Episode transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Listening to the people behind the statistics
Jaime Buxton: Have you ever looked at someone’s life and thought, “I can’t imagine how they ended up there?” Maybe it’s a woman holding a sign at an intersection, a man sleeping in a car, a child who’s dropped off daily at school, hungry and disheveled. Likely, these stories feel far away from your own life. But what if your knee-jerk reaction is wrong? What if those people we so quickly judge are more like you than you think?
This is Not That Different, a podcast about the stories behind the statistics, where we look at the real people behind the statistics of homelessness here in Cleveland, Ohio. Because when we stop and listen, and we start to understand, we learn that really, individuals experiencing homelessness aren’t those people. They’re mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, the people Christ calls us to love. Today we’re talking with Sam, and Sam, I am so sorry I forgot to ask how to say your name.
So go ahead and just tell me your last name, so I don’t mess it up.
Sam Jablonski: You are all good, Jaime. My name is Sam Jablonski. It’s got deep Polish roots to it.
Jaime Buxton: Love it. Well, thank you, Sam. He’s a community researcher and a partner who worked alongside The City Mission to better understand the needs of Cleveland’s Ward 5 neighborhood. Through his research, Sam helped us take a closer look at the challenges, strengths, and opportunities within our community, giving us a clearer picture of how to serve our neighbors effectively and thoughtfully. His work reminds us that meaningful impact starts with listening well, and that is something that is so important to me.
So, I am so glad that you’re here today, Sam, and I’m Jaime Buxton. I’m the senior manager of community engagement at The City Mission and I’m your host for this podcast. Something I’m still trying to figure out how I got the job for, but I’ve dedicated my entire career to working with men, women, and children at The City Mission and I’m humbled to be part of this podcast and to help our listeners and those who are watching via YouTube unpack and unfold what it really means to be experiencing homelessness and how we’re more like the people that we’re serving at The City Mission than we are different.
So, Sam, just tell me a little bit how you got the job that you have, how you got into research, and what it is you actually do.
How research supports community work
Sam Jablonski: Yeah, thanks so much, Jaime. Super excited to be here. I lead a small research firm called Jablonski Research Group and really my focus is helping manufacturers, helping folks in the real asset sector, helping folks in the nonprofit world understand the challenges they may be facing or if they’re at a crossroads of opportunity, what their different options are within that opportunity. And it’s something that I kind of stumbled into through a bunch of different experiences through the real estate world, through strategic consulting, and those kinds of things, but I’ve had a lot of fun building and growing this work and you know, typically I start with that explanation and people say, “Hey, that’s that’s great.
What does that actually mean? What do you actually do?”
Jaime Buxton: Exactly.
Sam Jablonski: And I think putting in context of The City Mission and my work with you all helps a lot. So, The City Mission, for example, has a lot of great folks on staff doing community-facing work, or doing programming, even finance folks, operations folks, some of whom have been on this podcast before. But when an organization like The City Mission comes to a crossroads of opportunity or you all are facing a net new challenge that might be outside of the scope of what you’ve dealt with before and then what you’ve seen before, that’s where I get really excited to jump in and gather all the existing context, all the existing conditions of that problem, that opportunity, and package them so that I like to say folks can start on call it square three, square three and a half instead of being at square zero and not understanding, okay, you know, what’s going on here, what can we do, instead jumping into their roles and really picking up with the problem and saying, “Hey, this is this is what we can run with.”
Jaime Buxton: I love that. So, tell me, how did you get connected to partner with us? Who knew you, or who did you know that connected you initially?
Sam Jablonski: Yeah, I was doing a previous project with a bunch of Cleveland leaders and folks that had come together really looking at tackling the affordable housing challenge in Cleveland. It’s it’s such a big issue here. Folks typically wouldn’t think that thinking about a smaller Midwestern city like Cleveland, you think about housing affordability, right? Places like New York, LA, metropolitan areas, but Cleveland suffers a really unique set of challenges and Cleveland leaders had come together saying, “Hey, this is this is unacceptable.
