CLEVELAND — Bo White said has been staying at the Lutheran Men's Shelter on Lakeside Avenue since March.
"It's good that they do things for the community, bring people in and stuff like that and keep people out of the cold," White said.
He said despite the bitter cold and snow some still prefer to stay on the streets, not used to accepting help or afraid to go in the shelter.
"The unsheltered numbers are higher than they were in the last couple of years, but thankfully in this community, they haven't exploded like you hear on the West Coast, Skid Row, places like that," Michael Sering said.
Sering is the vice president of housing and shelter for Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry. He said majority of shelters around the city are at capacity.
"Last night we had 326 people at the men's shelter. The night before we had 318 so an increase of 8, possibly storm related, but the night before that we had 342," Sering said.
Sering told 3News that a number of factors continue to impact the homeless community, but the lack of affordable housing is hitting the hardest.
"Most people are aware the lack of affordable housing is really skyrocketing beyond people at extremely low incomes, even low income or moderate income people are seeing increases in housing, so I think that would probably be the biggest culprit," Sering said.
For homeless individuals that are able to get housing vouchers Sering said sometimes they have trouble finding landlords that will accept them, adding another barrier.
"The storm of poverty is year-round and numbers come up a little bit when the blizzard come through but we'd have 350 guys in the middle of July on the nicest night there is so this is a year round task," Sering said. "We really need more landlords to be willing to take our people, we need more vouchers for our people, we need higher minimum wage for our people, there are a lot of factors to it."