We Need Help Printing Our Homeless Street Card

Cleveland Clinic Dropped a 25 Year Tradition of Collaboration

The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is looking for help printing 10,000 copies of the Homeless Street Card.  These are a one sheet (front and back) list of important phone numbers and contact information for every social service provider who can help homeless people in the community.  It features the meal programs, health care facilities and all the help lines for drug and alcohol addiction.  We give them out in 75 locations throughout the community such as libraries, hospitals, shelters, and police stations.   We were informed on September 14 by the Cleveland Clinic that they exhausted their charitable dollars before June 3, 2015 (the day we sent our first request) and therefore could not print the Street Card this year.

For the past 25 years, the hospitals have rotated printing the card with one year MetroHealth then the next year University Hospital and finally Cleveland Clinic accepting the cost of printing.  Even during the recession and downturn when some of the hospitals were making huge cutbacks, they still maintained their commitment to this important publication.  It is one of the most important sheets of information for those who do not have a smart phone or easy access to a computer.  Chris Abood, the director of Community Partnership and Employee Engagement, gave a list of the services that they provide to homeless, underserved and disabled and said, “In short, urban Cleveland has been the focus for many years and our range of services, at no charge and above and beyond health care, are substantial.”  This leaves the Coalition without a way to print the 10,000 copies of the double sided Street Card so late in the year.   NEOCH wishes that the Clinic would have told us back in June that they did not have the funds to print the Street Card so we would have had an extra three months to search for a new donor. 

It typically only costs $900 to print the Street Card, but some of the hospitals do it internally and then we just pick up the finished product when they are done.  We thank the entity that prints the Street Card by adding their logo to the Card and thank them on our website.  The card is so valuable to direct homeless people to local health clinics and not to the emergency room.  The Street Card helps low income people find a local hot meal program, and can help find a warm place out of the cold.  We need your help to print the 2015-16 version of the Street Card.  Contact Brian Davis at the Homeless Coalition if you want to help.

by Brian Davis

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