Supportive Housing: A Proven Platform for Employment

By Janette Kawachi, Director of Innovations and Research, Corporation for Supportive Housing

Individuals living in supportive housing often have long histories of homelessness and face a multitude of complex challenges like a serious mental illness, substance use disorder and other chronic health conditions. For these individuals, housing provides a critical platform for the delivery of various health and social services. It establishes a stable environment from which to reclaim their lives and begin their road to recovery from homelessness, illness and trauma. At CSH, we believe that a well-paying and quality job is not just the strongest defense against homelessness but also an essential factor in supporting the recovery process.

How WIOA & HUD Combined State Planning Can Benefit Homeless Jobseekers

By Caitlin C. Schnur, Coordinator, National Initiatives on Poverty & Economic Opportunity

Employment in quality jobs is key to preventing and ending homelessness—yet millions of homeless jobseekers face significant barriers to employment success. Fortunately, there’s growing awareness and accountability in the homeless services system around increasing employment and economic opportunity for people experiencing homelessness. At the same time, under the recently passed Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the public workforce system aims to increase employment opportunities for jobseekers facing barriers, including homeless jobseekers. There’s clearly a shared goal here—and WIOA implementation offers a unique opportunity for these systems to work together: WIOA and HUD combined state planning.

Getting Colorado Back to Work: Transitional Jobs Benefit Business + Workers

By David T. Applegate, Research and Policy Assistant, National Initiatives on Poverty & Economic Opportunity

In July 2013, the Colorado state legislature passed the Colorado Careers Act (HB13-1004) establishing ReHire Colorado – an innovative and forward-thinking transitional employment program to be administered by the Colorado Department of Human Services. Using transitional jobs as the central mechanism, ReHire aims to stimulate the local economy and address unemployment by putting unemployed Coloradans back on the path to work with wage paid work with local employers. In order to implement the program, the state awarded contracts to five local service providers – one being the Larimer County Workforce Center in Northern Colorado.

The Workforce Center serves both jobseekers and businesses through an array of training, educational, and internship programs. Adam Crowe, the Business Development Manager at the Workforce Center, reminds us that “work is such a key component of who we are as humans that I think it is easy to forget about at times.”

Recently, the NTJN had the chance to talk with Adam about the Workforce Center’s success in using transitional employment and strong relationships with employer partners in attacking poverty and unemployment in Northern Colorado.

Four Ways You Can Be an Employment Champion for Homeless Job Seekers

By Caitlin C. Schnur, Workforce Research & Policy Fellow, NTJN

Health Care for the Homeless – Baltimore (Photo courtesy of National Health Care for the Homeless Council)

In the National Transitional Jobs Network’s (NTJN) recent article in the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness‘ UNCENSORED magazine, we showed why employment is critical to ending family homelessness and gave homeless service providers recommendations for integrating employment strategies into their programming.  We know, however, that many homeless service providers already offer consumers quality employment services and believe that employment has an important role to play in ending homelessness—so, what’s next? Here, we shift the focus from building better programs to building systems that prioritize employment as a pathway out of homelessness and are well-equipped to serve homeless job seekers.  If you’re a service provider looking to channel your experience and expertise toward ensuring that more homeless job seekers have access to employment and economic opportunity, this blog offers four actionable strategies to jumpstart your advocacy work.  Ready?  Go!