Ending homelessness through employment and housing requires a focused effort aimed at building linkages with the mainstream workforce system, using innovative, proven strategies and advocating for the necessary resources and supports. Homeless jobseekers with barriers to employment are disadvantaged in the best of times. In the current economy, agencies need better tools and skilled practice. In this pre-conference session, we will help participants make use of new the Community Employment Pathway guidebook provided by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to create training and job opportunities, explore how hopeFound has combined a Housing First, work first program using motivational interviewing as a cornerstone practice. Speakers also addressed the need for local and national advocacy for financial resources, employment encouraging policies, and access to mainstream services.

1. EMPLOYMENT SERVICES FOR ADULTS EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS
hopeFound is dedicated to ending homelessness among men and women in Boston by
helping them achieve self-sufficiency and secure and maintain permanent housing.
We serve 3,000 individuals annually using three core strategies: Recovery, Employment
and Housing. Our services span street outreach, emergency shelter, addiction
treatment, employment assistance, and intensive, one-to-one assistance finding and
keeping permanent housing. Throughout our work, we are committed to outcomes
measurement, best practices, and innovation.
hopeFound reaches people who are frequently labeled the "hardest to serve" - single
men and women facing multiple challenges including addictions, mental health issues,
and long-term, chronic homelessness. We start from a difference premise: Respect for
all individuals and a belief that everyone has the potential to overcome homelessness.
IMPACT EMPLOYMENT SERVICES
IMPACT Employment Services, a program of hopeFound, was launched in1994 as a
regional job placement program specifically designed to address the multiple barriers
facing homeless individuals seeking employment. The program has grown to become
Boston's largest provider of employment services for homeless individuals, accepting
referrals and providing support for the city's entire homeless network.
IMPACT Employment Services reaches men and women with striking needs:
> 83% struggle with addictions;
> 49% have a mental health history;
> 60% have a history of involvement with the criminal justice system;
> 46% are chronically homeless, which means they have been homeless for more than
a year or repeatedly experienced homelessness.
Reflecting national statistics, 82% of IMPACT's clients are male and 18% are female.
The racial breakdown is 37% White, 35% African-American, 26% Latino, and 2% other.
EMPLOYMENT NEED
With Massachusetts’ unemployment still above 9%, even the most skilled and highly
educated workers struggle to find decent-paying jobs. Job seekers who are homeless
face exponentially higher barriers, barriers so high they "can be almost insurmountable,"
according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.
IMPACT Employment Services exists to break down these barriers and give men and
women who are homeless every possible opportunity to find and keep jobs. The
program addresses two urgent needs.
1. The need for specialized employment services for homeless individuals.
Traditional employment programs such as One Stop Career Centers are not equipped to
meet the complex, multiple challenges of homeless men and women who are also out of

2. work. These challenges can include medical conditions, mental health issues, substance
abuse problems, and histories of incarceration. Additional barriers to employment often
include limited educational background, lack of transportation, lack of technological
expertise, lack of workplace skills and experience, lack of appropriate interview and
workplace clothing, and no place to safely store job search materials like a resume.
2. The need to earn a living wage to end homelessness.
In the past decade, many nonprofits serving homeless men and women, hopeFound
included, have shifted their focus from managing homelessness in shelters to ending
homelessness by providing permanent housing. Yet housing is not the only solution.
Employment is equally important to help homeless men and women pay a portion or all
of their housing costs as they move toward self-sufficiency.
There is an especially strong need not just for jobs, but jobs that pay a living wage.
Almost half (44%) of the nation's homeless population works at least part time, but their
monthly income averages only $367 - nowhere near enough to pay for food and rent,
especially in a city like Boston, the fourth-most expensive rental market in the country,
with average monthly rents of $1,598.
A lack of income is an even more severe problem for the individuals enrolled in IMPACT.
Among individuals newly enrolled in the first quarter of 2010, 81% had no income at all,
11% earned under $6,000 a year, and 8% earned between $6,000 and $15,000 a year.
IMPACT addresses the need for earned income by helping men and women who are
homeless find and keep jobs while also developing a career path from minimum wage to
living wage jobs.
RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS: FINDING JOBS, ENDING HOMELESSNESS
Amid the worst economy since the Great Depression, IMPACT enrolled 395 individuals
in 2009 and achieved a job placement rate of 56%, with an average salary of $11.30;
30% making more than Boston's living wage of $12.62 per hour. Perhaps the strongest
indicator of the program's success was the number of individuals who left the program
with housing:175 housed.
In 2009, IMPACT also successfully launched a new initiative, WorkFirst, a three-year
demonstration project to help 140 formerly homeless, newly housed men and women
find and keep jobs. The project is the first of its kind in Boston and one of only a handful
of similar projects around the country.
IMPACT's work is known and respected among policymakers and practitioners. In 2003,
it was honored as a "best practice" by the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
JOB PREPARATION, PLACEMENT AND RETENTION SUPPORT
IMPACT includes specialized job assessment, job-targeted educational and skills
training, job development and placement, and initial employment supports. It also
includes WorkFirst; Project Team, which links homeless individuals with food stamps,
and a young adult component that provides specialized assistance for homeless or
precariously housed 18 to 24-year-olds.
We estimate an average of 20 hours of involvement per client with great variety in the
level of involvement among clients. In particular, it is not uncommon for clients to use

