Every day, groups of volunteers are out in Greater Cleveland feeding, clothing and talking to people who are homeless or experiencing life transitions or hardship.
Hit The Streets Corporation is one of those groups. Using mobile units and hosting local luncheons, Hit The Streets aims to bring food and other resources – like housing and help with financial or career planning – to communities that need it most.
Hit The Streets Corporation hopes to reach more residents in need through its upcoming “Plates & Pathways” community luncheon at the Cleveland Public Library’s main branch on Saturday, Jan. 10. Registration for the event is full – 150 community members have signed up.
Nish Miller started Hit The Streets in 2020 as Howze of Helping Hands to respond to community needs during the COVID pandemic. With schools closed and many services shut down, people were struggling to access basic needs, Miller explained.
“We focused on meeting people where they were rather than expecting them to come to us,” Miller said.
Miller was raised in East Cleveland and experienced poverty firsthand. She said it became clear to her during COVID that the community’s needs went beyond just a temporary pandemic response. She then relaunched as Hit The Streets, now serving communities in Cleveland, Euclid and East Cleveland.
Miller spoke with Signal Cleveland about Hit The Streets and its “Feed The Streets” initiative:
Q: What is “Plates & Pathways”?
A: We use food intentionally as a way to connect people, build trust and create space for conversation and support. And this particular event, it’s a free community luncheon, and it’s designed to help people transition into 2026 with motivation and encouragement and community support.
Q: What makes your Feed The Streets food program unique?
A: We’re very intentional about not doing one-off help, because our overall goal is to promote self sufficiency. … We walk through the storms with people. We don’t just give them food and then walk away. Because we just truly believe that a person cannot focus on their tomorrow if they’re hungry today, or they can’t focus on saving money for the future when they gotta worry about, how am I going to catch the bus right now? You know, people we talk to are choosing between going to McDonald’s and getting a burger or using the money for a bus pass to go to the doctor. And so we come in to try to bridge the gap. We don’t consider what we do just giving out handouts.
Our mobile crisis outreach unit – that is typically the way that we connect to those outside of traditional spaces. We go into homeless encampments. We work with various shelters when we can or when they allow. We go into some of the underserved, poverty-stricken neighborhoods. We’re everywhere.
Q: What type of long-term support services do you offer?
A: We actually have our case manager, her name is Kay Richardson. She’s a licensed therapist and our community resource supervisor. We transition people into those programs, and she works with them. She connects them to resources, which is what we’re doing at Plates & Pathways. She helps them set long-term goals, you know, financial, career, housing goals … because you can give a person, you can hand them things, but if you don’t teach them how to manage it, how to operate and function in it, they’ll be back to square one tomorrow.