Hosted by NEOCH
Thursday, August 2 at 11:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Huron and Euclid
It’s no secret that affordable housing is a scarce commodity in our community. There are currently over 23,000 people who are homeless in our city. In our county, a person working full-time and earning minimum wage cannot even afford a single-room apartment. This year, 50,000 Clevelanders applied for CMHA vouchers for subsidized housing: only 10,000 were lucky enough to be put on a waiting list to obtain housing. Source-of-income discrimination in the housing market continues to plague our community, and gentrification is making affordable housing even harder to come by.
To make matters worse, recent federal HUD proposals threaten to limit folks’ already tenuous access to housing. Developments like the Ross Plan could triple rents for low-income people. Ben Carson has removed anti-discrimination language from HUD’s mission statement. And as residents if cities across the nation struggle with lead poisoning, food deserts, unemployment, and chronic underfunding of community programs and agencies, over half a million people in our country do not have a place they can call “home.”
In effect, affordable housing in our country is dead. Join NEOCH on Thursday, August 2 from 11:30 am-1:30 pm for our Funeral for Affordable Housing. We’ll meet at the HUD office on Euclid and Huron Plaza and march to our county’s offices and Cleveland City Hall. We’d like everyone to wear black to the protest, if possible. Join us to stand up against the systemic lack of affordable housing in our community, and demand a change.