News

A threat to Progress
Community Vision's job training program for Montgomery County's homeless faces HUD budget cuts

BY IRENE TSIKITAS

Brenda Davis welcomes visitors in the lobby of Silver Spring's Progress Place, a large facility for the homeless, with a warm smile and lots of helpful advice. She seems so confident and knowledgeable in her position, it is hard to believe that she has only been an administrative volunteer there for a few months. Even harder to believe is the fact that she came to Progress Place little more than a year ago as hundreds of homeless people do every day, out of work and almost out of hope. Now seeking stable employment, Davis said that the next step will be housing and then full independence.

Brenda's is just one of many success stories that come out of Silver Spring Community Vision's unique job training program, a program that recently found itself in serious jeopardy when the Department of Housing and Urban Development cut its Continuum of Care Grant for Community Vision at the beginning of this year.

HUD had been providing half of all necessary funds to finance the non-profit organization's various programs for the homeless, which include individualized case management, substance abuse counseling, employment and housing assistance, and community outreach. The other half of their funding comes from a combination of grants from a number of organizations that support the homeless as well as funds from the county.

Silver Spring Community Vision has shared the Progress Place facility (located at 8210 Colonial Lane, just off Georgia Avenue) with Shepherd's Table, Community Action, Community Clinic, Silver Spring Interfaith Housing Coalition, and the Mental Health Association since 1995.

According to Director John Felt, Progress Place serves more than 200 clients per day. The goal of Community Vision is to transition these individuals out of homelessness. "A lot of these people just need a chance," Felt said. "We try to give them that chance."

When they lost their federal funding earlier this year, Felt and other Community Vision leaders appealed to local organizations and business owners for help, citing the importance of their services to the homeless, especially in this time of revitalization in downtown Silver Spring. Community Vision met with other homeless providers in the area at the end of last month to discuss ways to recover their losses using the resources they have. "The support in the community is huge," Felt said, "and that makes it all worth it."

The recent budget crisis has forced Community Vision to seek creative solutions. "We looked across Montgomery County to find gaps in services and to see where we can help," Felt said. The answer they found was direct job training, a service that is unique to Community Vision's program.

By enhancing and emphasizing its job training program over its ability to simply move the homeless into housing, Felt said that Community Vision will be able to seek new funding from government agencies, such as the Departments of Labor and Education, that specifically support job training.

Though it has yet to secure this federal funding, Community Vision has already recovered about half of its losses since December. Felt said he expects it will take the duration of the year to fully recover, but "our future is looking better every day."

According to Community Vision's Director of Training, Lonnie Royster, the job training program at Progress Place has been around for about five years, at which point a café was created not only to feed the homeless and to provide lunch for staff members, but also to act as a "training vehicle" for clients who want to learn job skills. After completing a 16-week course of classroom and practical learning, students in this particular program can become state certified and licensed food service personnel. Community Vision then works with business partners in the community seeking to hire graduates of the program.

Giving a rough estimate of the success rate of this program, Royster said, "Out of 100 people, 95 are successful." But, he added, this "is not an easy ride. The training process here is just like work, and students are held accountable just like they would be at any job."

Felt stressed the importance of approaching each individual on his or her own terms. Case managers assess the unique situation of every person who comes to Progress Place, many of whom are dealing with substance abuse issues, mental illness, or both.

State Senator Ida Ruben, County Executive Doug Duncan, U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes, and former County Countil member Derick Berlage attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies at the opening of Progress Place in 1995.

"These people are being pushed out of various institutions, and they don't have the support structure that a lot of us do," Felt said. By providing support and assistance to their clients, Felt said that Community Vision tries to "provide solutions for homelessness instead of pushing people out of the community."

An annual one-day census conducted this January by homeless providers placed the number of homeless people in Montgomery County at 1,208. According to Alex Wertheim, the Homeless Program Coordinator for Montgomery County, this number has dropped slightly from last year, which he said is "good news" overall. "The whole idea of the services we provide is to reduce the number of homeless people," Wertheim said.

At Progress Place, individuals seeking that extra push needed to get out of the cycle of homelessness are expected to fulfill a contract they sign with their case managers. "We only deal with those people who are willing to improve their lives," Felt said.

Brenda Davis is one of those people. Davis, a Silver Spring native, had been using the services provided by Progress Place for about a year when she decided she "needed to get back into doing things." She said that Felt and Royster noticed her desire to help out at Progress Place, and gave her a volunteer administrative position to help her gain some clerical experience before returning to the work world.

"Before John [Felt] came to me, I felt like I was in a hole," Davis remembers. Now, she is going to job fairs and hoping to move out on her own soon. "But I'm always going to come back here and volunteer for something," she added.