When 2025 started, Marthe Marie Vernet was getting by working as a visiting nurse’s aid for veterans and helping to manage the apartment building where she lived with her adult son, Stephon, and their dog, Gorgeous, an exuberant, mostly white husky mix.
A dispute with the property owner over the building’s condition ended that living arrangement. She needed to move but didn’t have enough savings to put down a deposit and first month’s rent on a new place. No relatives could take them in. Shelters were out of the question because she would have to separate from Stephon and give up Gorgeous, probably for good.
Seeing no other options, Vernet bought a tent. They packed up what they could carry, put Gorgeous on a leash and set up camp behind Garrett Morgan High School on Cleveland’s Near West Side. They kept the site clean, even picking up trash dropped by students.
“That’s my little house that God gave me for now. I’ll get a bigger one later,” she told herself at the time.
Vernet set to work solving one problem after another and making friends. She learned where to get meals and showers. A client — she was still working — gave her a propane stove. Teachers at the school provided some supplies. The owner of a house under construction let her use an electrical outlet.
The winter was brutal, but she tells the story now as though she never doubted that they’d be OK.
After high winds damaged the tent, a construction worker brought her a new one. That was especially exciting because it was “big enough to stand in and cook in,” she said, laughing at the memory.
Sometimes the stress was too much, she admits. In those moments she would take Gorgeous for a walk and listen to music on her phone — Janet Jackson, Lisa Lisa, Paula Abdul. “No cursing music!” she adds and laughs again. And she would pray.
“And God listened to my prayers, and they helped me,” she says.
In April, an outreach worker from the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless (NEOCH) arrived, introduced himself and told her about a city program called A Home For Every Neighbor. If she was interested, she and Stephon, and even Gorgeous, could be in a new home in a week or two with rent covered for a year.
It sounded almost too good to be true. But sure enough, the next day someone from the city came by to talk about some options and help her start an application. A little more than a week later, Vernet, Stephon and Gorgeous moved their suitcases and plastic bins into a cozy two-story house on a quiet street in Ohio City.
“Every day I start doing something to make it nice,” she says, seated on the living room couch. “I clean the wood [floors and molding]. I like wood, so I make it shiny. … I try little by little to make it nice.”
She hopes to attach a gate to the existing fence so Gorgeous can run around in the back yard. She’s saving for a car and a down payment on a house that she can truly call her own when her rent subsidy runs out next spring.
Getting people housed ‘like no one else’
Vernet and her son are two of just over 200 people — as of this week — to move quickly from the streets to a house or apartment since Cleveland launched A Home For Every Neighbor in 2024. The program focuses on the unsheltered homeless, people who are living outdoors.
By most measures the program has exceeded expectations. There were about 300 people living unsheltered in Cleveland when the project began, and today there are about 100, said program manager Liam Haggerty. Some of the people served had been living on the streets for years, far longer than Vernet, and never accessed any services — at least none that would get their names into the database maintained by the Cuyahoga County Office of Homeless Services.
From a policy perspective, the program’s biggest impact has been to show that it’s possible to rehouse people in less than two weeks.
“They’ve found a way to engage landlords and get people housed like no one else in our system,” said Chris Knestrick, executive director of NEOCH, a program partner. “I think it’s going to rewrite how we do landlord engagement in our community.”
The goal now is “equilibrium,” Haggerty said — identifying and rehousing people in crisis so quickly that they never need to pitch a tent.
Everyone ‘deserves a safe place‘
In Cuyahoga County, EDEN Inc. provides rapid rehousing services for families and survivors of domestic violence. EDEN also provides long-term supportive housing, either in one of its buildings or through a rent voucher, for individuals with disabilities and a history of homelessness. These are federally funded programs.
Adults who don’t qualify for those options can go to one of the men’s or women’s shelters. But a lot of people won’t enter a shelter, or won’t stay, for various reasons.
Some, like Vernet, don’t want to separate from a relative, pet or opposite-sex partner. Some are struggling with mental illness or addiction. Some just don’t feel safe in a shelter. Many end up on the streets, making up the relatively small but more visible segment of the homeless population known as the unsheltered.
In February 2024, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb announced that the city would fill this gap in services with A Home for Every Neighbor. “Every member of our community deserves a safe place they can call home,” Bibb said. He backed the project with $2 million from the city’s general fund and $2.7 million of federal COVID-era rental assistance funding.
Bibb set a goal of getting at least 150 people off the streets and into homes within 18 months.
The city hired Haggerty from NEOCH and brought in Clutch Consulting Group, a Texas firm specializing in homelessness initiatives. Clutch and city officials invited local providers to a week-long workshop. They studied models in Denver, Houston and Oklahoma City. But the participating service providers ruled out a tool used in many other places, the threat of arrest if someone refused the offer to leave the streets.
