The safe sleep lot that Cincinnati Public Schools committed to as a way to help a homeless student population that has nearly doubled since 2015 is now planned to open a month later than previously expected, the district said in a statement to The Enquirer.
The lot, originally slated to open in March at William Howard Taft Elementary School, will now open in mid-April. It is a first-of-its-kind initiative in the state known to the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, offering 12 parking spaces to families living out of their vehicles.
The extra preparation time allows CPS to build in extra amenities, including a kitchenette stocked with meals, the district said in a statement.
“We’re preparing to open with a safe place to sleep, showers, laundry and warm meals,” the statement about the delayed opening read.
Families will also be provided bathroom facilities and safe sleep car kits stocked with blankets, pillows, window covers, flashlights, batteries and more, Rebeka Beach, manager of Project Connect, previously told The Enquirer. Project Connect is CPS’s social services hub that’s spearheading the initiative.
Beach said she’s confident that 12 spaces will be plenty to meet the need she sees day-to-day in her work for Project Connect.
“On any given night we’re only seeing three to four families … who are experiencing homelessness,” she said, not accounting for the number of families housed in local shelters’ available space.
In terms of safety, CPS previously said it will employ a full-time security guard to monitor the lot during all hours of operation, from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. seven days a week. Before a school day starts, the guard will be tasked with clearing out the lot to prevent it from blocking students getting into school.
Safe sleep lot is meant to boost shelter placement rate
The lot is not a permanent solution to an issue that has persisted in CPS and grown steadily in recent years. It’s meant to expedite families’ placement in a living shelter like Bethany House or YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, Beach said.
Within 24 hours of being at the lot, Beach said, families’ homelessness status will be verified by Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services and they’ll be placed on a priority wait list for a spot at a family shelter.
CPS’ services can also determine a family’s eligibility for emergency hotel stays for four to six nights. But the problem with that method, Beach said, is that once families are living in a hotel, they can no longer be verified as homeless by Cincinnati Behavioral and can’t get on the wait list for shelter.
“Our hope is that it will increase shelter placement rate and families having to return to the lot don’t have to stay there for long,” Beach said.
How did we get here? Homeless CPS students nearly double from 2015
Data from Cincinnati Public Schools shows that the district had 4,326 homeless students in the 2024-25 school year, a 77% jump from a decade prior.
The jump in homeless students, advocates say, represents a swell in local families who have no roof over their heads. And shelters are struggling to keep up.
“We have been full since the summer of 2018,” Peg Dierkers, chief executive officer of Bethany House, told The Enquirer. The largest of the three local family shelters, Bethany House can shelter 43 families at a time at capacity.
“Some of the families wait several months to get into a shelter, and during that time, they live on the street,” she said.
The biggest driver behind the trend is a lack of affordable housing, Dierkers said.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a nonprofit devoted to ending the country’s affordable housing crisis, Cincinnati is short nearly 54,000 units of housing that is affordable and available.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Public Schools delays homeless student sleep lot
Reporting by Grace Tucker, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