This is something we need to work on.” And I had the opportunity to get involved researching with that project and really exciting work going on there as well, but Linda Uveges, obviously the mission CEO, was one of the leaders involved in that project. And we worked through that and towards the end she pulled me aside and she said, “Hey, we’re we’re running through some of our own opportunities and questions at the mission.
Is that something that you’d be interested in jumping in and helping out with?” And anytime that I can align the work that I enjoy doing with a mission that’s that’s really interesting and something that I’m kind of already bent towards and passionate about and then shares the common faith element too was something that I immediately jumped towards and said absolutely. How can I help?
Jaime Buxton: I love that. I love that. So, we probably should have said this. You’re you’re from the Cleveland area born and raised?
Sam Jablonski: Yes, born and raised in Cleveland. Left for a few years down to Columbus for school and for some work down there. But, Cleveland is home and really a lot of my work focuses around helping folks in helping local manufacturers, nonprofits that are operating with Cleveland for the good of Cleveland. And those are things that really get me going. I think the city is a really special place and somewhere that can use that kind of help.
Understanding Cleveland’s Ward 5
Jaime Buxton: I love that and I totally agree. Cleveland is home and should be home to lots of people. But, I am loving that you’re you know, you were taking a deeper dive into affordability. That’s obviously that’s something we talked about on a recent podcast. And I think a lot of people don’t understand when a lot of people question, you know, our need for existence of The City Mission and shelters and like-minded organizations.
People wonder why and really it’s that lack of affordable housing in Cleveland. So, thanks for your work on that and glad that you rubbed shoulders with Linda because I know that we have so many things that we’re thinking about where and what The City Mission will do next. And so, for our listeners who aren’t as familiar with kind of how we lay out The City Mission, our main campus that we call our administrative offices and then where we serve men is in the Midtown area Ward 5 of Cleveland.
So, that’s what we’re going to be talking about with Sam is that particular area. So, Sam, why was Ward 5 an important place to study and better understand.
Sam Jablonski: Yeah, it’s a great question, Jaime. So as you noted City Mission is kind of split between a couple different Cleveland neighborhoods, downtown and properly in the Midtown neighborhood bordering right on the Central neighborhood. And then all of that is encompassed in Cleveland’s Ward 5, which contains a couple other neighborhoods to your to your south as well. Really the purpose of focusing the look on Ward 5 was more strategy-based, more practical than it was anything.
The need to get accurate numbers, right? And the national census, Cleveland city data pulls on a ward basis. So it was a look at, okay, you know, which ward are you all in and what’s the what’s the immediate opportunity to serve? And I think important to stop and note what were the questions that we were trying to address and what was brought to me, what you all were looking at, is really kind of a two-pronged opportunity, a short-term focus and a long-term focus.
Jaime Buxton: Mhm.
Sam Jablonski: The short-term being you know, hey, we do great work downtown at the Crossroads campus serving men and bringing those men in from all kinds of different places around Cleveland and offering really specific programming to them. But we’re also cognizant of the fact and you all have done things in the past and even do things today with that immediate community because there’s a lot of need in that immediate community. So that’s kind of the short-term is what can the mission do in the immediate future to engage and serve that immediate community?
And then in the long term, it was an idea of, okay, as we serve that community, how do we become a hub that the community really trusts that is either empowering other organizations to do their work better in downtown Cleveland in Ward 5 and meeting real community needs through doing that. So that’s that’s what we were looking at and the idea for choosing Ward 5 was really looking at where can we get good data and how can we organize that in a way that we’re we’re actually showing, “Okay, these are the needs that are proximate to The City Mission.”
What the research revealed
Jaime Buxton: Awesome. And so, what did you discover about those needs of Ward 5 community? And then on top of that, what were most surprising or what were your yeah, I kind of figured that kind of moments?
