Lakeside Men’s Homeless Shelter Extension Opens, Putting Dent in County’s Demand for Beds

A year ago, in March 2023, Cuyahoga County released a strategic plan to best combat growing rates of homelessness exacerbated in wake of the global pandemic. Among the call for outreach workers and more affordable homes, the report clocked a goal for 2028: to house 500 more.

On Tuesday, the county seemingly stepped a bit closer to hitting its mark when it cut the ribbon on 2020 Lakeside Avenue, a brand new building intended as a sibling operation to the next-door men’s shelter at 2100, which Cuyahoga County has been overseeing in partnership with the Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry for almost two decades.

Out of the 5,000 or so the county estimated are homeless inside its boundaries, roughly 350 of those people are unsheltered, single men. (About the number of beds at 2100.) And, for the past few years, local governments and nonprofits have been drumming up solutions on the best way to steer this population—and the growing population of homeless women—into permanent housing.

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Lutheran Men’s Shelter at 2100 Lakeside Ave.

That is, if those that occupy the numerous tents that dot Superior Avenue choose to check in to 2020, or if they find greater value sleeping out on the sidewalks, without noisy neighbors, potential drug interference, or the nagging intimidation of barriers-to-entry.

“It’s bittersweet, because we need these beds, we need this space,” County Executive Chris Ronayne said from a podium inside 2020 on Tuesday. He recalled a recent tour of the shelter next door: “I was just making the rounds and walking, and realizing that it’s crowded. It’s crowded. And we need to give our residents the dignity of space.”

What looks to be a far cry from conditions in the past including spoiled food, the county’s newest shelter features 113 beds—the majority of them bunked—in a 14,000 square-foot room that resembles more of a barracks than a hostel. Each “semi-private” room contains one or two Hallowell lockers, and are separated with nine-foot, powder blue walls. There are lights for reading, outlets for charging phones, among other amenities.

It’s a stark contrast, it seems, from what lingers feet away from the new building.

“They really did a better job,” Loh, an activist who was present at county meetings rallying for action “every week,” told Scene, as she walked through 2020’s pristine shower stalls. In other shelters, “you can’t use the toilets. They run out of drinking water. Run out of bathroom tissue.”

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Mark Oprea

Brand new sinks and showers at 2020 Lakeside. “It’s a big improvement” from 2100’s shelter next door, housing advocate Loh told Scene.

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Mark Oprea

Most of 2020’s beds are bunked, and grouped in a very open room setting. Most have just one or two lockers. Some walls are color-coded, a county employee said, to help those with mental deficiencies find their beds.

It’s what, one thinks as they tour, $4.4 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars can build. But that was then, back in 2021, when the county’s budget for solving homeless issues was given more financial grace by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Which makes one wonder how exactly, as Ronayne and others suggested on Tuesday, the county could wrangle more funds together to fix the shelter next door. “We’re at this cross-current of ARPA winding down,” Ronayne said, “at exactly the moment when, sadly, our rates of unhoused are going off.”

As are hesitation to build facilities. Last February, residents of Ohio City sounded off at a Board of Zoning Appeals meeting, fearing that LMM converting an office building off Franklin Avenue would be hazardous to their neighborhood. BZA approved the construction regardless.

Similar tones of fear were seen at a town hall meeting in Munson Township last month, where hundreds of anxious locals showed up in attempt to steer the Geauga Faith Rescue Mission away from constructing a 10-bed shelter for women in their apparent backyards. (It worked; GFRM is now hunting for another site.)

Michael Sering, LMM’s Vice President of Housing & Shelter, said that he believed 2020’s opening would create an absorbing effect, both deflating some of the overcrowding at 2100 and other shelters, and speeding up renovation of their first space.

“We will no longer need offsite location and shuttle trips to meet periodic influxes” of people, Stearns told press. As for 2100, “we can now rearrange or de-concentrate one-third of our beds. And that will make for better spaces for everyone.”

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