Cities across the country are finding social and economic benefits from using a housing-first approach toward helping the chronically homeless get permanently off the street. In other words, house them first, then help to stabilize their lives. This approach ends up saving communities money because chronically homeless people make such expensive use of government services.
According to a census taken last January, St. Louis has 100 chronically homeless individuals. Of those, 50 are veterans. So city officials decided to make a big push to house those needy soldiers by offering many of them furnished apartments, free of charge, as part of Operation: REVEILLE.
The money funding the program comes from a $750,000 HUD “rapid rehousing” grant. “They especially need a stable place to start their recovery journey,” Joanne Joseph, homeless program manager for the St. Louis VA, told Jesse Bogan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
On July 30, the 50 homeless vets turned up for a meeting about the program, and each was screened to determine if they qualified for housing. According Bogan, most of the men were between the ages of 50 and 65, but one — 25 year-old Army veteran Esa Murray — “represented the next generation of homeless veterans.”
Murray served in Tikrit, Iraq, but was sent home due to mental disorders. After living in a tent in Indiana with his wife, he made his way to St. Louis after they split up. He hoped to qualify for the new housing program, but his time in the service falls a few months short of the two-year minimum requirement to qualify for an apartment.
Despite this, clinical social worker Toby Jones agreed to admit him to the program. “By the time we are done with him in a year, he should be able to walk away and sustain himself,” Jones told Bogen.
The program has enough funding to house the men for about one year, while caseworkers will help them try to achieve independence. For those who can’t obtain it, there will be continued support. The men are required to participate in services and abide by rules if they want to stay in the sponsored housing.
Near the end of the event, Antoinette Triplett, head of St. Louis’s Homeless Services Division told these often-overlooked veterans something they aren’t used to hearing: “I want to apologize on behalf of our nation that you are veterans and had to be homeless.”
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Tag: the Midwest
How Second Chances Are Helping States Reduce Their Crime Rates
Being convicted of a crime can certainly have lifelong ramifications that don’t necessarily involve life behind bars without parole. It can mean a lifetime of unemployment.
Minneapolis-raised Kissy Mason witnessed this firsthand in her own family. “People in my family were being locked up, and then they were locked out of a right to live, a right to employment,” she told Nur Lalji of Yes! Magazine.
Seventy percent of people released from prison commit another crime within three years, and part of this recidivism rate is due in part to how difficult it is for them to find a job.
Mason was determined to make better choices for herself than those being made by her family members. But in 2006, she was involved in a domestic argument that escalated, leading to a felony conviction. Although she never went to jail — she served probation instead — whenever she filled out an application for employment, she had to check the ubiquitous box indicating that she was a convicted felon. This status also disqualified her for low-income Section 8 housing.
Instead of lamenting the situation, Mason worked to change it. She joined the campaign to “ban the box,” which was started by All of Us or None (a group founded by formerly incarcerated people that had difficulty finding work) in 2003. Since then, 12 states have removed this question from job applications. Employers can still conduct criminal background checks, but by the time they get that far in the hiring process, they’ve usually had a chance to study the applicant’s other qualifications.
Mason’s home state, Minnesota, enacted legislation banning the box in January 2014. Because of the initiative, one of the state’s major corporations, Target, has stopped using the check-off box on job applications not just in its Minnesota stores— but throughout the country.
“Sometimes people bar you from jobs forever because of one incident, and I don’t think that’s fair,” Mason told Lalji. “People should be given another chance. It shouldn’t be one time and you’re out.”
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These Innovative Programs Give Poor Families the Means to Solve Wellness and Safety Problems
From being able to buy enough diapers to change babies regularly to sending kids to school in clean clothes and even having the technology needed to find out about weather emergencies — all of these are things that many of us take for granted. But for poor families, they are challenges they face on a regular basis.
Fortunately, the caring people behind some new insightful programs are working to make life a little easier for poor families.
In Richmond, Indiana, Mike Duke realized that many local families couldn’t afford the four dollars it costs to wash and dry a load of laundry at a laundromat. “I see people on a daily basis who just do not have the funds for laundry,” Duke, a Wayne Township Trustee Investigator, told the Pal-Item. So he and Sharlene George of Open Arms Ministries teamed up to launch The Laundry Project, a program that will provide poor families with laundry vouchers.
