Lifelong Cleveland resident Elliot Williams would’ve bought a house in the city had they not been scared for their safety and losing healthcare access.
“I would’ve planned to stay in Cleveland long-term,” said Williams. “It’s my home, and I love Cleveland.
Instead, the 31-year-old this week moved to Baltimore, Maryland, with three other transgender and nonbinary Clevelanders.
“We wanted to go and build a nice little life together rather than feeling like we were running and having a lot of agency taken away from ourselves,” Williams said.
Cleveland officials are currently considering creating a full-time liaison position to advocate for policies to make LGBTQ+ residents like Williams feel welcome and safe in the city, said Ward 3 Councilmember Kerry McCormack during the State of the LGBTQ+ Community on Thursday night.
The planning comes at a time when some members of the LGBTQ+ community say they are looking to elected officials in blue cities like Cleveland for leadership and protection after the passage of legislative policies statewide that curtail LGBTQ+ rights and the recent election marked by rhetoric that attacked and demeaned trans people.
In recent years, states have introduced a record number of bills limiting LGTBQ+ rights, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, prompting the Human Rights Campaign to issue its first national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in 2023. Between 2023 and Feb 13., the ACLU identified 1,434 bills it categorized as attacking transgender people, limiting local protections and allowing the use of religion to discriminate, pushing some people, especially trans people, to flee for more welcoming environments.
In Ohio, there were 15 such bills introduced over the same period. Two — a ban on trans women in sports and a parental “bill of rights” that the ACLU says forces schools to out students to their parents — were passed into law. The state also passed a transgender bathroom ban: It went into effect this week.
Since he took office in 2022, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb has been vocal about making it a priority to “attract and retain” new residents — particularly young people, a large share of whom identify as LGBTQ+ — to stabilize neighborhoods and spur economic development.
Cleveland has lost more than half its population since the 1960s, and numbers continue to dip: a trend Bibb is eager to reverse by attracting employers, investing in Downtown and attempting to stabilize neighborhoods hollowed out by decades of population loss.
About 10% of Americans identify as LGBTQ+, according to a 2024 Gallup poll, which included more than one in five Gen Z adults born between 1997 and 2006.
Even in Cleveland, which touts itself as the most “welcoming” big city for LGBTQ+ people in Ohio, some like Williams say they still don’t feel safe.
“In terms of the city of Cleveland's ability to keep folks there… Something I've noticed is that it is not just the state of Maryland that speaks up; it is the city of Baltimore that has been very directly involved with pushback to some of these current federal-level policy battles,” Williams said.
U.S. cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia have dedicated liaisons, task forces or offices dedicated to LGBTQ+ inclusion and advocacy.
Cleveland has had a volunteer LGBTQ+ liaison for about seven years.
“Keyword: volunteer,” said Kevin Schmotzer, who currently holds that position.
Cleveland City Council and the mayor are currently negotiating the 2025 city budget, which did not initially include money for a full-time staff role. But they could create the position during the reconciliation process after at least one council member has said they want to fund a full-time position to take on and expand the work.
Having that person on staff would indicate that local government is at least listening to LGTBQ+ residents, Williams said.
“There is the only so much control that Cleveland has over that statewide policy, but that it is harm reduction for the city to be able to do anything that they can to function as advocates considering state policy,” Williams said.
Advocating for LGBTQ+ Clevelanders should be a full-time job, current liaison says
One way to provide that support, say advocates including Schmotzer, would be to fund a dedicated staffer to serve as a point of contact between the city and the community and advocate for policies to protect LGBTQ+ residents.
Schmotzer already holds a full-time position within the Department of Economic Development. Any LGBTQ+ advocacy work he does, he said, is on top of his full-time job.
“Well, it's turned into a lot,” Schmotzer said. “So that's why I've been pushing for a full-time position hopefully to be created … It's time.”
Keyword: volunteer.Kevin Schmotzer, Cleveland's volunteer LGBTQ+ liaison
A job description for the LGBTQ+ liaison does not exist, so it’s unclear what work the liaison would do.
But Schmotzer said whoever is in the job should be able to attend community meetings during the daytime, work with other cities on policy and regularly have a presence at the Statehouse — all of which his schedule and workload cannot accommodate.
Schmotzer was appointed in 2018 under Bibb’s predecessor, Frank Jackson.
