Street Roots
Jan. 5-11,2018
News
Page 7
Rent assistance program pays off for folks seeking work
BY A M A N D A W A LDRO UPE
STAFF WRITER
program that provides job-training
skills to low-income Portlanders has
shown that participants who are given
rent assistance while in the program are far
more likely to finish it, get a job and earn
higher wages.
The Economic Opportunity Program is a
job-training program of Worksystems, the
local workforce development board for the
Portland metropolitan area, that provides
job training and career coaching to
impoverished and homeless people.
Three years ago, the program began
giving rent assistance to as many of its
participants as possible. In a recently
published report analyzing the impact that
the rent assistance had, Worksystems found
that people who received rent assistance
were:
■ 38 percent more likely to complete job
training,
■ 67 percent more likely to get a job in
the career they wanted to pursue, and
■ their income was at least twice as much
as the income of people who did not receive
rent assistance.
To have the outcomes that we’re seeing,
it’s a good investment,” Blair Schaeffer-
Bisht, a senior project manager at
Worksystems who oversaw the program,
said.
The Economic Opportunity Program
began in 2012. Targeted to w ard low -incom e
and homeless people, the program provides
up to three years of job training, assistance
with job searching and other services.
Schaeffer-Bisht said some program
participants have little work history and
work on skills as basic as English speaking,
earning a general education diploma (GED),
basic reading, writing, and typing skills.
Others need help writing resumes,
interviewing for a job, or developing the
interpersonal and communication skills to
feel comfortable in a workplace.
Deandre Kenyanjui, a career coach who
works at the social-service agency Central
City Concern and has clients in the
Economic Opportunity Program, said some
people need to be taught to let their boss
know if they are sick and can’t come to
work, or to cancel appointments a person
cannot make instead of simply not showing
up.
“To the population that we work with,
that is completely foreign to them,” he said.
While participants can pursue any job
they want, Schaeffer-Bisht said, the program
concentrates on providing skills and training
in the health care, construction,
manufacturing and IT sectors, due to
demand, job security and the opportunity
for advancement.
Three years ago, the program noticed
that many of the participants who were
either homeless or on the verge of
homelessness either would not finish the
program or, if they did, were unable to keep
they re likely to remain employed, which, in
turn, means a much better chance they will
remain in housing.
That, Schaeffer-Bisht said, has important
implications for ending a person’s poverty
and their reliance on public assistance.
“Once they have jobs that are not
minimum wage, they no longer need rent
assistance or other public benefits,” said.
“The economic stability allows them to
(support themselves).”
Malcolm Hoover is one person who
credits receiving rent assistance with being
able to successfully complete the Economic
Opportunity Program.
“I can’t say that I wouldn’t have made it,”
he said. “I don’t know if that’s true. But I
wouldn’t be as stable as I am now. I wouldn’t
have had that backstop.”
He received six months of rent
assistance through the program, which he
said gave him the “mental and spiritual
insurance” to not worry about housing and
to focus on finding a job.
Hoover has a long history of working in
government bureaucracies, including for the
city of Oakland and Alameda County in
California. He was living and working in
Oakland when he saw “some traumatic
events,” including witnessing the deaths of
more than one person. He started using
coke, first using only on the weekends. But
the habit soon became daily.
He moved to Portland and his life became
A
source :
a job.
“When housing and other basic needs
aren’t met, it’s just too challenging to be at a
work site at six in the morning or at a
training program,” said Patrick Gihring, a
chief program officer at Worksystems.
In October 2015, the program started
giving rent assistance to homeless or
unstably housed people, using $125,000 in
funds from Home Forward, the Portland
metropolitan area’s housing authority, in the
first year.
Early data showed that the funds were
effective, and by the second year were
increased to $475,000, with money coming
from the Portland Housing Bureau, Home
Forward, and A Home for Everyone.
A total of 169 people were given rent
assistance. On average, the monthly rent
assistance contributions amounted to $590
per person, for approximately four and a half
months.
The amount of assistance each person
was given varied depending on the situation,
and in some cases paid 100 percent of the
rent.
Some of the reasons people faced housing
instability were circumstances that have
become far too common due to the region’s
housing crisis. Gihring said one participant
was evicted while she went through the
program and lived in a truck stop.
Nearly a third of the participants who
received rent assistance owed back rent to
their current landlord or owed money to
Dignity
former landlords, debts that had to be paid
so they could find new housing. On average,
each participant had $890 in such debts.
Paying security deposits were the only
barrier to housing for some program
participants. The average security deposit
payment the program made was $1,242, for
26 people, 24 of which were homeless.
The report found that nearly every
participant who received rent assistance
remained stably housed while they went
through the Economic Opportunity
Program.
The program was not able to meet the
total demand for rent assistance: 46 people
who qualified did not receive assistance due
to limited funding.
But that created a natural comparison
group and a way to clearly see how receiving
rent assistance affected a person’s job
prospects.
For instance, the report found that the
average income of people who received rent
assistance was $24,678. The average income
of people who did not receive assistance was
dramatically lower, at $14,410.
Gihring said he is not necessarily
surprised by the results. “You expect it,” he
said. “Once you remove the barriers ...
they’re on equal footing and have similar
results” to people who do not experience
homelessness or stress related to staying in
their housing.
Schaeffer-Bisht said that once someone is
able to keep a job for six months to a year,
m o re ch ao tic. H e co u ch -su rfed w ith d iffe re n t
p e o p le and s le p t in c ars. A t o n e p o in t, h e
wound up in a hotel with two duffel bags full
of the only possessions he still had. He was
too high at the time to even remember
where he was, even to this day.
“My life fell apart. I just felt worthless. I
felt horrible. It’s the lowest I’ve ever felt in
my life,” he said.
After a year and a half of using drugs, last
year he entered drug treatment at Central
City Concern. He also lived in housing
provided by Central City Concern; the rent
was paid for with rent assistance from the
Economic Opportunity Program.
He now works as the equity coordinator
at the Oregon Food Bank, a job he started
last May. Kenyanjui was Hoover’s career
coach, mainly helping Hoover revise his
resume, and provided a good dose of moral
support. “He reminded me to talk about my
achievements. Reminded me that I had
achievements,” Hoover said.
“He had all this (work) experience. He
just needed some assistance,” Kenyanjui
said.
Kenyanjui said all the clients he provided
career coaching to and who received rent
assistance “are doing amazing.” And he sees
a stark contrast in people who are less
stably housed.
“There are so many other people ... who
would be doing so much better, and would
be just as successful.”
Poverty