CLEVELAND — Olen Owens had a tear in his eye after learning the Southeast Cleveland Resource Center may be forced to close by the end of February due to a lack of funding.
Owens, who is dealing with a crisis and is in need of emergency housing, was able to get help from the resource center, which has played a big role in helping low-income families in Cleveland's Slavic Village neighborhood for the past 18 months.
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“It’s very important because if it it weren’t for this center I would be left out in the cold, nowhere to go, no food, no nothing," Owens said. “I come to them and I told them that I needed emergency housing, I didn’t think it possible. if it weren’t for a place like this someone like me would be totally devastated.”
Odetta Jordan, Managing Director of the Southeast Cleveland Resource Center, told News 5 that the center is staffed by volunteers and is in need of more consistent funding so it can continue to provide a wide variety of resources for families and individuals in one of Cleveland's poorest neighborhoods.
We provide clothes, food, a warm place to come into, I’d like to say we are taking down barriers and creating safety nets for people," Jordan said, “We wrote small grants like Neighborhood Connections, and then we got donations from some very generous people, but those have run out also.”
Jordan said her agency has filed an application for a grant from the Cleveland Foundation with the help of Cuyahoga County Council member Yvonne Conwell, but it may be weeks before she knows the outcome of that effort.
“We’ve been here a little over a year-and-a-half and we have grown so fast, I didn’t think it would take-off this fast," Jordan said.“Nothing like this has grown in Slavic Village this fast, we have clothes, we have a small food pantry, we have an AA meeting that has 30 people.”
The agency held an open house for Cleveland and Cuyahoga County leaders on Feb. 14, hoping to find new funding sources.
Ward 5 Cleveland Councilman Richard Starr told News 5 he is working to try and find the needed dollars to help a neighborhood he said city data confirms is financially distressed.
“When the average income and the median income for that neighborhood is $12,500, that doesn’t make sense," Starr said. “We were having the discussions about different strategies to figure out how do we allocate funding, whether it’s through the city, whether it’s through the county, whether it’s through nonprofit organizations."
The agency has set up its own GoFundMe account, hoping to extend services over the coming weeks as the search for permanent funding continues.
Meanwhile, Owens told News 5 he's living proof the agency is helping to prevent people from having to live on the streets of Cleveland.
"An employee here has set-up and told me I may have a place to go to today," Owens said.“When it comes to the homeless, places like this help keep that number down, helps keep people from being hungry everyday, helps people to put clothes on their backs that other places do not offer.”
News 5 will continue to follow through on this developing story.