Sam Jablonski: Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I think we all and you know, the title of the podcast hints at this a little bit, too. We all have a conception in our minds of what we think of when we think of an impoverished area, when we think of an area that has certain challenges and could use help like this, right? And a lot of what comes to mind is lack of employment, is poverty, sometimes higher crime rates, things like that.
Jaime Buxton: Mhm.
Sam Jablonski: So, I don’t know that any of that was really necessarily a surprise. You know, the rates of poverty are really extreme and that can be difficult to research, difficult to dig into to learn that you know, over 60% of people in Ward 5 are living below the poverty line.
Jaime Buxton: Mhm.
Sam Jablonski: And of that 60%, like a third of residents are living in what’s called deep poverty. So, a level of income that’s half of the poverty line. And those are those are really challenging statistics. But in a way, not shocking when we think of an area that has challenges. And I think what was more surprising to me in the research and what came out was around the demographics and who lives there and who doesn’t live there.
If you look at a an age chart of the ages of folks by gender that are living in Ward 5, men are pretty stable, you know, from birth to death, it’s it’s kind of consistent. Women, there’s a spike between 20 and 30-year-olds. And what that’s telling us is there’s a real concentration of mother age women, of young single women in Ward 5 and where that’s really most dramatically obvious is the rates of single-parent households and looking at a single-father household versus a single-mother household, only about 1% of single-parent households in Ward 5 are father-led, whereas 81% of households with children in Ward 5 are led by a single mother.
So, really the vast majority of kids growing up in Ward 5 are growing up without a father figure, without a dad in the picture, raised by a mother, you know, a female figure, but without that father figure in the picture. And that was something that really struck home to me and I think struck home to the whole team at The City Mission.
Jaime Buxton: Absolutely. Not to throw you for a loop because we didn’t practice this beforehand, but do you know how many of those homes where mom is there, where grandmother is also in the picture, where we’ve got then three generations of family living together?
Sam Jablonski: Yeah, it’s a great question. The census data doesn’t get that granular, it can’t capture that specifically, but there’s I think taking a step back, there’s a real multi-generational culture in Ward 5 and often times we think and focus about the problems, we don’t focus on a lot of the strengths and that’s something that the Ward 5 has that I think a lot of other areas of Cleveland lack. Where folks are going out on their own earlier or not living with parents, not living with grandparents.
And that’s a real unique identifier of Ward 5 is that there is a high rate of we live with mom, but we also live with grandma. And there are even examples there’s a strong contingent of four-generation households in Ward 5. So, it’s an interesting question, but yeah, I don’t have the exact number, but it is it is common.
Forty-two organizations and the need to collaborate
Jaime Buxton: Interesting. Okay. Were there any assumptions that maybe you had when you researched this, and I know you kind of already said that, but that really challenged you, that really I don’t know, you read a stat and said, “Oh, that can’t be right. I’ve got to push back and really lean into this.”
Sam Jablonski: I would turn that back on you, Jaime. I’d say, you know, you know you know the area from working there a lot better than a lot of our listeners and than I even do, right? Because that’s that’s your day-to-day. Would you be surprised to learn that there are 42 unique nonprofits, unique government agencies doing work that’s specifically focused on Ward 5 today. There are 42 of those in total.
Jaime Buxton: In that neighborhood, you’re saying? In Ward 5?
Sam Jablonski: Just focused on Ward 5.
Jaime Buxton: Wow. Yes, I am shocked to know that. I know there are a lot. I know there are a lot. But 42 seems really large to me for that specific area. You know, I think one of the reasons I love Cleveland is because of the deeply rooted bent toward a philanthropy, but also just compassionate ministry. So interesting that we have that many neighbors trying to do the work. Whatever that work is, you know, because I know I can’t pigeonhole that.
But yeah, trying to do work to help people. That’s amazing.
