CLEVELAND — After a long history of disinvestment, Cleveland’s southeast neighborhoods continue to face low home-ownership rates, business closures, crime, poverty and people leaving the area.
Council passed Bibb’s plan to invest $15 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding into those neighborhoods last month, but community leaders like Troy Simmons and Odetta Jordan of the Southeast Cleveland Resource Center have been working to bring resources into those neighborhoods since long before now.
Simmons spent 19 years of his life in prison after getting in trouble with some friends when he was young, but now, he’s dedicating the rest of his life to helping others at the Southeast Cleveland Resource Center.
“It’s a good neighborhood,” Simmons said. “There are good people around here, and they need a lot of things. You know, the housing crisis, drugs. It’s horrible, and we wanna get it together. We want to help as much as we can.”
Simmons and Jordan founded the Southeast Cleveland Resource Center last year.
From their building on Fleet Avenue in Slavic Village, they provide folks in the area with anything they need from diapers and clothes to help with securing housing.
When they noticed a lack of outdoor spaces for the community, they even created a park.
“We have meetings over here for the neighborhood,” Simmons said. “Kids all up and down these streets come over here and play. As you can see, there’s no trash out here. They take good care of it.”
Simmons and Jordan have been busy with neighborhood projects and residents ever since they opened the center.
But Jordan said it was a struggle to get up and running after their Community Development Corporation told her another resource center wasn’t needed.
“I know what my neighbors are going through,” Jordan said. “The struggles we face, but it’s not just this neighborhood, it’s our surrounding neighborhoods.”
Jordan said because of this, they serve anyone who comes to the center, not just residents of Slavic Village.
She said she was hopeful the mayor’s plan to revitalize Southeast Cleveland would include her neighborhood, but the focus so far has been on Lee-Harvard, Union-Miles and Mt. Pleasant.
However, Jordan is used to overcoming obstacles.
So, regardless of what external support she gets, she’ll keep pushing for her neighbors.
“If somebody tells us ‘no,’ we will find a way, the best that we can,” Jordan said. “We might not always have the answer, we might have to go to somebody else, but we do our best to find that answer for anybody we can, and sometimes, we work 24/7 to find those answers.”
While they work around the clock to serve their community, they’ve both experienced hardship and know the importance of self-care.
Something Simmons cherishes the most these days is heading home after work to his own space and listen to music.
“I can’t help the world,” he said. “I can’t. But every individual person I can help, I think, adds another day to my life. I just want to keep living and see what happens.”