At that time, Schmotzer said the volunteer position was created — in part — to help boost Cleveland’s points on the Human Rights Campaign's Municipal Equality Index scorecard. The annual analysis, conducted and issued by the human rights advocacy group, assigns a numerical value out of 100 for cities’ policies and support of their LGBTQ+ residents.
The HRC has points available for cities that house an LGBTQ+ liaison in the executive office.
Between 2017 and 2018, the city’s HRC score jumped from 81 to 100. Since Schmotzer’s appointment, Cleveland has earned the maximum score of 100.
But the HRC scorecard is not necessarily the best indicator of safety and inclusivity, said Michele King, and the city should be careful using it as a metric for perceived safety within the LGBTQ+ community.
“While that is something worth celebrating, I think that creates a blind spot for the administration,” said King, who worked at Cleveland City Hall as a Cleveland Foundation public service fellow and policy strategist from 2022 to 2023. “The HRC MEI, while incredibly useful, is missing something vital: qualitative data on the lived experience of queer residents.”
Bibb reappointed Schmotzer to the role in 2022 when he took office. He also appointed Heather Bruner as the LGBTQ+ Liaison in the Department of Public Safety and the Division of Police. Bruner has since left, and no one currently holds that title.
City Hall employees pushed for the role over last two years
During her fellowship, King researched peer cities’ LGBTQ+ inclusion efforts and drafted a full-time liaison and policy analyst job description to pitch to the administration.
“This position will craft citywide policy, expand the departmental scope to include issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, create programming that will lead initiatives aimed at improving communities’ ability to thrive, and analyze City policies and resources to better support LGBTQ+ identified employees,” she wrote in an April 2023 memo to members of Bibb’s administration. “This is an opportunity for the City to be a leader in Ohio and the Midwest in advancing equity goals and supporting diverse communities in a time where many LGBTQ+ rights are under attack.”
She said throughout the process of crafting the job description, she heard “general comments of support” but there wasn’t significant follow-up after her recommendation was sent.
“Across the nation, there are so many cities right now that are self-identifying themselves as queer and trans safe havens that are doing anything in their power to be able to protect people from state and federal governments,” King said. “That's what we need, and we don't have that. We don't have anything close to that.”
A year later, Schmotzer sent Bibb a memo urging him to apply for and accept up to $200,000 in outside funding to create and partially pay for a full-time LGBTQ+ liaison position for three years.
“The City of Cleveland can do much more with a full-time dedicated person responsible for developing policy, community oriented programming and providing resources for the City of Cleveland’s multiracial, multigenerational, multicultural and multilingual LGBTQ+ community,” he wrote in the May 2024 memo.
The position was not created.
A spokesperson said the city did not submit or accept external funding “due to a number of conflicts identified with the memo in question.” He said the memo did not appropriately budget expenses associated with the position and programming.
The spokesperson said the city is now in a "different stage" than they were at the time of the Schmotzer's request.
“Taking that into consideration, the Administration has been working to make the necessary operational adjustments to further ensure representation and positive impact in our beloved queer community," the spokesperson said in a written statement.
Ward 12 Councilmember Rebecca Maurer, the first openly LGBTQ+ woman to serve on council, raised the question of creating the position during budget hearings in recent weeks.
Maurer asked Angela Shute-Woodson, who heads the city’s Community Relations Board, if she would support such a position, to which she replied: “Absolutely.”
The Community Relations Board already houses paid liaisons that represent the interests of various city constituencies, including Cleveland’s Asian and Hispanic communities.
“Because of the climate that we're in, we get numbers of complaints as well as intimidation, ethnic and cultural intimidation in that constituent group,” Shute-Woodson said. “That concerns us a lot. So it would be very, very helpful to us.”
What other measures is Cleveland taking to make LGBTQ+ people feel safe?
Bibb’s administration has taken other steps to make city government more welcoming: City health insurance covers gender-affirming care, and there is a gender-inclusive restroom at City Hall.
Embracing diversity and fostering inclusion is — and will always be — a priority for Mayor Bibb and his Administration.City of Cleveland spokesperson
But Elliot Williams said it’s important to make the city feel welcoming for all residents, not just city employees.
They didn’t feel that way in Cleveland, so they left.
“Ultimately, more than any government entity, the people that are going to keep queer people safe are other queer people,” they said.