Sam Jablonski: Yeah, it really stuck out to me as you talked about stats you have to go back and double-check. I checked that one a few times, and 42 is kind of what the what the big research poll yielded, but that’s not even to say that, you know, we’re not including everybody, or not including people that have, you know, some kind of focus on Ward 5. And what it really tipped me off to, and I had the opportunity to talk to some of your team about the research as well, and present it to them, and we were all surprised by the amount of work being done, definitely, but also surprised by kind of the lack of collaboration.
And, you know, there are 42 individual entities at work, but it doesn’t always feel like that, right? And doesn’t always feel like, we have that kind of net of support around Ward 5. And that was something that, we were really looking to identify and understand what to do with that. You know, How do you respond to knowing that there’s all that kind of support, but that it’s not necessarily tied together?
Jaime Buxton: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s something, you know, that the mission as an organization, but even just me personally, that’s where my heart beats fast is when it’s time to talk with others. And so, you know, I think that really leans into this next question is, you know, how important do you think it is, Sam? And I think you’ve already given a hint for us to be able to, find points of communication between all of these different, organizations.
And really not just the organizations, but the community itself before deciding how to create, you know, what comes next for any ministry.
Sam Jablonski: Yeah. Yeah, and that was, that was a real challenge in what we were looking to do because there’s a lot going on and it’s not organized, right? It lives on the internet, it lives in people’s heads, it lives in, community meetings and in board meetings. But there’s there’s not a central place to go to, you know, to understand that. And your question kind of has two parts. How do we, how do we understand what’s being done, but also how do we understand what the community still needs?
What the most pressing needs are. Because a lot of what we found was there’s there’s enough help, there’s enough assistance that if you come in assuming that you understand the need, if the mission turns to community assuming that they already have a good finger on what’s needed, could really miss the mark on what’s actually impactful for the community and that’s been done enough that can erode community trust definitely and that can ultimately do more hurt than it does help when you come in without a servant’s heart and come in you know assuming that we understand.
So, I think on the on the interconnected side, you know, working with other organizations, really important to understand what work are they targeting and what are they best at that the mission might not be as well poised to do and needs they might not be as well poised to meet. And then where are the gaps in there? And really it’s a it’s a Venn diagram, right? Of what are other people doing?
What are the needs? And then what’s what’s that slice in the middle that’s not being done but that meets real needs for Ward 5. And that’s I guess really what we’re trying to identify is where is that gap today?
Turning good intentions into lasting impact
Jaime Buxton: Yeah. Wow, that’s a really great answer. Thank you. When I think about what you just said and really what I was asking, you know, beyond good intentions and the willingness to hear and collaborate, what is required to actually have community impact, meaningful community impact?
Sam Jablonski: Hm. Yeah, Jaime, that’s it’s challenging to get at, right? Because if it was if it was easy, we would see a lot more change. And it’s it’s challenging to determine and discover what’s going to what’s going to move the needle for this community. What’s going to be something that is that has a lasting continuing impact. And those were words that came up a lot as we were discussing as a group, as I was researching is really this idea of wanting to do something, wanting to build something that is evergreen, that’s lasting, that has a sustained impact.
And I think one way to look at that is what hasn’t worked to date and some of the things that haven’t worked are like I mentioned the lack of collaboration and coming in with a new program that might overlap with somebody else’s. I think other things that haven’t worked are like talking about lack of sustained vision, you know, not having a continued vision, not putting consistent effort into a program or not even not sustainably funding a program and coming in with a couple years of funding, but you know, not something that can be lifted up and continued and I think you know, those are the those are the easier ones to identify.
Okay, if we put these things in place, then we can create you know, really lasting change, but I think even deeper than that kind of the thread you’ve been hitting on is leading with a servant’s heart and coming in not assuming the needs of the community, even not just coming in on the sole basis of research, but really coming in with a listening ear saying, “Hey, you know, we’ve done our due diligence.
