GREATER CINCINNATI COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS

ADVOCACY, COMMUNITY ORGANIZING & POLICY (GREATER CINCINNATI UNITED HOMELESS CONGRESS): 2025 was the year of the Homeless Congress! The Greater Cincinnati United Homeless Congress was birthed following the historic lawsuit that was settled between us and the City of Cincinnati. The Homeless Congress was established to represent those experiencing homelessness in all forms: whether outdoors, bouncing from couch to couch, in a car, or shelter living, we desired every voice, because, while systemic, the experience of homelessness is not monolithic. In 2025, we were able to establish consistent meeting times with our folks at both Shelterhouse's men's and women's shelters, Our Daily Bread (ODB), Bethany House family shelter, outdoor camps, and at the library. The formation of this group excited many of our folks and dozens of people were interested in joining. This led to the group deciding to formalize membership. The group decided elected representation from each form of homelessness would establish the authenticity of the group. Thus, elections were held at each shelter, ODB, and libraries. People nominated themselves or someone else. After a month of elections at the shelters, the Greater Cincinnati United Homeless Congress had its first official meeting of elected representatives in February 2025 and hasn't looked back! The Homeless Congress had several victories this year. The group drove to Washington D.C. to participate in the National Homeless Coalition's rally on Capitol Hill. More than 20 people made the trip, and also met with several other individuals who were leading their own Homeless Unions in their respective cities. The momentum from the D.C. trip led to us being featured in several articles from WLWT, WCPO and Enquirer, which included front page coverage! In an open luncheon at Christ Cathedral, the Congress invited individuals with lived experience of homelessness to discuss what they would like to see happen in Cincinnati. More truly affordable housing was highlighted as the top priority for all of those in attendance and the group decided to form a petition to call on Cincinnati's City Council to create more truly affordable housing so we all have a healthy place to live. That petition will be released early in 2026! Over the summer, the Congress played a key role in planning the Fall 2025 National Coalition's National Lived Experience Training Conference to be hosted in Cincinnati. This conference will bring hundreds of people who have experienced homelessness from across the country to Cincinnati to learn from each other and discuss plans for how we can strengthen our national movement. The Congress also nominated one of its elected members to an open position on the local Continuum of Care board, known as the Homeless Clearinghouse. This person was then elected by majority vote of our Homeless Coalition Member Organizations, and appointed to the Clearinghouse, which decides how to strategically manage federal homeless response funds. ADVOCACY, COMMUNITY ORGANIZING & POLICY (TENANT ORGANIZING): We will never have enough affordable housing to end homelessness if we don't save the affordable housing we do have and build power to secure more. We both build power and save homes, through organizing with Tenants. When Tenants come together as one collective body, the group can overcome slumlords and greedy developers, reverse years of neglect and save their homes not only for themselves, but generations to come. Tenant organizing is our most powerful work to build power to fight against poor housing conditions, fight gentrification, and keep existing affordable housing affordable. Tenant organizing builds grassroots power necessary to achieve an equitable Cincinnati, accessible to us all. We have been organizing with Tenants at Williamsburg Apartments, which sits in Cincinnati, Springfield Township and Wyoming, for three years. When we got involved, Tenants were staring down the barrel of abhorrent living conditions, a negligent owner and the eventual loss of their 976 homes. The City of Cincinnati sued the owners because of their unwillingness to repair the many problems the property had. We organized with Tenants, who formed an Association called the Williamsburg Residents' Association and elected Legal Aid to serve as their legal representation. Because Tenants were organized, they were able to join the City in the lawsuit against the owners. Here are some examples of conditions issues individuals and families were experiencing at the time: no electricity for a week or more; leaking plumbing and roofs; lack of heat for weeks at a time; unemptied and overflowing dumpsters; no hot water for extended periods; and even, at times, no water at all; and standing sewage in apartments. This is all in addition to rude or unresponsive management. After much hardship, the organizing and legal action resulted in a judge putting the property into receivership, meaning the court appointed a third party organization to receive all rental income and invest it in court-supervised repairs and preservation of the homes. As an organized body, Tenants were integrally involved in the court's oversight of the repairs and established themselves in a position of power in relationship with the receivership company. A primary person in the company that owned Williamsburg was eventually arrested for real estate financial crimes. Over time, hundreds of homes that became unlivable, have been returned to healthy condition. In our biggest Tenant Organizing victory this year, Williamsburg Residents' Association saw the process through to the end of the receivership and the purchase of the property by the receivership company. While the Residents' Association believes the new owner and former receiver has many improvements to make, Tenants' have been encouraged by the progress they have seen the new