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Recommendations
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Jobs-Plus: Welfare, Housing, and Employment: Learning from the Jobs-Plus Demonstration (05/01/01)
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These findings open questions that need further exploration, but they strongly suggest that public officials ought to make housing status a key consideration in developing strategies to strengthen mainstream welfare-to-work programs. They also indicate that special efforts may be required in order to promote big improvements in the self-sufficiency of welfare recipients in public housing.
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JOBS-PLUS Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing: Participating in a Place-Based Employment Initiative (11/01/03)
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- Take advantage of informal, ad hoc ways available to a place-based program to engage and assist residents wherever they live and “hang out.”
- Offer individualized assistance to residents as well as standardized group services on-site, and develop referral partnerships with local service agencies to address residents’ various employment needs, cultural backgrounds, and eligibility for different categorical services.
- Form partnerships with local ethnic organizations to develop specific outreach and employment services for the various languages, cultural practices, and immigration-related problems of residents in multicultural communities.
- Recruit residents to help with program outreach and service delivery in order to draw on their social networks and knowledge of local conditions and needs, to win the trust of the community, and to attract participants to the program.
- Designate a program staff member to coordinate residents’ outreach and service activities, and provide training for those responsibilities.
- Use employment-related support services, such as monthly bus tokens or passes, as a “hook” to bring working residents regularly into the office to ask them about their employment and help them with career advancement.
- Arrange for the management office to send the program monthly updates of
incoming residents, and have a program staff member attend move-in interviews
with new residents and annual lease renewal interviews with current residents, in order to orient and enroll them into the program.
- Have the housing management office inform the program of job gains and losses among the residents and incidences of domestic violence, substance abuse, and other problems that can undercut their employment, so that the program can follow up.
- Arrange for the local welfare agency to identify welfare recipients who reside in the housing development or neighborhood and who might be recruited by the program.
- Have the local welfare agency recognize participation in the program’s employment activities as a way for welfare recipients to fulfill their work requirements.
- Consider substituting participation in Jobs-Plus as the mandated work activity for welfare recipients, thereby requiring recipients to visit the program office to enroll and to check in regularly to receive their benefits.
- Colocate welfare-to-work caseworkers with the program staff at the housing development or in the neighborhood, and integrate them into the program’s efforts to recruit welfare recipients, to develop and implement individual service plans, and to monitor job retention and career development needs.
- Arrange with the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) One-Stop Center for program staff and participants to have on-line access through the program’s computers to the One-Stop’s database of employment openings.
- Train program staff in the procedures for processing applications for local WIA funds and programs so staff can help residents assemble paperwork before going to WIA offices.
- Make arrangements to ensure the safety of residents when traveling to and from the One-Stop Center.
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JOBS-PLUS Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families: Implementing Financial Work Incentives in Public Housing (07/01/04)
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- In deciding whether to implement rent incentives plans that involve gradually increasing steps, do not count on residents' income levels keeping pace with higher rents that the plans impose, especially in the short term.
- For ease of administration, consider the advantages of flat-rent plans and plans without rent steps, which involve calculations that are somewhat simpler than calculations for income-based plans with steps.
- In formulating plans for changes in rent rules, recognize that these incentives may not necessarily exercise a strong influence on whether residents go to work, which depends on many factors, but that they also have the potential to strengthen work efforts in other ways -- for example, by making it more advantageous for additional household members to work or by encouraging people to stay employed.
- Do not expect that official announcements and flyers about the availability of rent incentives will suffice to catch the residents' attention. To publicize these benefits adequately, devote energy to ongoing marketing campaigns with multiple strategies that involve personal interactions between staff and residents in groups and one-on-one. Involve resident volunteers to help get the word out and to counteract suspicion of the housing authority.
- Recognize that many housing managers command the respect of tenants and that their personal efforts to promote rent incentives can be a key asset to marketing campaigns.
- Incorporate efforts to educate residents about the incentives plans into other events, such as annual rant reviews.
- Under incentives plans that involved rent steps, be ready to offer on going clarifications and reminders to prepare residents for periodic rent increases.
- Make outreach and education on rent incentives part of a broader effort to help residents take advantage of other financial work supports-- including the EITC, food stamps, and child care subsidies-- that can help make low-wage work pay.
- Given the modest sums involved in most bonus accounts and rent credit payments and the expenditures of staff time needed to monitor employment status, consider requiring only quarterly or less frequent tracking to determine whether residents qualify for these benefits.
- To improve the operation of a rent incentives plan, provide housing managers with the training needed to meet the challenges associated with a role that expands their responsibilities beyond property management.
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JOBS-PLUS Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families: Mobilizing Resident Networks in Public Housing (06/01/04)
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- Clearly specify from the outset the community outreach worker's role and responsibilities.
- Select the right residents for the job.
- Ensure that the outreach workers receive compensation.
- Make the program staff ultimately accountable for the performance of the outreach workers.
- Retain certain program responsibilities with the professional staff.
- Maintain an appropriate distance from the housing authority, and cultivate the support of the resident advisory council.
- Address crime and safety problems jointly with efforts to deploy outreach workers.
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