Cleveland is the second poorest large city in the United States, yet policymakers and community leaders rarely have the opportunity to hear from large numbers of people who live at or near the poverty level. The Center for Community Solutions and The Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland (CEOGC) have collected new information directly from low-income residents of Cuyahoga County about the issues and challenges they face.

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  • Climbing out of poverty

    In this first part of our Poverty Speaks series, The Center for Community Solutions focuses on the challenges that people living below the poverty line in Cuyahoga County face when trying to move out of poverty.

  • Tough choices

    In this second part of our Poverty Speaks series, The Center for Community Solutions focuses on the tough choices our neighbors who live in poverty have to make.

  • Getting Help

    In this third part of our Poverty Speaks series, The Center for Community Solutions focuses on the help our neighbors who live in poverty need and what they get.

  • Racial Disparities

    In this fourth part of our Poverty Speaks series, The Center for Community Solutions focuses on how on nearly every economic measure, people of color fare worse than whites in Cuyahoga County.

These and other findings come from an online and phone poll of county residents conducted by Baldwin Wallace University for The Center for Community Solutions. The poll was targeted toward people below or just above the federal poverty line. Fifty-seven percent of the 434 respondents reported a household income of less than $25,000. Our mixed-methods approach yielded results with a five percent margin of error at the 95 percent confidence interval.