Delete WardMaking a Public Comment
Council welcomes public comment before regular council meetings. Fill out the online form below for your chance to make a public comment at the next regular Monday Council meeting. Please read the revised rules and procedures.
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Public Comments
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My name is Ericka H.
I am speaking today as someone who is directly impacted by the decisions you have made — or allowed to stand — regarding the reduction of funding for homeless assistance and nonprofit services in Cuyahoga County.
I am not speaking in theory.
I am speaking from first-hand experience.
The programs being reduced or destabilized are not abstract line items to me. They are the difference between safety and danger, stability and chaos, survival and crisis — not only for me, but for the people who live, sleep, worship, and seek help in the wards you represent.
The Reality You Do Not Have to Live With
You return to stable housing after these meetings. You do not have to figure out where to sleep when services disappear. You do not have to navigate trauma, illness, hunger, or fear without support.
But we do.
The people making these decisions are not the ones who absorb the consequences. The consequences land on us — in the neighborhoods surrounding Norma Herr Women’s Center and St. Paul’s Community Church, in hospital waiting rooms, on sidewalks, in shelters stretched beyond capacity, and in families trying to survive systems that are being dismantled around them.
When funding is reduced:
Shelter access shrinks
Case management disappears
Mental health crises escalate
Outreach stops before people stabilize
People are pushed back into unsafe conditions
This does not reduce costs.
It moves suffering into public view and shifts the burden onto emergency responders, hospitals, faith institutions, and neighborhoods.
We are already living with the fallout.
To the Councilmembers Representing These Wards & To the Governing Boards and Leadership of These Organizations
You represent areas where the impact is immediate and unavoidable.
Norma Herr exists because women need a place to go when systems fail.
St. Paul’s exists because faith institutions are forced to fill gaps left by policy decisions.
When you approve or remain silent on cuts that affect these places, you are not making neutral choices. You are deciding who bears harm and who does not.
And right now, that harm is being placed squarely on the backs of people with the least power to absorb it.
Your missions are supposed to be rooted in service, dignity, and protection of human life.
Yet the communities you serve are being destabilized by decisions made without our voices at the table — decisions that assume someone else will pick up the pieces when funding disappears.
We are asking you to do more than manage a decline.
We are asking you to advocate publicly, to challenge policies that undermine your missions, and to stand with the people whose lives give meaning to your work.
What We Are Asking — Directly and Clearly
We are not asking for sympathy.
We are asking for accountability.
We are asking you to:
Acknowledge publicly that these reductions disproportionately harm people who already live on the margins
Engage directly with impacted residents before further cuts are implemented
Advocate for restoration, reprogramming, or pilot funding rather than passive acceptance
Support community-based stabilization models that prevent crisis instead of reacting to it
Stop making decisions about us without us
This Truth Must Be Said
Policies made at a distance feel clean.
Their consequences are not.
We are the ones who live with the aftermath — every day, every night, in every season. If these decisions truly made communities safer, healthier, and more stable, we would not be here pleading to be heard. But the opposite is happening, and it is happening in the Wards you are responsible for & obviously don’t reside in.
In closing, Leadership is not measured by how well budgets balance on paper.
It is measured by who is protected when systems are strained. Right now, the people absorbing the cost of these decisions are not the people making them.
We are asking you — as elected officials, board members, and community leaders — to step closer to the reality you govern, to listen to those of us who live it, and to choose solutions that do not sacrifice human stability for short-term accounting.
We are here.
We are affected.
And we expect to be part of the decisions that shape our lives.
Respectfully,
Ericka H.
Directly Impacted Community Member / Resident / Service User /Tax Payer
Wards 7/8 & Ward 3 Communities
As of Fall of 2025, the Trump administration has escalated military aggression and lethal strikes on Venezuela and on peoples of the Caribbean. Our secretary of war has defended actions that amount to violations of the Geneva conventions and the UN charter. We people of good conscious recognize these war crimes for what they are, and we know that we will be the ones to sacrifice materially to help our fellow humans from the resulting fallout of war. We therefore reject this war. Cleveland city council should be of accord with this position. I implore council to adopt a Resolution that says No War on Venezuela, to share the passed resolution with state and federal parties interested, and to encourage surrounding cities and municipalities to take similar positions. The working people of the United States do not and will not support a destructive war in Latin America.