Hope

One of the articles in today’s local newspaper had to do with homelessness, veterans, and hope. You might initially think that this is an unusual combination of words, but San Diego is a military town and so will have a good number of veterans. California has a relatively large homeless population, so it stands to reason that San Diego would have its share of homeless veterans, and it does. One of the worst things about being homeless is the despair that goes along with it, and one big thing that society can try do is to offer them some hope . . . hope that things will get better. The article was about a “Back2Work” program which hires homeless veterans in San Diego to work temporarily for the California Department of Transportation’s clean-up crews. The program also teaches skills to help them find permanent jobs, such as resume-writing, interviewing techniques, etc. Some  of the luckier ones will stay on at the California D.O.T. Recently Caltrans has hired more veterans through Back2Work, expanding from 3 crews to 7 crews with 12-15 workers on each crew. Bill McClinton, a Caltrans superintendent in San Diego said, “They help with our workloads. We’re kind of short right now for some crews, so it’s been very beneficial.” The program has an 84% success rate, with 153 people leaving their temporary jobs at Caltrans for other employment after three to six months.

Norma Murillo, 38, Marine Corps from 2001-2006, was one of the first to work on a Caltrans crew in 2017.  “I was homeless, unemployed, and in recovery. . . . When I started working, I started to see a little bit of hope.” In February she began a new job as a an official technician with Caltrans. Wow, I thought, “This is a great program because it provided hope for homeless veterans here in San Diego.

In an apparently unrelated story, we just got back from taking three of our granddaughters to Chicago for a few days. We stayed at an Embassy Suites and did a lot of walking – from five to six miles a day. As you are probably aware four days anywhere involves a lot of eating, especially with teenagers. A lot of things stood out on this trip, but what stood out the most to me was the number of youths, all black, between the ages of 18-25 who worked at the various places to eat. UNO’s pizza, Pot Belly sandwiches, Shake Shack ice cream, Garret’s popcorn, and Safe House restaurant all had black late-teens and young adults working as clerks, waiters and waitresses. Likewise at the Embassy Suites’ “breakfast is included,” the staff clearing the tables was made up entirely of young black women. All of these black youths were well dressed, attentive, and extremely polite. (I usually try to avoid all-inclusive words like “all” in my essays, but here I need to emphasize “all.”) I thought “what an outstanding way for these black youths to get introduced to the workforce.” Obviously these were all entry level type jobs or perhaps summer jobs,  but they were jobs! These jobs provided hope for their future.

Where am I going with this? These two apparently unrelated stories are in fact related! Here we have two separate groups, homeless veterans and black youths, who have historically had little hope for a good future. Here we have two very different stories of ways to provide hope, through jobs. In the first story Caltrans was short on some crews, and with the low unemployment rate, Back2Work used ingenuity to help homeless veterans get into the workforce, and thus provide hope for their futures.
In Chicago, something is causing entry level jobs to be available to black youth. In September 2018, the 3.7 percent unemployment rate, a nearly 50-year low, helped all U.S. workers, but it’s especially beneficial to disadvantaged groups that have struggled to land jobs — like black teenagers. The jobless rate for African-Americans age 16 to 19 fell from 20.1 percent to 19.3 percent in October, 2018, the lowest on records dating to 1972. In May 2019 the unemployment rate for black youth was down to 23.9%, up slightly, but still a dramatic drop from 49% in 2010.

Why did I see a plethora of black youth working in and near downtown Chicago? To me the answer is quite simple – The economy, the Trump economy, is driving down the unemployment rate and so employers are hiring those that they were not considering before. I am not alone in thinking this way. “As the labor market tightens, employers have to look to workers they ordinarily don’t (consider), like black teens,” says Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
This Trump economy is providing hope for the futures of many black youths in Chicago, as well as many homeless veterans in San Diego!