Eric Carmen, the frontman of the powerpop band Raspberries and singer of solo hits including All By Myself, Never Gonna Fall in Love Again and Hungry Eyes, has died aged 74.

“It is with tremendous sadness that we share the heartbreaking news of the passing of Eric Carmen,” she wrote. “Our sweet, loving and talented Eric passed away in his sleep, over the weekend. It brought him great joy to know that, for decades, his music touched so many and will be his lasting legacy. Please respect the family’s privacy as we mourn our enormous loss.”

…til she kissed me and said, "Baby…

!detroit@midwest.social
!michigan@midwest.social

Lots more people showed up to block view of them from attendees

I live in an east side suburb and recently noticed at least one person with a bunch of bags/sacks sleeping at an RTA bus stop on multiple occasions. I've lived here since 2016 and this is the first time I've seen homeless in this part of town. Just today I saw on facebook some person complaining about the homeless at bus stops around here, and I was wondering what I could do to help them.

Obviously, I can buy them food or give them some money, but I'm more worried about their lack of shelter and exposure to snobby suburbanites who don't want to see them around as well as shitty suburban cops.

Does anyone know of resources I could give them to find shelter nearby?

In a legal filing, an attorney for the landlord wrote that remarks Scott made in a TV interview and an unrelated court hearing are evidence of bias against his client. In the hearing, Scott accused a pair of Shaker Square landlords – both based in New York City – of having “incestuous” business connections with one another.

This could be a massive boon to the city. Fingers crossed it actually comes to fruition!

I fucking hate these people

In recent years, the Cuyahoga County court system has drastically cut its use of cash bail. That means fewer people sit in jail while awaiting trial.

The shift followed calls to dismantle a bail process that created a two-tier system: one for those who could pay for their freedom and one for those who could not. Local and national reports showed those who could not were most often poor or Black.

The Marshall Project reviewed the bail decisions Cuyahoga County judges made in nearly 70,000 felony cases filed between 2016 and 2022 to understand how their bail practices had changed. Overall, judges are now setting cash bail in felony cases far less frequently and are more often setting personal bonds — which don’t require payment for release.

Check the link for the whole story. There's been positive changes, but nothing institutional to ensure they keep going.

I havent been following this closely but I wanted to see if any of the Clevelanders have an opinion.

Photos taken at Forest City Yacht Club

Then came the pandemic. Since then, it seems no matter what Mims does, she can’t attract workers. She’s tried job listing websites. Word of mouth. A sign in the window of the center in the Southgate USA strip mall. None have brought the candidates she needs to reopen three classrooms closed since the early days of the pandemic. The center has a long waitlist of families, some waiting months for spots to open.

What about higher pay?

There are nearly 20% fewer child care slots available in Northeast Ohio than there were in January 2020, even though demand hasn’t decreased. This finding comes from a survey of child care providers by Cleveland-based Starting Point, a nonprofit focused on child and youth issues. Overall capacity is mainly down because of 2,500 vacant child care jobs, most of which were filled before Ohio officially entered the pandemic in March 2020. The vacancies mean providers have had to waitlist or turn away families.

This is perhaps the longest and most severe child care staffing shortage ever in Greater Cleveland, according to everyone Sigal Cleveland interviewed for this article. They range from workers to people who have studied the child care field for years. The staffing shortage was also fueled by vacancies created when Baby Boomers and older Gen Xers, who were a sizable percentage of employees at many Greater Cleveland child care centers, left during the early days of the pandemic.

“We built this quality system based on wages that weren’t that competitive,” said Starting Point’s President and CEO Nancy Mendez. “It wasn’t a huge issue.Then COVID came and what it did was definitely expose the weakness in having a low-wage child care system. You have sectors, like restaurants and customer service, offering salaries of $20 and above. This is devastating the early child care system.”

More at the link.