Job Clearinghouse Helps Homeless and Businesses’ Profits at Same Time

When purchasing executives at San Diego National Bank first learned they could give homeless men and women work stuffing envelopes at the Episcopal Community Service work center, they proceeded with customary caution, giving the work center a small job to test the quality of the service.

Six months later, the bank contracts with the center regularly for projects that need the kind of meticulous handiwork that machines can’t do and which are too menial for higher-paid clerical employees.

“We’re really well satisfied with the work they are doing and pleased that it’s helping some people who might not otherwise be employed,” said San Diego National Bank President Murray Galinson. “I do think there’s a charitable side to it--that it’s helping people who need the work--but it’s also a savings to us because it’s cheaper than using our own employees.”

Hard-boiled business considerations, rather than charity, have made the work center a success, said program sales manager Steve Baker, a 37-year-old former youth minister whose idea it was to start the homeless workshop. “We have good prices, we’re good and the turnaround time is like that,” Baker said, snapping his fingers.

A U.S. Department of Labor grant awarded earlier this month will enable the program to expand to twice its current size. The money was awarded to the San Diego Consortium and Private Industry Council, a city-county funded group that helps low-income and homeless people get jobs. The group, which will channel the grant to homeless aid groups, expects to have reached about 700 homeless people by March of next year, finding jobs for more than 200 of them.

About half of the $539,000 grant will go to the St. Vincent de Paul-Joan Kroc Center, which also provides shelter and training to homeless people, and the other half to Episcopal Community Services, which will use part of its share to expand the workshop, said Stan Shroeder, the Industry Council’s assistant chief executive.

“The work center is a good way for people to show they are stabilized and ready to go into the private sector,” Shroeder said. “We see lots of jobs in San Diego, but we see homeless people unprepared to compete for them. Our program is geared toward increasing the skills of homeless people so they can compete for those jobs.”

The Episcopal Services Center is one of at least six privately operated workshops that employ the down-and-out throughout San Diego County. Workers are generally referred to the center through the church group’s emergency services arm, though many people simply wander in from the streets looking for work, Baker said.

Frank Landerville, project director for the Regional Task Force on the Homeless, said that, although there are about 1,600 shelter beds throughout the county, only about 100 homeless people a day are receiving any kind of job counseling through programs similar to the Episcopal Services workshop.

“Like most other major metropolitan areas, San Diego has responded pretty well to the problem ‘How do we get someone through the night?’ ” Landerville said. “But the question about ‘How do they put their lives back together?’--and getting a job is key to that--hasn’t really been addressed except in a few examples.”

Although there is an abundance of easy-to-find minimum wage jobs, there are very few “livable wage” jobs and hardly any jobs between those two levels to help homeless people make the transition off the streets, Landerville said.

Workers at the Episcopal Center receive the minimum wage of $4.25 an hour for a maximum of about 20 hours of work. During that time, case managers evaluate their skills and employability before helping them find permanent jobs. Most of the workshop’s jobs involve stuffing envelopes or pasting labels for bulk mailings, although workers have also been employed to measure out buffer powder used to clean microscope slides.

The center has done work for about 25 businesses so far. The largest bulk mailing job that the center has taken on involved 600,000 pieces. Depending on the size of the job, businesses pay anything from 6 cents to 10 cents apiece, Baker said.

Diane Nichols, forms and printing services manager for Great American Bank, which has been contracting with the center since its inception, said the center’s low prices outweighed any concerns about the workers’ cleanliness or ability to do good work.

“Basically, the reason we started doing business with them is that they are extremely competitive,” Nichols said. “There was skepticism because they were a new business,” but she said her bank now has since made the transition to seeing the service as a viable vendor, not just a charity.

Except for the sound of a radio, the small, concrete-floored workshop on Broadway near 12th Avenue was quiet yesterday as about 15 people, including a woman accompanied by her 3-year-old son, worked on a mailing for a church newsletter.

It was Patrick Spragley’s first day at the workshop, and the articulate 27-year-old homeless man clearly wanted to make a good impression. As he carefully applied mailing labels to the newsletter, making sure not to cover up any text, he spoke about what he hoped to gain from his experience at the work center.

“I thought this was the best way to get my foot in the door,” said Spragley, who left his family and a life of drugs in Washington two weeks ago to make a new start in San Diego. “I’d rather be here trying to keep myself busy. It gives me time to think. I don’t have that much skills, so I’ll probably go to school to get into welding.”

Another worker, Stephanie Neal, 29, also a reformed drug user, said the program helped her because “I know I have to be here at 9 a.m. and not be late as if I had a real job. It gets you motivated to look for another job.”

Neal, a pregnant mother of five, said she hopes to eventually find a job as a cashier, bus driver or assistant nurse, something that pays a little more, but that stuffing envelopes and pasting labels is a good diversion for the time being.

“You’ve got to start somewhere,” she said. “Plus, when I go out to find jobs, I can use this as a reference.”