaning against piles of backpacks. The group gazed into the empty room and sat in near silence, save for a few complaints about the food. One woman offered our writer an extra plate of dinner: dried meatloaf and something described to her as “cheesy cauliflower.” It was understood that this was one of the better meals served at that time.
“No pillows, no mat,” a woman shouted as others around her shuffled on their makeshift beds. Some had mats; others propped themselves up on plastic chairs or their personal belongings. It was that woman’s first night at Cleveland’s only women’s shelter too, and she continued to go on about the things Norma Herr lack.
“What the hell kind of shelter is this?” she said to no one. “This is worse than the county jail.” – Additional reporting by Brittany Rees
This article appears in Feb 8-14, 2017.
What happened with the Housing First program? Why are we discussing the time limit for staying in the shelter? Transitional Housing for men lost HUD funding as the result of developing Housing First program. Shelters are overcrowded and underfunded. Where are the winners of this fight: Housing First against Transitional Housing?! The only way to decrease the numbers in the shelter is to get them into Housing First, not to put a time limit on their stay in the shelter. Where are they supposed to go after the time limit? This is what Housing First propaganda promised — that we would not need transitional housing because of Housing First! How is it that those who said that the only solution to end homelessness is through Housing First are in charge of shelters which by definition are Transitional Housing?!
@Ryszard The Housing First Program became the HVAP program and the men never lost anything in regards to housing. The reason why you don’t see too many homeless men getting any housing through the county is because one of the requirements to have housing is that you cannot be convicted of certain crimes which include sexual, drug related, domestic violence related, or arson related crimes. I was told about 5 years ago by shelter staff that there was about close to 200 sexual offenders in 2100 alone and that right there is a major disqualifies in seeking help from this program. It’s not because they were never offered the Housing First Program of HVAP-because of their own actions, they were never eligible in the first place. That’s not to say women can’t be found guilty of that either-there were three registered sex offenders in Norma Herr when I was there. Another disqualifies for the program is if you have other serious criminal offenses such as arson, domestic violence, drug possession/trafficking, prostitution, etc. These are the people who can’t get Transitional Housing, Housing First, or Section 8. There are however other halfway houses that accommodate these types of individuals.
Now with the time limit, the reason why that was proposed is because unfortunately-and there aren’t a whole lot of them-there were a few that were inside the shelters for 5 plus years. There were about 4-5 of them that were in there close to 15 years for NO REASON. One particular one used to leave out the shelter every morning before 6am when shelter staff shown up that were in charge of the rapid rehousing program and refused to return until 9 or 10pm at night to avoid the discussion of getting housing. They were thinking about proposing the time limit because of people like this particular woman. There is nothing mentally wrong with the woman or anything, she just refuses to leave. Then there is another where she is an able bodied woman with no mental issues that I am aware of that did the same thing too where she stayed gone all day to avoid housing staff by going out and feeding stray cats all day and half the night. Usually the wait time for section 8 is 2-3 years here in Cuyahoga County and they should cap the stay period to about 3 years. There is NO REASON why someone should be purposely staying in the shelter that long when there is nothing prohibiting them from going to the county to do so. They can take folks down to the county and apply-Front Line does have a van that comes by and picks folks up to take them there. To combat this issue, and FrontLine should have jumped on this sooner, but they should have made it mandatory that anyone staying in there upon entering MUST fill out an application with CMHA upon entering the shelter. They also should have made it mandatory to for everyone staying there to speak with a housing specialist too while in there to expedite the process, but they didn’t.
With Transitional Housing, the way people at the women’s shelter were picked to go over there was ridiculous. The transitional housing that I eventually went too took the HVAP voucher but I had to fill out a CMHA application to get that much and go through the interview. They also had a program there that took folks waiting for section 8 to respond but had no income, so they got funds from other sources to cover their rent while they waited. I was never offered this other program while I waited for my section 8 to come through. They were giving this program to a lot of the women inside the shelter who honestly didn’t deserve it at all. The women who got them were the ones who destroyed their apartments, continued to prostitute, steal, do drugs/alcohol, fight, etc., while at Transitional Housing and were evicted within a 3-5 month time frame and wound up back at the shelter. During my time in Transitional Housing, they lost at least 20 residents within a short time period.These idiots thought they could continue their 21 Jump Street behaviors they were engaging at the shelter at Transitional Housing, but they soon found out that they couldn’t when they got the eviction notice. The people like me who worked part time, went to school, or done a combination of both and weren’t into the riffraff oftentimes were never even offered Transitional Housing at all. It took them 2 and a half years before they offered me it and this is after about 30 women were booted in 3-5 months or less from Transitional Housing.
there is so much entitlement to this issue I want to scream!
Cleveland does NOT owe anything to you lazy parasites–you don’t like housing conditions–better than streets!–or food (where did you think they get their food–be glad you’re eating for free!), and no wifi access–there are libraries with FREE computer access! kick them out if they don’t like conditions!
Why do people in shelters receive SS checks, SSI checks, SSD checks and/or food stamps? This allows them to not be responsible for paying their own rent or utilities. The shelters while offering a place out of the elements are really not helping people to become self-sufficient.
I just hope the ones posting Negative Comments instead of solutions Never have to Fall on Hard times..Sometimes it easier said than Done..Different people Different Circumstances.