At Denison UCC, 71 fire watch volunteers help homeless center remain open

CLEVELAND, Ohio — It’s 8:00 at night at Denison Avenue United Church of Christ on Cleveland’s West Side and the place is full.

Two volunteers on fire watch walk through the building while homeless men and women sit at tables in the community room clutching their coffee cups or lie on cots in the sleeping rooms upstairs.

In the downstairs kitchen, two staffers dish up bowls of rice and beef, donated by Chipotle. Some guests eat quietly, focused on their food. One reads a book. Others talk about their day. And some just sit in silence, happy to be in from the cold.

The homeless hospitality center here, operated by the nonprofit Metanoia Project, will welcome about 60 people this weeknight.

The Cleveland Fire Department on Dec. 24th deemed the church unfit for this purpose, as it lacks a sprinkler system and proper alarms, among other things.

The church has appealed the order, as well as a violation notice from the Cleveland Building Department contending that allowing homeless to sleep here in cold weather months is a change of use and requires city permission.

The church contends what it is doing is a church function, so no change-of-use permit should be required.

While the appeal is pending, the place can remain open, fire officials say, only if it conducts an approved fire watch: City code calls for a competent adult whose only responsibility is to tour the property every half-hour and record information about each tour in a logbook. They must have a way to contact the fire department immediately if they spot trouble.

Fire prevention officials have twice visited the church and found its fire watch process to be in order.

But compliance isn’t easy for a nonprofit with limited staff and many guests who need to be fed and housed for the night.

That’s where the fire watch volunteers come in, 71 of them so far, teams of two, who work in two-hour shifts until 10 p.m., when many guests are asleep and the Metanoia staff is freed up to devote someone solely to fire watch for the night.

“People were asking, ‘How can we help?’ said Maggie Rice, the educational coordinator at the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, assigned there as part of her Americorps service. She also heads the Lake County and East Side Cleveland chapter of Food Not Bombs, a group that advocates for social justice issues.

She’s had a lot of experience wrangling volunteers with that organization, having coordinated food for protesters during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in 2016. So, she set up a spreadsheet, designed a flier and put out the word.

Soon she’d signed up a dentist, an office worker, ministers, teachers, a retired postal worker, an actor, a retired fire captain and dozens of others, some of them activists, others who have never carried a protest sign.

“You don’t have to have a political science or social work degree. You don’t have to be an expert on homelessness to know people shouldn’t freeze to death in our city,” Rice said.

Billy Tyler, 38, is a regular on fire watch. He brought his dad, Bill, on this night. Bill, 71, is a retired captain who worked 38 years for the Cleveland Fire Department.

Billy, carrying a small flashlight, shows his dad the ropes as they walk through the building, around the gym and into the kitchen, where they check behind the commercial stove. They head through the sanctuary and upstairs where remodeling is underway, and no one is allowed to be.

“You just want to poke your head in every room, smell for smoke, look for fire,” Billy says as he opens a door that reveals the pipes of the church’s organ. They look closely at radiators to assure nothing flammable has been left on them. The make sure no one is in the off-limits sanctuary sneaking an indoor cigarette, which is against the rules.

Smoking is only allowed on a porch off the sanctuary once an hour. Walking onto the porch after smokers are finished, Billy explains: “We make sure all the cigarettes are out.” There wasn’t a stray butt to be found. All were in designated cans, snuffed out.

It’s clear Bill, a man of few words, is impressed with his son, who didn’t follow his dad into firefighting and works at a graphic design firm. The son’s fire-watch vigilance is in his DNA.

“This one. Ever since I was a kid, he’s like, ‘Don’t light a candle, we’ll all die!’,” says Billy.

“He exaggerates a little,” replies Bill.

Once their tour is complete, both sign the log sheet attesting to what they saw.

Their names follow those from the previous shift, Gwen Fyfe and Darius Stubbs, who made the same rounds every half-hour beginning at 6 p.m.

Fyfe was the first volunteer for fire watch and she and Stubbs have been there every Tuesday night since Christmas Eve.

“You can talk about what you want the world to look like and complain, but you’re not doing a concrete thing,” Fyfe said. “This is a good way to intentionally do something.”

Both wish City Hall, and particularly Councilwoman Dona Brady whose ward contains the church, would have been more supportive in finding solutions.

“I can’t understand why they don’t want to help this happen,” Stubbs said. “But if they’re not going to do it, it’s up to the people who live here to look out for each other.”

Those interested in volunteering for the Denison UCC fire watch can email [email protected] or text Maggie Rice at 440-340-3663.

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