EMPLOYMENT IS DIFFICULT to focus on for agencies helping people who are homeless, but it’s also a key solution to homelessness.
That’s the message coming out of the Shelter Providers Network Annual Forum on Ending Homelessness in Clallam County, which I emceed Wednesday at Lighthouse Christian Center in Port Angeles.
Getting housing “can be at odds with getting a job,” said Mark Putnam, consulting services manager for Building Changes, a statewide organization that “exists to end homelessness.”
Qualifying for housing and essential services while getting a start on employment “is a delicate dance,” he said.
Earning even a little money may make the client ineligible for services needed to maintain employment. A shift toward removing such “multiple barriers [is an] important sea change,” Putnam said.
More people working, working more hours, earning more, gaining improved well-being, maintaining housing, reducing reliance on public supports and freeing up supportive housing units for others are “good outcomes,” he said.
“We can’t build enough units of housing to end homelessness,” Putnam said. “We have to work on self-sufficiency.”
“If you provide employment services at your site, more people will work,” he said.
Joining a roundtable discussion, Rep. Kevin Van De Wege said, “Job creation is the answer to lead the state out of recession.”
Van De Wege, a Democrat whose 28th Legislative District includes the North Olympic Peninsula and part of Grays Harbor County, encouraged support for the “Jobs Act” which will be on this November’s statewide ballot.
It would increase the number of bonds the state can issue to fund “energy efficiencies in public buildings, especially schools,” he said, and create “38,000 low-skill, well-paying construction jobs statewide over three to four years.”
The Department of Social and Health Services has had a “Work First program going for over 10 years,” said Patty Busse, local DSHS administrator.
“The last few years we have come into the most challenging population,” she said. “They are not work-ready — if the alarm doesn’t go off one morning, they leave employment and never go back.”
She recommended Olympic Community Action Programs’ community jobs program that gives people “a safe place to learn, screw up and go on.”
Clients benefit from having jobs, said Cheri Fleck of West End Outreach Service, the Forks hospital’s mental health agency.
Fleck said people “cycle in and out of treatment when they’re bored with nothing to do.”
A successful supportive employment program ended years ago when funding ran out.
“We want to recreate that, to create something different for their self-worth,” Fleck said.
Ending homelessness takes both a home and a job, making both part of the solution.
Earlier in the forum, executive directors Pam Tietz of the housing authority and Kathy Wahto of Serenity House, the network co-chairs, led a review of many collaborative construction projects across the county and other evidences of community commitment to ending homelessness.
“The sooner we can help people, the smaller the problem will be,” Wahto said.
All construction projects and service programs are guided by the county’s ten-year-plan. Accountability is documented through the homeless management information system that tracks performance and trends.
“Statistics are great, outcomes are better,” Tietz said.
She encouraged people to advocate locally and at the state and national levels, to inform decision-makers and those who fund about outcomes to help develop better programs.
For example, the budget-cutting, limited-timeline Disability Lifeline Program adopted by the state Legislature to replace General Assistance Unemployable, or GAU, will encourage individuals to move into housing and to participate in treatment.
Cheryl Bozarth, executive director Dove House Advocacy Program — formerly Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault of Jefferson County — told of raising $2.15 million in 11 months to build Dove House for needed programming space and transitional housing.
Jefferson County’s big need now is more affordable housing, she said.
Dove House’s housing action group is seeking to partner with developers who have buildable land.
There could even be some jobs created.
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Martha Ireland was a Clallam County commissioner from 1996 through 1999 and is the secretary of the Republican Women of Clallam County., among other community endeavors.
She and her husband, Dale, live on their Carlsborg-area farm.
Her column appears Fridays.
E-mail her at irelands@olypen.com.