The program launched as a special project in the mayor’s office (it has since moved to the Department of Public Health). Partners included NEOCH and Downtown Cleveland Alliance (which handles the rent payments).
Work began in August 2024 with a pilot focused on two camp sites with six people each, one near Canal Basin Park, the other in the parking lot of West Side Catholic Center.
“It took us six weeks to house those 12 people,” Haggerty said. Way too long to meet the goals.
The biggest holdup was finding enough rental units. The program was new, and explaining it to property owners and managers — and overcoming their concerns — took a lot of time. The people whom A Home for Every Neighbor was trying to serve had little or no income, and some had criminal histories and past evictions, all of which can be red flags to landlords. Some landlords just flatly refused to participate.
The team reviewed the pilot and revamped the process for lining up units based on what they had learned about engaging with landlords. When they went back to the streets, they were able to house 40 more people in three weeks. By the end of 2024, they had moved 100 formerly unsheltered people into homes. In April 2025, they hit Bibb’s goal of 150 — almost a year ahead of schedule.
Later that month, City Council unanimously approved another two years of funding at $1.9 million per year. (It’s also supported by $530,000 in donations from Rocket Community Fund, First Presbyterian Church, Nord Foundation, Westfield Insurance Foundation and an anonymous benefactor.)
From engagement to keys in less than two weeks
The process begins when the team’s outreach workers approach a camp site with bottles of water and personal items. They tell the people living there about the program and start a list of who is interested — nearly everyone is — and tell them what they need. Do they want to live alone or with someone else? Do they have a pet? Are stairs OK? Etc.
Next, others on the team get to work finding enough suitable rental units to give everyone a few options. This has gotten easier over time as the team has developed relationships with landlords. But the acquisition specialist, Connor Marrott, said he also spends a lot of time searching online and calling new landlords to make the pitch.
When Marrott’s list is complete, Haggerty and others take an iPad to the site to show everyone their options. The team then guides them through the application process and signing the lease. If that goes smoothly, other members of the team work with the faith-based charity I’m In Ministry! to round up furniture, kitchen basics and some clothing and move it all into the house or apartment.
When it’s set up, a case worker picks up the person or people and drives them to their new home. The average time from engagement to handing over keys is about 11 days.
Tears of joy are common, said Knestrick.
“Most programs are like, ‘Here’s your voucher, go find a landlord,’” he explained. That can be a tremendous burden on someone who’s already dealing with the stress of homelessness. Nearly 90% of current and former participants reported a disabling condition, most commonly related to mental health or substance abuse.
NEOCH manages a separate fund to help with unique situations such as paying off outstanding debts with utility companies so the new tenant can get service; sealing a criminal record (with assistance from Legal Aid Society of Cleveland); and obtaining or updating an ID or certification needed for employment.
A case worker visits weekly for the first two months, then twice monthly and eventually monthly. The caseworker helps the new tenant connect with services and develop a plan for moving on when the 12-month subsidy ends. The program extends stays in certain circumstances, such as when the person has secured a voucher for long-term housing but a unit isn’t available yet.
What about the people in shelters?
Council Member Kris Harsh said that when A Home for Every Neighbor moved a few people into rental houses in Old Brooklyn last year, he started getting calls from constituents within days.
One of the new residents invited other homeless people to camp in the vacant lot next door, Harsh said. Another approached his new neighbors as they sat on their porches to ask them for money or a cigarette.
Harsh said that the same attributes that make some people “shelter resistant” — like mental health and substance abuse problems — also make them ill-suited for rapid rehousing with little supervision. The program also subverts the shelter system, which is supposed to be the gateway to whatever services the person needs, he said.
“Why should you ever go into a shelter if just camping with a tent on Superior for a couple of weeks will get you a free apartment for a year?” he asked. A Home for Every Neighbor is “just undercutting [the system] and not solving people’s problems. … The people that should be getting housing within 10 days are the people that went to the shelter.”
Haggerty said that people end up on the street because a shelter was not a solution for them. “So to say the only way they can get housing is to go to shelter is to basically say there isn’t a housing resource for [them],” he said.
Haggerty also pointed out that the county’s strategic plan for homelessness, developed with input from shelter providers, recognizes that the unsheltered have “specific needs” and does not call for coaxing them into the shelter system.
There have been some problems.
“One of the things that I think is kind of uniquely beautiful, but also very difficult to manage, is that some people that get housed want to help their friends,” said Knestrick. “So they’re like, ‘Come live with me.’”
Two or three people have been evicted, Haggerty said, and some landlords have stopped working with the program after what they considered a bad experience. But that’s no more than the number of landlords the program has cut ties with after they failed to live up to the lease agreement or made racist or prejudiced comments about tenants.
