Dayton Job Center

Massive One Stop Center for Jobs....

Dayton features the largest one-stop employment center in the United States called the Job Center. It is a huge--renovated old warehouse that was updated to be roomy, well lit, and easily accessible social service headquarters. It is basically, the Virgil Brown Building in Cleveland, part of Tri-C- and many social service providers housed together in an 8.5 acre campus. There are colorful floor panels so that people do not get lost. They have a huge cafeteria, and now some of the homeless providers are moving into the facility. There are charter schools and colleges have satellite offices in the building. Many government entities have offices in the building, and it is on the bus line. The big health care provider is right down the street and the Thrift Store is right next to this building.

We gathered for a meeting of all the Homeless Coalition's in Ohio. It was an awesome building, and made us all envious that we did not have a similar facility in our home cities. The Job Corps, Job Bank, Dress for Success type programs, GED classes, job training classes, Social Security, and youth services were all available at the Center.

The One Stop Center opened in 1997 and was funded by federal and local resources. WEA was first funding to help people get back to work. It eliminates duplication and reduces travel time to get help. It is in an old Federated (Lazarus/May/Macy's) Department Store warehouse that is now operated by County Government but the funding went to St. Vincent De Paul to open it quickly. Just the job bank with computer terminals for looking for jobs serves 3000 individuals per day. It is the biggest in county (8.5 acres). It was a risk to set this up, because it was unknown if other providers would want to set up shop in the facility.

• 18 conference rooms for meetings.
• It facilitates collaboration among agencies with quarterly meetings of all the directors.
  
• All the partners are briefed when big layoffs are coming.
• Development folks are now visiting and advertising the place as a community attraction to set up shop in the Dayton area. They champion that it will be easy to recruit labor through the Job Center.
  
• - They do have remote center for people subject to mass layoffs with specific case management. For example , the set up next to GM plant closing.
• The Vet Center is right down the street as well.
• Re Entry Program starting Feb. 16 starting Specialized Employment Center – training, screening, skills assessment supportive partnership Job Club will help Social Services partner with other agencies. (110 individual per year) Will try to help find a Job mostly soft services.
  

Other items from the meeting:

• Appalachia –The shelter served 164 People in 2009. They had to turn away 36 while 84 were turned away in 2008.
  
• They are working on funding and revising their structure to try to get help to shelters in the rural communities.
  
• Fundraiser was very successful in January with 521 people showed up and did a simulation about homelessness.
• - Homeless Prevention and Rapid Rehousing is going well and getting out to the right people.

Cincinnati –
Talked a great deal about the Hate Crimes Forum that they organized after two recent events.

Columbus

The local groups are still trying to replace Barb Poppe who headed the Community Shelter Board and now is the new Homeless Czar in DC. The Columbus Coalition is working on workforce development. Their October conference went well in combining the religious and secular services.

Helping to employ people and try to work out all the details. They are proceeding forward on hiring a full time director. Their VISTAs are looking at a home deconstruction project in Dayton to look at replicating that in Columbus. They have 541 vendors for their street newspaper in Columbus, and 40 regular vendors. They have conducted a writing workshop with 3 volunteers who help.

Dayton

They have a new Mayor, and are waiting to see what the new priorities are locally. They are working on a community organizing project, which will look at the 10 year plan within the County. They have hired a national assessor to see how people are served within the homeless community especially to the Permanent Supportive Housing. There has been a good deal of media attention over a group of homeless people who were moved out of the woods and then into a neighborhood. Dayton Daily News did a story about a group that wanted have these guys removed from their neighborhood. The neighbors are really angry. The community groups are relocating some of the men to other places to keep them safe. With the move to the Job Center, they have space to help with a furniture donation program. A new site was opened with plenty of land that there is a thought to open up a Social Enterprise or Farm as part of the project where the residents can make money while residing in the housing.

Brian Davis

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