Just in time to get children ready for school, The Laundry Project will kick off on July 28 with a “Back To School Laundry Bash,” at a laundromat near the homes of many poor families. George and Duke hope to expand the program to offer activities for kids while parents do laundry and receive free health screenings and education about how to stretch household dollars.
Meanwhile, in Story County, Iowa, organizations are teaming up to distribute 100 NOAA weather radios to low-income families. Melissa Spencer, deputy Story County emergency management coordinator told Melissa Erickson of the Ames Tribune, “These radios are more important for families living in mobile homes or homes without basements that may need more time to get to a safe sheltering location. Unfortunately, the relative small cost of these radios may be out of reach for these families or individuals due to a very limited income.”
The families who receive the radios will also be given emergency preparedness kits and batteries to power up the radios. “We’ve had tornadoes in Story County as late as November, and we’ve had occasions in the wintertime with blizzard-like conditions that we’ve had to close Interstate 35,” Spencer said. “This is definitely a tool that can be used year-round.”
Making these families — regardless of their income — safer and better off.
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It’s Not Potato Salad, But This Crowdfunding Effort Aims to Keep A Disabled Vet in His Home
Clearly, America is a generous country. Where else would an Ohio man launch a Kickstarter campaign to fund his dream of creating a savory batch of potato salad and find more than 5,000 souls willing to help him with his quest — to the tune of more than $47,000?
If we as a nation can do that, surely we can rally behind a cause that’s even more worthy: Helping a disabled veteran keep a roof over his head.
Ross Dahlberg is an 82-year-old Korean War veteran who lost the home he lived in for 17 years while in the hospital recovering from triple bypass surgery. Dahlberg told Amanda Whitesell of the Livingston Daily that he fell behind on his mortgage payments after a divorce and several surgeries. He applied for financial assistance through the Michigan Homeowner Assistance Nonprofit Housing Corporation’s Step Forward program, but was denied due to a clerical error.
Joshua Parish, a veterans’ benefits counselor at the Livingston County Veteran Affairs office in Michigan, thought that what happened to Dahlberg wasn’t right. “It’s not just this veteran in this county that it’s happening to, it’s everywhere,” Parish said.
Parish began to fight for Dahlberg to keep his home, submitting a motion to prevent the house from auctioned off at the sheriff’s sale, while at the same time working to raise the $4,000 Dahlberg owed in back mortgage payments. The judge denied the motion, however, and the house sold to Day Glo LLC for $132,000 in March. Dahlberg has until September 26 to match that amount, or he’ll lose his home for good.
Parish has not given up, researching all the sources for veterans’ assistance he can find and setting up a GoFundMe account in June that so far has raised more than $8,000 — but remains well short of the funds needed. “It’s an incredible amount of money,” Dahlberg, who is wheelchair bound and suffers from diabetes, told Whitesell. “I would be astounded if we raised that much.”
It sounds like the time for Americans to unite behind this veteran. If we can put a man on the moon and finance an epic batch of potato salad, what’s to stop us from keeping this veteran in his home?
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Two NFL Players Surprise a Veteran Dedicated to Helping Service Members
Erich Orrick grants wishes for a living.
Yes, really. And no, Orrick not a genie.
But the disabled vet and single father of two from Indianapolis who served in the Army for two decades, now works as a volunteer and board member for Wish For Our Heroes.
Wish For Our Heroes is a nonprofit that grants wishes to active-duty military members who badly need a hand. The charity has helped an Army Staff Sergeant who lost everything due to an apartment fire, assisted a Marine with mounting medical and legal bills, covered expensive car repairs, and given gift cards to military kids for Christmas.
On the Wish For Our Heroes’ website, Orrick says his goal is to “champion the needs of the typical ‘Joe’ in the military who gets the least amount of praise, pay and often needs the most to make ends meet.” He has dedicated his life to helping other military members — running the Indiana branch of the charity out of his garage.
The tables turned on Orrick, however, when professional punter Pat McAfee of the Indianapolis Colts decided that Orrick deserved a wish come true himself — despite not even making one. Through the years, McAfee has supported Wish For Our Heroes by donating football tickets, by giving money and by serving as a volunteer himself.
“That guy is an absolute legend. He’s the most selfless person I’ve ever met in my life,” McAfee told Dana Hunsinger Benbow of The Indianapolis Star.
Along with fellow Colt Coby Fleener, McAfee hatched a plan to lure Orrick away from his house for a weekend meeting in Chicago connected to the nonprofit. And while the meeting was fake, what McAfee and Fleener accomplished while Orrick was away was very real.
