Feature image: Deron Hamilton, right, conducts interview training as part of LRFuse Co-Working. (Photo by Paul Atkins)
When it comes to homelessness, meeting the basic needs of food, shelter and safety are critical, and connecting people with transportation, jobs and job training can help those experiencing homelessness become self-sufficient. Equally important, though, is instilling financial literacy skills, such as budgeting, that can set individuals up for long-term success.
“There’s a lot of people that have experienced chronic homelessness that have never had any real exposure to money management, that have never had anyone say, ‘Hey, do you have anything saved up? In case something goes wrong, can you still make your rent?’” said Neil Denman, president of LRFuse Co-Working.
Neil Denman
Working from the Canvas Community Church in Little Rock, LRFuse provides life skills to people experiencing chronic homelessness that can help them be successful going forward. The organization offers a series of classes about resume building, becoming rent ready and more.
“We always do them in twos, so we talk about the theory of something. Then the next class is the implementation and practice of it,” Denman said. “Probably our most popular is job interview skills where we’ll do a class for an hour, and we’ll talk about job interview skills, and then the next week, we’re going to run mock interviews for people to help them walk through those skills and actually practice them.”
LRFuse also hosts an annual job fair. Many participants are also part of Little Rock’s Bridge to Work program, and they frequently receive mentoring from Pastor Paul Atkins, as well. When it comes to employment, transportation can be a major hurdle for people who are homeless, since they often rely on the bus system to get to work and job interviews.
That can lead to some resume gaps that can be hard to explain to a future employer, and Denman said LRFuse can help people find a way to say they were unemployed because they were homeless and what steps they have taken to improve their situation.
Other organizations can help people build an employment history and receive the training and education to pursue a career.
“Many people who join us, we’re the first ‘yes’ they get,” said Brian Marsh, president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Arkansas. “We’re the first job offer that they receive because they don’t have an employment history. It’s not a solid employment history, so they can work with us, go through our career pathways and earn more as they’re working for us but also get on a pathway for another career, be it with Goodwill or someone else.”
Brian Marsh
With a mission of changing lives through education, training and employment, Goodwill Industries of Arkansas can help lift people out of homelessness and poverty for good.
“Many times people say that, ‘I’m one paycheck from being in trouble,’” Marsh added. “Well, a lot of the people that we deal with are three missed hours on a paycheck from being in a catastrophic situation.”
When someone comes to the organization for assistance, Goodwill uses a self-sufficiency matrix to identify individuals in crisis and works with its partners to provide resources such as transportation, temporary housing and food pantries.
“If we find someone or identify someone who’s in crisis, we work to make sure that, one, we address the crisis situation because if you don’t have a place to sleep and you don’t have regular meals, you can’t learn in the high school because your focus isn’t on learning; it’s on surviving,” he said. “You can’t be a good employee if you don’t know where you’re going to sleep tonight or if you didn’t get any sleep last night or if you don’t have anything to eat.”
After those needs are met, Goodwill can help people start earning income, manage their finances and secure sustainable living arrangements. Learning the basics of budgeting is key to ensuring long-term success.
“If you do get housed and you may not be able to plan correctly and you can’t make that rent payment, you’re back on the street, which is extremely demoralizing,” Denman said.
Marsh agreed that financial literacy is important not just for people who are homeless but for everybody.
“If you do not have financial literacy, if you do not understand where your money is going, how to plan, then you won’t understand the opportunities to save and the power of time and interest to grow money, and you won’t have the discipline to be able to save for something because you won’t know that that’s possible,” he said.
Financial literacy training at Goodwill starts with understanding cashflow, which can be a challenge for anyone who has never been taught how to budget.
“Building a budget requires that we have a couple of things,” he said. “One is delayed gratification, and that’s difficult. That’s difficult if you’re someone who has been without or been with lesser means to wait and save for something because you don’t know if you’ll ever get to that number, and historically, they don’t have anything to draw upon.”
The next focus is debt relief, and once clients start earning enough to meet their basic needs, they start working toward a living wage that will get them on the path to buying a car and a home.