3. our Job Search Resource Room as an office and to log more than 100 visits during a
prolonged job search. The Resource Room offers computers, printers, a dedicated IT
staff person, and a well-organized roster of trained volunteers.
IMPACT EMPLOYMENT SERVICES: CORE STRATEGIES
a. Recruitment and Assessment: Targeted outreach and recruitment is conducted at
community-based organizations serving homeless men, women and young adults.
IMPACT is located on Chauncy Street in downtown Boston, easily accessible to clients
by public transportation. Our multilingual staff (English, Spanish and Polish) assesses
client’s education, skills, employment, legal, substance abuse, mental health, and
physical histories. Together, staff and client develop an Employment Action Plan.
b. Job-Targeted Educational and Skills Training: After developing the Employment
Action Plan, clients gain access and referrals to educational resources, job training, and
on-site technology training in computer proficiency to develop job-targeted skills. An
Employment Portfolio is developed to include a resume, cover letters, and references.
Referrals are made for employment-related support services, such as medical care,
mental health care and legal services and are supported by other hopeFound services
such as addiction treatment and housing placement.
c. Job Development and Placement: IMPACT's staff and volunteers help clients with
all aspects of job searching from how to read an ad, how to interview and how to write
thank you letters. Clients gain access to IMPACT's on-site Job Search Resource Room
and links to local and regional job training providers and employers. Additionally,
IMPACT provides support services such as voicemail, email, transportation assistance,
clothing for interviews and help gaining IDs. The result of these activities is competitive
employment.
d. Initial Employment Support: Once placed in jobs, clients receive post-placement job
retention support to address on-the-job issues. Conflict resolution, problem solving and
life skills development result in clients making progress toward stability and confidence
in job duties and workplace relationships. Ongoing support, such as coaching to address
career goals, helps clients retain employment long-term. Employment counselors mentor
each client working toward long-term employment and self-sufficiency.
WORKFIRST: THE NEWEST IMPACT EMPLOYMENT SERVICES INITIATIVE
In the fall of 2009 hopeFound launched WorkFirst, a three-year demonstration project to
support long-term housing retention and self-sufficiency among 140 newly housed,
formerly homeless men and women.
WorkFirst, described as "pioneering" in The Boston Globe, will test the premise that
adding employment services to post-placement housing support improves outcomes for
new tenants. The project design includes an evaluation and the results will be
disseminated to local, state and national audiences to advance knowledge within the
fields of workforce development and homeless services.
WorkFirst is now up and running, with the first clients enrolled, staff hired, partnerships
established, an original curriculum, an external evaluator and a distinguished Advisory
Board of local, state and national policymakers and practitioners.
The project design encompasses outreach and recruitment; individualized assessments;