We have some ideas about what might help, but you know, we also want to hear what is it that the community thinks that they need and then what is it that is really pushing folks’ day-to-day lives.” I think something that might surprise us about Ward 5 is you think urban, you think in the city of Cleveland, you would assume that they have good grocery access and good access to food and that’s something that as I’m sure you’re well aware is not in the neighborhood today.
Not many of our urban Cleveland neighborhoods today. I think that’s just one example of you know, we can come in assuming what the needs are. We can come in kind of with a blind eye to what’s already being done, but the real needs could surprise us.
Jaime Buxton: Agreed. Thank you so much. As you’re talking, I’m listening to your passion and you know it leads me to think how do you not fall in love with every organization and what they’re doing as part of your role. Like how do you Well, one, how did you say okay, I will help The City Mission, but then you know, you’re you’re just already passionate about the things. I’m ready for you to come join The City Mission staff.
Sam Jablonski: Yeah, that can be a line I have to draw, right? Is folks will say, “Oh, you know, this is this is really helpful. Like we have to keep this going.” And it’s it’s something I’m still learning is understanding like what does a healthy project with a client look like? And like what is the call it the breakup stage, the you know, we decide that you’re going to you’re going to run with this and I’m going to take a backseat.
And I’ve actually had some really good conversations with Linda about you know, what does that look like? But no, it’s it’s tricky to not fall in love with the with the challenges and the you know, what people are doing because it’s it’s so easy to get fired up about especially for me when this is this is really what hits home and getting to sit with this and I think finding the overlap between the work that the folks like you are doing and then my own skill set and passion around the data and putting it all into Excel spreadsheet and spending hours in city census data and spending hours in City of Cleveland data.
That for me has been a real blessing to figure out where those things connect, but understanding where to break it off can be a challenge. And short answer is always want to always want to be able to be a resource where I can jump in. And I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do things like this, to be on this podcast, to even have served The City Mission in general. But then at the same time I like to say that you know, your leadership team and your even your folks on the front lines, the folks doing this work every day like you Jaime know this work so much better than I ever will and I can’t pretend that just because I jumped into data and interviews and research for a couple months to learn Ward 5 that I can that I can understand all that.
So I think my job is to get the lay of the land, to try to understand what’s going on, but it’s your job to understand what do we do with that and what direction do we take this?
Choosing where to make a difference
Jaime Buxton: For sure. And even as you think about you know, breaking up well with you and then determining where we go next, I think you also hit the head of the nail when you were talking about you know, we can’t do everything, right? We’ve got to understand what exists, what the needs are and where we can actually intersect. One of the biggest for me working in ministry, one of the biggest difficulties can be I see a need and we have to fill it, you know?
And as Christians I think we want to do that and I’m not saying that we can’t always, but as an organization we have to stay real focused on what is it that we’re doing, what we can do well and how we can actually meet those needs and not just jump all around because if Linda said yes to everything, we wouldn’t do anything well. And so knowing our community, knowing the needs is so important for her to be a leader for us and then for us to then actively engage in these really primary conversations that follow this understanding to decide you know, what the Lord would have us to do next.
So thank you for your part in that. I think based on what you’ve seen, where do you think The City Mission has the greatest opportunity to make a difference in Ward 5?
Sam Jablonski: Well, that’s the question, isn’t it, Jaime?
Jaime Buxton: Don’t turn it around on me, Sam.
Sam Jablonski: Sorry, that’s that’s what we were out to discover is what should you all do from here? And then what are the opportunities? And I think to take a step back, you know, just asking the question is a great place to start in terms of we’re doing this set of core things really well. And you’re right that serving the community is definitely not secondary, but it hasn’t been the call it the bread and butter of what The City Mission has been doing through Building Crossroads and Building Laura’s Home and then building up those programs into, you know, the great service fixtures they are today.