owner make in repairing and managing the property. Importantly, Tenants have established a working relationship with the new owners. Per changes made to the property's deed because of the work of the Residents' Association, the new owners are now required to recognize the Residents' Association. Tenants can use this organized power for years to come to hold the owner accountable and ensure the saved 976 homes never return the brink of loss. We will continue to organize alongside the Williamsburg Residents' Association. This year we have: Worked with or assisted Tenants in forming and operating more than 15 Tenant Organizations, including the Williamsburg Residents' Association, across eight different Cincinnati neighborhoods and in three Hamilton County municipalities. Assisted Tenant Organizations in writing and implementing many large petitions and surveys to put pressure on negligent landlords. Knocked on hundreds and hundreds of doors to talk with Tenants about the issues they are dealing with. Facilitated or taken part in well over 100 meetings with Tenant Organizations. ADVOCACY, COMMUNITY ORGANIZING & POLICY (ADVOCACY & POLICY): As we continue our work for truly affordable housing for all, there is an increased push from a variety of directions to have municipalities further criminalize people without homes; to remove people from subsidized housing, and to further limit access to housing. We are organizing ourselves locally. We have formed a large group effort with four active committees fulfilling different roles of our collective plan. Together with our Member Organizations and the Homeless Congress we are working to protect life-sustaining programs and promote the changes necessary to end homelessness. We presented to many local municipalities within Hamilton County so they know who we are and what we are doing. We met with about 20 different faith communities so they know about the important life-saving power of the work our agencies do. One of the committees is building a system to ensure people living outdoors across wide geography are connected and can communicate about problems and opportunities.

PUBLIC EDUCATION: This year, we successfully delivered all our established programs, broadened our reach through new initiatives, laid the groundwork for programs that will shape our future work, and responded proactively to social and political changes. We found that many members of our Homeless Congress are eager for the opportunity to educate through our SPEAKERS' BUREAU and share their stories directly with the general public and elected officials. We brought both experienced and new Speakers to dozens of different groups, reaching thousands of people ranging from middle school age to senior citizens. We reached students, community organizations, and elected officials. In addition to our regular programming, we have educated the public about specific, timely issues and policies through podcasts, performance, and rallies. We have utilized engagements through our SPEAKERS' BUREAU, SOCIAL JUSTICE TOURS, ALTERNATIVE BREAKS, STREETVIBES SHADOWS, and TRAININGS to inform the wide range of participants about harmful policies pursued being pushed from a variety of directions- policies that would force people back into the experience of homelessness, further limit access to affordable housing and actively criminalize people without homes. Our Director of Education worked with several other organizations to plan and implement a meeting with the staff of Senator Bernie Moreno, and to successfully secure and facilitate a meeting with Senator John Husted's office. We provided policy analysis and leadership in preparing both materials and participants for these meetings to provide the senators with important knowledge and encourage them to not support cuts to affordable housing, homelessness services and medical care. We gathered the video and written stories of our people who would suffer because of proposed cuts. These were used to create physical and digital handouts to inform the public and the senators. In addition, in collaboration with partner organizations, we produced four podcast episodes to constructively inform the public about proposed policy changes. Our Director of Education provided public education through informative articles in all twelve issues of Streetvibes and significantly grew our connection with people via social media by creating and publishing more regular and politically and socially informative posts, more than doubling our social media following. Our education programming reached new people in new ways through ART in collaborations with other organizations, including Freedom Groove and Storefronts. At the invitation of Storefronts, a local social justice arts organization populated by members of our Coalition, our Director of Education participated in several days of workshops through a conference called Freedom Groove. Freedom Groove is a training and gathering event for organizers. This collaboration empowered us to develop new youth education-through-art programming opportunities we were then able to propose to five area schools, community centers and libraries that have now agreed to participate in 2026. We developed a long-term curriculum for FAITH COMMUNITIES to take part in with us. Participating faith groups will gather congregants who will spend several months in sessions learning with us. The purpose is not only for individuals to be better informed, but to assist faith leaders in moving their congregations to collective systemic action. We have several local congregations who plan to take part in 2026. We reached thousands of people in-person with information they need and we need them to have. We reached thousands more through planned online growth. And we set the stage to reach even more people in 2026 through new and innovative ways. We plan to take people from educated about homelessness to active in working to end it.