4. mobile career counseling through home and office visits; pre-employment skill building;
job search assistance and coaching; scholarship support and stipends; employment
placement and on-site job coaching; post-placement support and career coaching for up
to 18 months; and ancillary support including access to a post office box, email and
voice mail, interview clothing and travel assistance.
WorkFirst's guiding philosophy is client-centered, strengths-based and non-coercive,
with a goal of helping each participant not only secure employment but also identify and
follow a career advancement path. Our original curriculum translates the "stages of
change" theory developed by addiction treatment experts to a vocational setting. This
approach makes it possible to engage clients at the very earliest stages of change,
helping them move toward work in incremental steps.
CURRENT CONDITIONS: 2010
Despite a few recent promising economic indicators, the outlook for homeless men and
women seeking jobs remains bleak.
At IMPACT, the decline of the once-buoyant economy has led to lower job placement
rates: from 69% in 2007 to 56% in 2009. It has also influenced the average wage earned
by IMPACT clients, which rose from $11.01 in 2007 to $11.48 in 2008, but then slipped
to $11.30 in 2009.
IMPACT is responding to these challenges by proactively seeking new partnerships with
employers and increasing the skill level of applicants by directing greater numbers of
program participants to job training programs, GED courses, and college.
GOALS FOR 2010:
1. Enroll 350 individuals in IMPACT Employment Services
2. Of those enrolled, 210 (60%) will find or upgrade employment.
3. Of those employed, 15% will earn at least Boston's living wage of $12.79 for 2010.
4. Of those employed, 60% will retain their job for more than 6 months.
5. Of those who exit the program, 65% will have housing.
MEASURING SUCCESS
hopeFound has a strong commitment to continuous improvement within its programs
and services by measuring and monitoring successes and challenges.
Program outcomes are set annually as part of hopeFound's agency-wide outcomes
measurement process, which is based on a model developed by the United Way.
Senior managers review progress toward goals quarterly and data is aggregated to
inform organizational planning, including regular Board reports. When goals are met,
best practices are discussed and shared. If goals are not met, an analysis is conducted,
revealing deficiencies in funding, a change in the client base, a lack of outreach or a shift
in needs. hopeFound has been using this outcomes measurement system for the past
five years and now has long-term trend data, which is especially useful for measuring
and monitoring program challenges and successes.
The key tool to capture and analyze data is Efforts to Outcomes (ETO), an agency-wide
database used by many human service providers.

5. Program outcomes are linked with an Employee Performance Review system, with all
staff held accountable for program performance. Employees are reviewed annually, with
performance reviews based on client outcomes. The result is a competency-based
organization that is grounded in the need of each client while striving toward the larger
goal of ending homelessness.
APPLYING LESSONS LEARNED
IMPACT uses outcomes measurement data as a key tool for strategic change and
program improvements. They have helped IMPACT improve performance in the
following ways:
1. ENROLLMENTS: A recent review of referral data led to the recognition that some
referral sources were not making appropriate referrals (the clients were not homeless).
These same clients were being pressured by their referral source to find any job - as
opposed to a job with a living wage - and therefore their job retention rate was not very
good. A meeting was held with the referral provider where program eligibility and job
placement philosophy were clarified. A written memorandum of understanding was also
signed, reinforcing the partners’ agreements.
2. LIVING WAGE JOBS: IMPACT is dedicated to helping clients find and keep living
wage jobs. To better understand where clients succeed, we recently analyzed a year of
employment data.
The data revealed that the food service sector was by far the leading employer of
hopeFound clients, yet the majority of food sector jobs paid less than a living wage job.
Within the food service sector, however, we identified a handful of employers (including
Legal Seafood and Dunkin Donuts) with a strong track record of not only employing
hopeFound clients but also retaining them for more than 6 months. We also found that
the highest hourly wages were in the marketing, health care, and building maintenance
sectors.
Another sector that employed many IMPACT clients, frequently at jobs above the living
wage, was temporary staffing. IMPACT Employment Counselors reviewed this data
collectively and are using it to steer clients to employers and sectors with a strong track
record of living wage jobs and job retention.
______________________________________________________________________
For more information call 617-983-0351 or visit www.hopefoundboston.org
Mary Nee, Executive Director Ext. 312
Wendy Lauser, Workforce Development Director, Ext 271