By Prerna Agarwal
Approximately 23,000 people experience homelessness in Cuyahoga County every year, and unjust policies often criminalize unhoused folks simply for existing in public. In Cleveland, just resting in a public place after hours can land you in jail. If you are found in a public area after closing time, you can be ticketed for trespassing (Code of Ordinances § 559.53). Sleeping in a park or even relaxing on a park bench for too long can also get you a ticket and a court date (Code of Ordinances § 559.45), according to the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. To make matters worse, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the case of City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson allows localities “to arrest, ticket, and fine people for sleeping outdoors on public property, even if leaders have failed to produce enough affordable housing or shelter for everyone in the community who needs it.” The Fair Housing Center’s 2024 State of Fair Housing report outlines that housing unaffordability and rates of homelessness are at “all-time high,” with the share of housing cost burdens growing amongst “middle income renters.” Such blatant anti-homeless and anti-poor policy, combined with rising rental costs and housing unaffordability across the Greater Cleveland area begets the question author and associate professor Daniel Kerr seeks to answer in his book Derelict Paradise — who benefits from homelessness in Cleveland?
We had the opportunity to hear from Kerr directly, as he was the keynote speaker for the first annual Housing Justice Summit organized by the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH) last month. He traces this answer by charting how homelessness became institutionalized in the first place. Kerr finds its origins in the massive, often privatized shelter system that grew in Cleveland following the railroad rebellions in the late 1800s. Day laborers were heavily exploited, with low wages and unkempt working conditions. Not being able to afford housing in the city, they had to endure degrading treatment in shelters (often akin to the way folks are treated in penitentiary systems). This made clear the city’s desire to penalize poverty and prevent unhoused folks from accessing public spaces to maintain an illusion of Cleveland’s progress and a vision of the city as a lakefront vacation destination. This continued throughout the 1900s, with high levels of unemployment especially following the Great Depression (unemployment rates were as high as 91% in Black communities like the Cedar Central neighborhood), racist policies through redlining, and the promotion of “urban renewal” throughout the 1900s, which displaced thousands of families for the sake of community improvements.
During his keynote, Kerr contextualized more of his methodology behind the book. He was born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and during the late 1990s, began a chapter of Food Not Bombs—a radical, food-centered mutual aid group that distributes food to anyone with no questions asked—in Cleveland’s Public Square. They met weekly, breaking bread and sharing stories and through that oral history, Kerr heard from the people most impacted, but often excluded from conversations around homelessness and poverty. These conversations and his research drew him to the conclusion that “there are several groups with a vested interest in the continuation of homelessness.” Banks, developers and contractors who build luxury properties in formerly working-class/residential neighborhoods benefit from folks being displaced. So do corporations and commercial property owners, who benefit from greater access to the city and a pool of low-wage laborers. Even the city and its political actors benefit from “the massive expansion of the penal system” and anti-homeless legislation which allows them to maintain their contracts, and their profits at the expense of constituents (Kerr, 245).
Thus, Kerr’s work is a strong reminder that homelessness is not caused by the folks experiencing it, but rather an intentional result of systemic, anti-poor and racist legislation; most of us are much closer to becoming unhoused than we are to becoming politicians or CEOs.
As an organization promoting fair housing across Northeast Ohio, we believe knowing this history is critical to informing our fair housing work today. During our fair housing trainings, for example, we emphasize that systemic segregation is still prevalent in Cleveland, noting that the racist redlining policies from nearly a century ago still influence the racial makeup and living conditions for people today. If you are interested in learning more about this history and your fair housing rights (as a tenant, landlord, or homeowner), we encourage you to check out our upcoming online and in-person trainings.
Finally, if you’re interested in learning more about local Cleveland history or fair housing history from a national perspective, we encourage you to read Derelict Paradise and find our other book recommendations in our 2024 Fair Housing Reading List.