Pathways to Housing provides consumer choice: Housing first...employment next

MENTAL HEALTH NEWS 

By Annora Karas MS, CRC

Director, Vocational Services and Human Resources

The right to a place to live, the right to a job and the right to choose them both are values that fuel the passions of creative and dedicated Pathways to Housing staff!  Pathways staff work together with their tenants—formerly homeless men and women who have coexisting psychiatric and substance abuse problems—to develop equal opportunities and a life within possibilities.  Pathways to Housing, Inc., a progressive, community based, not for profit organization established in 1992 by its visionary leader Dr. Sam Tsemberis, founded the agency on the belief that the cure for homelessness is a place to live.  People living on the street cannot contemplate matters such as treatment, recovery and employment when they are waging a war for daily survival.  Pathways treats homelessness by giving people apartments of their own.  Once housed safely, with basic human needs met and psychiatric and substance abuse problems addressed, Pathways found that many of the tenants wanted to work.  If the cure for homelessness is a place to live then why is the cure for unemployment not a job?  Pathways believes that it is!

Vocational Initiatives

Tenant Worker Program

Driven by consumer choice, Pathways modeled their first vocational initiative, Pathways Tenant Worker Program, on the housing first principle and gave tenants who wanted to work a job.  Keeping with the housing first model, no requirements for medication compliance, abstinence or sobriety were established.  When most vocational programs were administering interest inventories, evaluating skills, abilities, motivation and training people for employment, Pathways’ tenants were earning better than minimum wage and performing necessary work in jobs which would have been otherwise filled through traditional staff recruitment measures.  Tenant worker jobs, when available, are schedules for 20 hrs or less a week dependant upon the position and tenant choice.  Jobs are often shared and per diem “back up slots” have been created to allow tenants to “try” rather than commit.  What Pathways staff shortly discovered was (1) nothing succeeds better than a “try” and that most who tried succeeded (2) the demand for jobs began to snowball; the motivation to work is often proportional to the reality of getting a job, and (3) peer success serves as a strong role model.  Pathways to Housing, today, has approximately 75 tenants employed as receptionist/clerical workers, maintenance workers, messengers, building repair people, nutritionist assistant, medical clerk and activity leaders at the six ACT team office sites located in East and West Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn and Westchester County.  Cleaning/moving teams have been developed to provide cleaning services for tenants who need and want a little extra help around the house or when a tenant moves in and out of an apartment.  Driver assistants, stock clerks and cashier/sales associates work at the Pathways Thrift Store in Jamaica Queens.  All tenant workers are employed at $5.25 hr. during an initial three-month introductory work period.  Following a satisfactory evaluation of work performance, at the end of this time, a salary increase is awarded.  Most tenant workers currently earn $6 hr. and some who do more difficult and grueling work can earn up to $10-12 an hour.

Thrift Store: A Social Enterprise

October 2002 heralded the opening of Pathways Thrift Store, our first Social Enterprise located in the busy shopping district of Jamaica, Queens at 92-10 147^th Place, off Jamaica Avenue.  The Thrift Store is an entrepreneurial project with a social purpose and is operated as a business that expects to be self-supporting and, indeed, generate a profit.  Pathways Thrift Store offers quality goods at very low prices to residents in surrounding communities.  The store also provides both transitional employment for tenants seeking to enter the mainstream job market and primary employment for others.  While providing a supportive work environment, the manager of the store, a person who has both a business and clinical background, expects his staff who are tenant workers to report to work on time, fulfill the demands of the job in a professional manner, provide customer friendly service and maintain appropriate work behaviors.  Allowances are not made for sloppy work and abusive conduct.  Accomodations are made for those who want to work and need guidance and support to realize this goal.

Pathways Thrift Store is an attractive, clean and welcoming place to work and shop.  The interior and windows are decorated seasonally; there are warm smiles to greet you and a dish full of candy to taste.  Customers quickly learn that the thrift store is not only a relaxing and courteous place to shop, but also a place to visit, browse and engage employees in friendly conversation.  Pathways is educating the community about mental illness.  Tenant workers are selling more than merchandise; they are “selling” their abilities and making friends with the community.  As employees, tenant workers are honing social skills, realizing self worth and developing the social confidence (so often lost in the illness process) to relate to the public.  Pathways Thrift Store can only provide regularly schedule part time employment for 9-12 workers and this job is highly coveted among the tenants.  It is certainly, we feel, an empowering employment opportunity.

Donors and shoppers alike quickly embraced Pathways Thrift Store!  What have been some of the reasons for the early success that established this thrift store as a credible social enterprise business?  We believe that the overreaching reason has been that donors and customers, alike, have been treated equally with respect and appreciation, a basic Pathways practice that has governed all of our operations.  This practice in concert with a (1) focused donor solicitation plan (2) defined advertising campaign and (3) customer driven merchandizing, have been the building blocks of our early success.

Practical and operational keys to our successful donor solicitations included (a) developing a targeted mail campaign which is repeated at defined intervals, (b) responding to donors requests for pick up of large donations in a timely manner and (c) the small business, customer friendly, respectful approach of the thrift store employees.  Pathways Thrift Store has been the fortunate recipient of increasingly large donations from many new donors.  Among merchandise donated, in addition to clothing, shoes, accessories, toys, books, home furnishings, collectibles, and costume jewelry, have been many unique items of furniture and fur coats as well as artwork and electronics.  On any given day a full house can be furnished and a large family clothed for all seasons at Pathways Thrift Store.  No small accomplishment for a 6-month old fledgling business with the heavy New York City competition for donors!

Practical and operational keys of a defined advertising campaign that established the thrift store as a visible community presence included (a) creative and repetitive advertising in many local newspapers featuring discount coupon campaigns (b) distribution of flyers by our own tenants on the sidewalks of Jamaica Avenue and (c) publicity derived from a human interest article about the thrift store published in a local newspaper.

From the very beginning Pathways Thrift Store has been responsive to the needs of the community, providing a place to shop that offers quality, gently used, personal and home furnishings at very low prices.  A loyal customer following was developed by giving the community what it wants.  Pathways did not attempt to walk in the footprints of other thrift stores e.g. developing inventories of antiques or exclusive designer clothing.  Although valuable, costly and collectible merchandise has been collected and sold, the mainstay of Pathways’ business has been the sale of merchandise, at very low cost, that residents of the surrounding communities need and want and can afford.  We believe that is the primary reason that the community has shopped Pathways and have sent their friends and relatives to shop as well.

Mainstream Competitive Employment

Some of Pathways tenants are working competitively in the community.  Often these are people who are highly resourceful, have more recent work histories and have found their own jobs.  Some people are former tenant workers who were, with support of the ACT team, able to secure and maintain competitive employment.  Many of them developed the confidence and gained the work experience to enter the competitive job market in the Pathways Tenant Worker Program.  We are very proud of all of these people and seek to assist others in this goal – if they chose to do so.  Staff from Columbia University, School of Social Work, Work Opportunities for Rewarding Careers (WORC) program, is currently providing training and technical assistance for twenty selected Pathways staff to enrich and expand their current vocational expertise, to develop jobs in the local labor market and place and support tenants in competitive employment.  We are currently poised to hire an experience job developer to work with those tenants who want jobs.  Look for Pathways Career Clubs & Pathways Job Banks – coming soon to an ACT Team site near you!

The Future-Pathways Florist