They redecorated his home with help from HHGregg, an electronics store — outfitting it with new appliances, television and furniture, and providing organization that any parent of two can use. (Orrick is a single parent to two daughters.) They also donated $5,000 to Wish For Our Heroes.
“I hate being in the center of all of this,” Orrick said. “I feel very guilty to have gotten so much when there are guys that need it more than I do.”
Orrick, selfless to a fault, told ABC News, who also covered the story, “I don’t want you to miss the story here, that there are a lot of soldiers who really need help.”
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Many Politicians Are Dragging Their Feet on Immigration Reform. But This CEO Says It’s Time
Last week several news organizations including the Washington Post and Politico reported that many Washington insiders feel any hope for immigration reform in the near future is “dead,” following the defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his primary race. But those outside the Beltway aren’t so pessimistic. In a recent speech at the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, Greg Brown, the CEO and Chairman of Motorola Solutions, said, “Why is the timing not right for this? I find that unacceptable.”
According to Anna Marie Kukec of the Daily Herald, Brown plans to continue to advocate for immigration reform and rally other business leaders to do so, until it’s revived. According to Brown, it just makes good business sense at a time when the economy remains “fragile.”
Brown said that American businesses cannot find workers with the skills they need, due to limited visas available for high-skilled workers. He believes that hiring such international workers does not take jobs from Americans—on the contrary, it creates jobs for them.
“Immigrant workers are job generators themselves,” he said. “They have a job multiplier effect. So if our goal is to grow a dynamic environment for businesses to be created, grow and thrive, we ought to care about this as a state.”
Motorola Solutions runs programs to encourage American kids to become engineers, working with the Chicago Public Library Foundation, the Museum of Science and Industry, school districts and other organizations. “It’s about preparing the workforce for the jobs that will keep America competitive and enable kids to succeed in the 21st century,” Brown said. “But, unfortunately, it takes 18 years to make an engineer, and the crisis for talent is now.”
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Helping Veterans Is As Easy As Drinking This Beer. Seriously.
In the summertime, the most exertion many of us are willing to commit involves turning over some hamburgers on the barbecue. But a new brewery with a special mission is making helping veterans as easy as cracking open a bottle of beer.
Navy veteran Paul Jenkins and Marine Corps veteran Mike Danzer founded the Veteran Beer Company in 2012 with the goal of easing the veteran employment crunch by creating a company that would employ veterans and generate profits that could be donated to charities that help veterans. They began selling their two varieties—Blonde Bomber and The Veteran—on Veteran’s Day in 2013, and the company has been expanding ever since.
“We only anticipated to sell about 2,000 cases our first year,” Josh Ray, regional director of Veteran Brewing Company told Nicole Johnson of Valley News Live. “After four months, we did over 30,000 cases, and we’re pretty close to approaching 60,000 cases right now.”
Beer drinkers can now find Veteran Beer Company’s brews for sale in Indiana, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Ten percent of the profits go to veterans’ charities, and the rest is channeled back into the company. Veteran Beer Company, which brews its beer in Cold Spring, Minnesota, employs only veterans, and plans to hire more vets as it continues to expand.
“Some of the things that veterans are promised aren’t really always followed through on,” Ray said. “With this, it’s really our opportunity to give back.” And anyone planning to buy a six pack to celebrate a lazy summer afternoon can give back too.
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Helping Homeless Veterans Is on This Cafe’s Menu
When you order a plate of barbecue ribs, yams and collard greens at Veterans Cafe and Grill in Merrillville, Ind., it comes with a side of veterans’ assistance.
That’s right. Every purchase at the cafe supports not just the veteran employees that work there, but homeless vets, too.
Bessie Hitchcock, the co-owner of the restaurant, is also the director of operations for Veterans Life Changing Services, a nonprofit that provides transitional housing to homeless soldiers, in nearby Gary. She told Karen Caffarini of the Post-Tribune, “A portion of the proceeds generated by the restaurant are used to assist homeless veterans.”
Decorated in red, white and blue, the Veterans Cafe and Grill opened its doors in May, serving up items such as Master Sergeant’s Breakfast and Captain’s Breakfast.
The cafe’s co-owner, Marine Corps veteran Brian Cody, can relate to the service members that the restaurant helps. Three years ago, he sought assistance from Veterans Life Changing Services when he was homeless, and his health was deteriorating due to an injury. “I didn’t think I could walk again,” he told Chas Reilly of NWI Times. He began working as a caterer, and eventually hatched the plan with Hitchcock to open a vet-themed restaurant.
