Our Mission
NEOCH exists to eliminate the root causes of homelessness while loving our diverse community through organizing, advocacy, education, and street outreach.
Our Story
In 1987, Lisa Thomas, Sister Mary Frances Harrington, Rev. George Hrbek, Pat Tomcho, and Catherine Lowe founded the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH), and it served as the successor to the Emergency Shelter Coalition. Since then, NEOCH has remained a non-profit coalition of service providers, housing activists, members, and people experiencing homelessness. We are called a "coalition" because we bring together diverse interests – from religious groups to people living on the streets to social service providers – with the common goal of finding solutions to homelessness. NEOCH stands uniquely poised to take on an exciting, yet challenging role within the community and continue as the primary resource for homeless advocacy in Northeast Ohio.
Our Vision
The work of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless is collective, and our coalition is a community formed by unhoused people, concerned community members, social justice groups, and homeless service providers, all of whom have been critical to the development of our mission and long-term vision. We envision a society where everyone has a safe and stable place to call home where they can also embrace their own power and dignity. We also recognize that this cannot be achieved without first acknowledging and confronting the root causes of homelessness: namely, structural racism and the lack of affordable housing. Thus, we find it imperative that our work be centered on anti-racism, radical love, education, and collective grassroots organizing on issues of safe and affordable housing, along with tenants’ rights advocacy.
This vision can only be fully realized in the context of radical inclusivity, not for its own sake, but because we know that it is required of us to repair ourselves, our systems, and our community. Our vision calls us to do more and to risk more - it believes that there is enough for everyone and that housing is a human right.
Our Work
Eliminating the root causes of homelessness informs all aspects of NEOCH’s work. Our street outreach work provides trauma-informed care to people suffering from unsheltered homelessness, while our advocacy initiatives fiercely defend their rights to exist, utilize public spaces, and access safe and affordable housing. NEOCH’s organizing work builds power within the homeless community by highlighting homeless voices through initiatives like the Homeless Congress and The Cleveland Street Chronicle. Education is also essential to our work. NEOCH continues to act as a hub that service providers, homeless advocates, and community members turn to for information and training. We seek to enact our vision and values through the four avenues of organizing, advocacy, education, and street outreach. This is vital in maintaining NEOCH’s identity as a community and coalition that affirms human dignity, and one whose values are consistently informed and guided by those with lived experience of homelessness.