Marrott, the unit acquisition specialist, said the team is mindful of Cleveland’s history of segregation and tries to avoid contributing to the concentration of poverty.
“We want participants to be in a neighborhood where they not only feel like they can succeed, but there are opportunities for them to succeed,” he said.
‘No other solutions for chronic homelessness coming’
More than half of the people who have participated in the program were living unsheltered in Cleveland’s downtown or the near west and east side neighborhoods that hug the city center. Those include what is now Ward 7 and Ward 8.
A Home for Every Neighbor “is a step in the right direction,” said Ward 8 Council Member Stephanie Howse-Jones, an early supporter. Cleveland is making up for some of the failings of the state and federal governments, which are “reneging on the deal of supporting the least of us,” she said.
Ward 7 Council Member Austin Davis said that when he was campaigning last year, there were several people living in tents in Ohio City’s Fairview Park. He talked to area residents who wanted to be compassionate but also wanted the green space back.
A Home for Every Neighbor delivered, and continues to, at a relatively low cost, he said.
“In the scheme of our overall city budget, this is not breaking the bank,” he said. “It’s the equivalent of paving four streets — which is important too. But there are no other solutions for chronic homelessness coming, and there are no other methods that work. This is the way.”
A March progress report showed a mixed bag of outcomes for people who had exited the program to that point. Here are some of them:
• 35 are in permanent supportive housing with a voucher from EDEN Inc.
• 21 were in jail or prison when their leases expired. In some cases, the offense preceded the person’s involvement in the program and they failed to show up in court, resulting in a warrant.
• 18 left at the end of their leases and their whereabouts are unknown, but they have not shown up at a shelter or been seen on the streets by outreach workers
• Eight returned to homelessness
• Six found somewhere else to live without a rent subsidy
• Six died, most of natural causes.
Sometimes an EDEN voucher expires before a new lease can be signed. That’s happened close to 40 times. Haggerty explained that, in many of those instances, landlords delayed the paperwork. In those cases, A Home for Every Neighbor extended the participants’ leases while they reapplied.
Several past participants moved in with relatives, Haggerty said. One man now lives with his sister, who drove from California to Cleveland to pick him up. She knew that he’d been struggling for years, Haggerty said, “but it’s a very different conversation when you’re in an apartment versus living under a bridge.”
‘We’re trying to solve this together’
The Cuyahoga County Office of Homeless Services and its many partners are bracing for expected new restrictions on federal funding for homelessness starting next year. There could be fewer options for people leaving A Home for Every Neighbor. That’s part of the backdrop as Haggerty and the team continue to refine the program.
They’re looking for ways to offer more support to tenants to better set them up for success. They’re also considering adjusting the 12-month subsidy; some people might only need three to six months, others might need 18 or 24.
Haggerty said he meets regularly with the other service providers in the county. “We’re trying to solve this together,” he said.
“We absolutely believe there are lessons to learn from the Home for Every Neighbor program” and its success in rapid rehousing, said Elaine Gimmel, executive director of EDEN. But different service providers ”operate under different structures, funding requirements, and regulations. …Those requirements are important safeguards, but they can add steps to the housing process.”
The biggest challenge is beyond even their collective ability to solve: the lack of affordable housing. Rents in Greater Cleveland are rising at more than twice the national average. A Home for Every Neighbor pays an average of $1,225 in rent per month per unit.
“Without additional affordable housing opportunities, many households remain vulnerable to returning to housing instability despite the progress made through programs like this one,” Gimmel said.
‘You have to make your house your home’
Andrea Reedus stood in the back yard of her house in Lyndhurst and marveled at the silence. It was late afternoon on a sunny Friday and the only sound was a distant lawn mower.
“You could never have told me in a thousand years that I would live in a place like this,” she said.
Reedus has been homeless off and on throughout her adult life. Drugs were at least partly to blame, she said, but she doesn’t like to dwell on it. When she gets a ride downtown to deliver the plates of barbecued chicken and sides that she makes up for people still on the streets, she avoids looking at certain places.
“I just put my head down,” she said, before dropping to a whisper, “because I was there.”
In April she moved into the first floor of a house in the eastern suburb. She is already planning her next step, an EDEN voucher. (She had one before but lost it after the apartment building failed inspection, she said.) But for now, she’s focused on decorating.
One of her daughters visited recently and asked, “Why does it look like you’ve already been here for four years?” Reedus said. She laughed and shrugged and said, “You have to make your house your home.”
Landlords who are interested in providing housing for A Home for Every Neighbor should contact Liam Haggerty at LHaggerty@clevelandohio.gov or 216-857-1104.
I’m In Ministry! accepts donations of furniture and household items to provide to A Home for Every Neighbor participants. For more information, email info@iminministry.com or call 440-502-1060.
