Delete WardJan 28, 2025
Cleveland City Council recently approved a $1 million grant to help renters understand their rights, organize to fight neglectful landlords and tap into services to pay rent and avoid evictions.
The three-year pilot program, sponsored by Councilman Kris Harsh and Council President Blaine A. Griffin, will be funded with federal revenue recovery funds the city received.
The program aims to connect renters to a handful of local groups that have helped fill the gap since the Cleveland Tenants Organization closed in 2018. For more than 40 years, the tenants organization provided education for renters and support when they had landlord troubles.
Councilman Harsh said he sponsored and worked with partners for nearly two years on this legislation because of the increasing need for allies for renters. council members receive complaints from residents about negligent landlords, many of them out-of-town owners.
The grant goes to United Way of Greater Cleveland, who will contract with existing groups assisting renters to coordinate their efforts and find a better way to link tenants to the help they needed. Groups that would be included in the pilot program include the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, which already provides free legal representation to low-income Cleveland tenants facing eviction through the Right to Counsel program Council started several years ago. See United Way's presentation on the proposal.
It also would include Fifth Christian Church in the Lee-Harvard neighborhood and the Morelands Group, formed in 2021 to advocate for renters in the Shaker Square area.
United Way's 2-1-1 helpline would serve as the central point of contact and would refer renters to the right resources. Its operators, known as navigators, would receive special training about the tenant programs.
Councilman Harsh said tenant organizing will allow renters to band together to find effective ways to get the often corporate, often out-of-town landlords to respond to poor building conditions and other complaints.
Fifth Christian Church’s focus would include leading training sessions to help tenants organize. The Morelands Group’s efforts would include providing tenant workshops on housing rights and facilitating forming tenant organizations.
The program Council passed would directly connect tenants to emergency housing services, including cash assistance, short-term housing and hotel vouchers.
The Cleveland Mediation Center would provide mediation between tenants and landlords, including addressing back rent that is owed. The organization would also connect tenants to rental assistance.
The program would also continue work to prevent evictions by supporting the efforts of the Cleveland Mediation Center and Legal Aid to provide tenants information on their legal rights and options as well as providing mediation with landlords. It would connect eligible tenants to Cleveland’s Right to Counsel Program.
In addition, Legal Aid would use tenant education and other efforts to promote use of its Tenant Information Line at (216) 861-5955.