In addition to being one of the cooks at the Veterans Cafe, Cody also mentors other veterans in culinary skills so that they can find jobs in his restaurant and other eateries.
Terrell Junigan, an Army Reservist and Indiana University Northwest business student, also works at the cafe. “It’s hard for some veterans to find work here because of the economy and the area we live in,” he told Caffarini. “Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of jobs here, and the ones that are here, it’s kind of who you know to get them.”
But with this restaurant, it’s not who you know — but what you are and the country that you served that can land you a job.
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Can a Reverse Boot Camp Help Veterans Find Jobs?
When veterans return from serving their country, it can be hard for them to figure out how to switch gears and transition into a new career.
Genesis10, a St. Paul-based technology and business consulting firm, is doing its part to help veterans go “from deployed to employed,” according to a motto on its website. Part of the process involves what they call a “reverse boot camp,” which helps former service members understand how a business mindset differs from the military one. One specific part of the training? Teaching soldiers “corporate speak,” which is different than how they talked in the military.
Katie Garske, a Genesis10 communications and social media manager told Elizabeth Millard of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal — which named the firm one of its Eureka! Award winners for innovative businesses in the Twin Cities — that lots of programs try to help vets find jobs, but “while well-intentioned, many of these efforts fail to make a significant impact on veteran unemployment, because each approach only partially addresses the issues that contribute to the overall problem.”
After finding there was a persistent demand for IT employees, Genesis10 hired Marine Corps veteran and reserve member Nick Swaggert in 2013 to run its veterans program. The company begins by evaluating prospective veteran employees to find out what their aptitudes and interests are. When it determines a vet would be a good fit for the IT or business sectors, Genesis10 welcomes him or her into its reverse boot camp, so they learn what the firm’s clients are looking for in an employee.
On Genesis10’s website, one veteran writes about his five-month frustrating search for a job that ended when he met a recruiter from Genesis10 looking for veterans with experience in GIS (aka Geographical Information Systems), a military specialization.
“Much of the messaging surrounding veteran unemployment has been ‘do it because it’s patriotic,'” Garske told Millard. “But veterans are not pity hires. Our clients are hiring them because it is a smart business decision.”
MORE: Does Military Jargon Prevent Vets from Landing Jobs?
From Field Hands to Farmers: This Program Helps Latino Immigrants Become Land Owners
When asked what they want to be when they grow up, many little boys say that they want to be farmers. But when those small men become full-grown ones, a career in agriculture is often far from their minds.
That’s precisely the problem facing Minnesota. Those who own the state’s 69,000 farms are aging — averaging 56.6 years old — and many of their children aren’t interested in continuing the family business.
At the same time, more Latino immigrants than ever before are flocking to the state, and many of them would love to own their own farms, but they lack the necessary capital to purchase land.
It’s precisely these two demographic trends that inspired Ramon Leon, the CEO of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC) in Minneapolis, to find a way to help low-wage Latino workers become farmers.
Leon has experience in transforming the lives of low-wage immigrants. According to Tom Meersman of the Star Tribune, Leon’s organization has already helped many people previously employed as dishwashers and drivers become business owners. And three years ago, the LEDC established a training course for prospective farmers, provided them with loans, and set up Latino farming cooperatives, such as the Agua Gorda co-op (named after the Mexican town that many meatpacking workers in Long Prairie, Minnesota come from).
“There are a lot of Latino workers in agriculture that aspire to be farm owners if they had a chance,” John Flory of the LEDC told Meersman. “The question is what model can we use to bring them from being low-wage agricultural workers to having an opportunity to be a farm owner.”
The workers in the co-op keep their day jobs while farming rented fields on evenings and weekends. The first year, each member contributed $250 and all together, the group took out a $5,400 loan. They sold $7,000 worth of produce (including peppers, tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers), and eventually were able to expand their acreage and their sales to $40,000 last year. Their main focus? Developing connections in the community so that they can sell all of the produce they grow.
Many of the immigrants find that as their work roots them to the Minnesota soil, long-time residents are becoming more accepting of them. “When you go to communities the people start seeing you there working so hard, and they give you some respect,” Jaime Villalaz, business development specialist for the LEDC told Meersman. “They start thinking of us as good people.”
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