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Project Description

The Cleveland Community Building Initiative (CCBI) is a comprehensive, neighborhood-based enterprise designed to reduce poverty by building on neighborhood assets and involving a group of diverse group of residents, civic, and business leaders as partners in the community revitalization process. The community building approach promotes positive change by working comprehensively to improve the physical, social, and economic conditions affecting residents’ quality of life.

Project duration: Jan 1995 - Apr 2001

Sites studied include 4 Cleveland, OH Neighborhoods:
East Village;
Central Village;
West Village;
and Mt. Pleasant Village

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

4 Cleveland, OH Neighborhoods:
East Village; Central Village; West Village; and Mt. Pleasant Village
Sample size varies by methodology: (see http://povertycenter.cwru.edu/testing_measures.htm.)

Recent Findings in Brief

10/01/01: Cleveland Community Building Initiative: The End of Welfare as They Knew It What Happens When Welfare Recipients Reach Their Time Limits?

Interim Impact Findings:

"Relative to those who left welfare without facing time limits, the time limited leavers have lower employment rates, work less steadily, work fewer hours and make less per hour and therefore have significantly lower family incomes. They are also less likely to hold jobs with benefits and more likely to depend on public transit or others for a ride to work. And they face more housing hardships such as overcrowding and excessive rent burdens.

However, the time-limited leavers have been more able to utilize support services such as Medicaid and food stamps, employment referrals and housing support, services for which they were still eligible after reaching their cash assistance time limit.

If the goal of welfare reform is more than to simply reduce the rolls, those leaving welfare still require a broad range of services, such as child care, transportation, housing assistance, job training and referral, and emergency funds for unforeseen needs, and may even need more than is already provided. While this is particularly true of the time-limited leavers who face multiple barriers to success off of welfare, even those who voluntarily leave welfare could use greater access to such support services. Understanding the changing characteristics of those leaving welfare, both time limited and voluntary, will be critical in assessing their changing needs. Policy makers need to know they have not gotten rid of a population in need—they’ve only moved them off of welfare. Short of eliminating or extending the time limits for cash assistance, it is clear that other types of support are even more important.

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