“That is the ABCs of work,” Marsh said. “It’s a job, a better job and a career.”
Goodwill has career ladders that can take people from an entry-level position to a career, he added, starting with scheduled raises if participants pass a proficiency test and going as far as scholarships to earn a high school diploma at the Excel Center or learn a trade at the Academy at Goodwill.
Nilvia Juarez, from left, instructor Miya Miller, Maryyah Ramadan and Kina Berry pose for a photo at the Academy at Goodwill in Little Rock.
“What that does is that then puts them on a pathway to a job making $15, $18, $22 an hour,” Marsh said.
He added that many of Goodwill’s clients are unbanked or underbanked, especially those in the reentry program. Representatives from Encore Bank visit the Goodwill Training & Education Centers in Little Rock and Springdale each month to answer questions and help people get banked, and Southern Bancorp also helps with tax preparation and financial management.
“If you’re unbanked, No. 1, you’re carrying all your money with you, which, if you’re chronically homeless, is not the safest thing to do,” Denman said. “If you do, at some point, get housing of some nature, you’ve got to worry about paying the bills and rent, and not having access to those bank accounts is really a big deal because it’s hard to just take the bus around and try to go pay your bills everyday as opposed to being able to pay them directly from your bank account.”
He added that LRFuse board member Mark Murphy at First Horizon Bank teaches a class on the importance of banking through the program. Securing a bank account can provide a major financial and psychological boost.
“I think it gives a big sense of pride that they have made a huge step forward,” Denman said. “They’ve got their bank account, and they’ve got some money they’re starting to get saved up. I think it’s a big issue of pride and an accomplishment.”
The cost of poverty is part of why homelessness can be difficult to overcome. People without a bank account incur additional fees when it comes to check cashing and other financial transactions. Without a safe place to store food, people who are homeless often pay for more expensive prepared items.
The generational nature of poverty can also keep people on the streets. As Marsh said, “You can’t be what you can’t see.”
“What happens, as I’ve seen, is that if you’re raised in a situation where you’re in crisis, you’re in a financially unstable situation as you’re growing up, it becomes the norm, so it’s hard to break out of that,” Marsh said. “It’s hard to break free of your preconceived [notions] and your experiences, so in order to move someone through that, really, sometimes it takes a life experience that causes them to break that path or to get off of that path.”
He added that the reentry program at Goodwill has a recidivism rate of less than 6 percent. The recidivism rate in Arkansas is almost 50 percent. Marsh credited Goodwill’s transitional employment opportunity program to helping individuals find a new way of life after prison.
“What that does is it takes them off the path that they were on that became a pretty circuitous path, and it puts them on another path,” he said. “Really, in order to break out of that, sometimes it takes a situation where change is thrust upon you or when you get to a point that you see the opportunity and you can grasp it.”
Having a criminal record can pose employment barriers for people who are homeless, Denman said, which can include the inability to pass a background check or simply encountering negative attitudes about incarceration.
“Unfortunately, it does come with some stigma,” Denman said. “People, for whatever reason, when they see some type of prison record, it does tend to turn them off from an employment position because they’re wondering, ‘Are they violent? Are they prone to theft?’ It’s just a general turnoff when a lot of people have overcome that many, many, many, many years ago, and it’s not really an issue for them.”
LRFuse has had a number of success stories. Denman shared a story about three men who became roommates after going through the program.
“They’re good friends. They have found where they need to be in life,” Denman said. “One of the big things that you think about when you think about homelessness is people on the run, but there’s actually a huge community, and a lot of the chronically homeless that come through Canvas, they watch out for each other.”
He encouraged anyone who would like to make a difference through LRFuse to donate at lrfuse.org, join the board to lend their connections to the organization or attend the job fair to see just what individuals experiencing homelessness are capable of.
“If you own a business, it would be great if you would come to one of our job fairs and talk to some of the people down there,” he said. “They all have great stories, great attitudes. The attitudes are fabulous. I think that’s one thing that would probably shock people the most if you haven’t experienced it is the very positive attitude and how well prepared everybody is when they come to these interview nights.”
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