But then turning that around into, okay, what else can we do? And then you’re absolutely right that if you if you ran to every challenge, Cleveland’s a great place, but there are enough challenges to keep The City Mission very distracted and very off the mark of you know, what the main things are you should be running towards. And so I would say asking the question is the best place to start. And then from there it’s you know, in the research we were able to identify here are some of the key themes.
And then we’ve run through a couple of those in terms of the amount of single mother households and the amount of you know, the lack of father figures, the lack of food options, the lack of employment options, you know, some unique challenges that Ward 5 faces that could really use the help of someone like the Mission. And I think the exciting thing now is that you all get to dig in and understand how do we go about that?
Because even just looking at the challenge of call it a single mother challenge, do you choose to serve the single mother that’s that’s in that position and support her and maybe support her with child care so that she can leave the home and seek employment and better her situation that way. That’s that’s one way of going about it. Do you seek to serve the children and work on that issue through the next generation, right?
And help those children to raise families where there is a father figure and where dad stays in the picture, or do you choose to serve the fathers who are who are currently absentee right now and teach them how to become a fixture of that community. And I don’t think that there’s one right answer to that. I think that’s the beauty of what the mission is looking at doing now. So, I would answer your question by saying that really whatever angle of the problem that you all choose to own and to champion and to say, “Hey, this is this is something we’re not just going to talk about, but we’re going to take action on.” and we’re going to be committed to having a real focused long-term impact in this specific area, that’s what’s ultimately the most impactful for Ward 5 and for the work you all are doing.
Reasons for hope and ways to connect
Jaime Buxton: Awesome. I think for our last question, you can’t turn this one around on me.
Sam Jablonski: I’ll do my best.
Jaime Buxton: What gives you the most hope for Ward 5, for the community, the people, the organizations that exist? What gives you the most hope when you think about the future of this neighborhood?
Sam Jablonski: Well, that one’s easy. The City Mission’s there.
Jaime Buxton: Of course.
Sam Jablonski: No, it is a real spot of hope, for sure, but I think you can turn it back to the 42 unique groups that are involved there. There’s there’s a lot being done. There’s a great need, but there’s a great force rising up to rise to the challenge and to look at meeting those needs. And I’m really encouraged by the leadership team at The City Mission and even beyond that, all the folks at The City Mission really looking to understand these challenges, to jump in on them.
I’m really excited to get moving on these and I see that I’m I’m filled with hope. And then obviously knowing that we can work at meeting the physical needs and that’s really important, but that the work that The City Mission is doing is going deeper than that and meeting the heart need. And we know that you know that’s where it’s a lot harder to put into a spreadsheet, but that’s where a lot of the real change happens and the lasting change happens.
Looking at it from an angle of not just what’s needed physically, but holistically, how can we serve these folks?
Jaime Buxton: Awesome. Well, thank you so much Sam for being part of this and I know you love a good podcast. So hopefully you become instantly famous because you’ve been on Not That Different. But give yourself a little personal plug. If people were interested in your work or getting to work with you, how would they find you?
Sam Jablonski: Like I mentioned, the work that I do I really enjoy the opportunity to serve nonprofits. And I as you can tell, I get really fired up when I get to be in the nonprofit housing space. But that being said, I do work for folks in manufacturing, folks that own and operate real assets. And always happy to help out where I’m needed. So they can find me at jablonskiresearch.com and then connect with me there.
Jaime Buxton: This has been an awesome time to get to know Sam and to understand the work that he’s uncovering in the area where we live. If this episode has resonated with you and you are local to Cleveland, we’d love for you to reach out to The City Mission. You can go straight to our website at thecitymission.org to get involved. But if you’re not local to this area, we’d really encourage you to find somewhere where you can plug in and use your skills and your talents to be able to help the neighborhood that you are a part of.
We have appreciated you listening and we just ask you to continue to like and subscribe and we’ll catch you next time on the Not That Different podcast.