The initiative is partially supported through the City of Cape Town under the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme.
The initial phase of the program ran from December 2021 to June 2022 and employed 667 homeless individuals.
Participants’ health and living situations improved dramatically, with many moving back in with family or into their own houses.
What happens when you provide homeless individuals with jobs in addition to social services?
Streetscapes, a project of the national non-profit organization Khulisa Social Solutions that focuses on homelessness, has been doing research.
Since December 2021, Streetscapes, in collaboration with fourteen other organizations, has administered three cycles of the public employment program for the homeless.
The programs were financed under a contract with the City of Cape Town, utilizing funds granted to the municipality through the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme.
This is not your typical public employment initiative. A few hours every day, participants in the program serve as outreach workers cleaning streets, repairing parks and public areas, washing windows, recycling, and conducting surveys, among other tasks.
The program offers participants several hours of rehabilitation, skill training, or developmental sessions following their paid shifts.
Chantal Sampson, a past recipient of the Streetscapes initiative, is now a supervisor and peer educator.
This year, she will begin her training to become a social worker.
The project is funded by the President’s Economic Stimulus Plan.
In addition to the money supplied for salary, the municipality provides an additional 30% to cover the participants’ development and rehabilitation.
This funds social workers, transportation, healthcare, etc.
The first cycle of the employment initiative ran from December 2021 to June 2022 and employed 667 homeless individuals.
Across a spectrum of well-being markers, participants exhibited a dramatic improvement.
Participants were questioned during the duration of the event about their current circumstances and past.
Many of those interviewed stated that they left their homes in search of employment. The majority of individuals (87%) desired assistance to quit the streets.
The participants were also asked about the condition of their housing, their drug usage, their mental and physical health, their recreational activities, and their “motivation for change” at the beginning of the program and again three and six months later.
There was a significant improvement in all measures.
The majority of participants who had been living on the streets stated that their living condition had improved, with the majority either living with family or in their own house.
The majority of respondents claimed that their substance usage was now under control and no longer a concern.
Many individuals reported an increase in their desire to alter their situation.
At the beginning of the program, the majority of participants had not even undergone a health examination, but six months later, the majority had been evaluated and were receiving essential therapy.
Jesse Laitinen, the founder of Streetscapes, told GroundUp that this is one employment program that wants its participants to leave. “A positive culture develops, which is only possible due to our ability to invest in the participants,” she explained.
The current program cycle, which began in September 2022, employs a total of 410 individuals, including supervisors.
According to Laitinen, participant outcomes have been consistent.
A survey of homeless persons living and working in the primarily middle-class Cape Town city bowl suburbs of Devil’s Peak and Vredehoek, Ward 77, was one of the employment program’s tasks.
In November, Streetscapes conducted a survey in partnership with the Devil’s Peak Vredehoek Outreach (DPV Outreach), a community organization founded to assist homeless persons in the area.
Formerly homeless individuals were trained and sent out to collect data from local homeless individuals.
Laitinen stated that homeless individuals were far more inclined to converse with former homeless individuals.
The surveyors interviewed 93 homeless individuals, 35 of whom resided in the ward. T
They discovered that more men were homeless than women.
41% of respondents had left their family home in search of employment, with 25% stating poverty as their primary motivation.
29% of respondents cited unemployment as the cause of their homelessness; 25% said they had nowhere to go (an additional 11% had nowhere to go after leaving prison); 25% had no family support or were orphans (15% said that other homeless people were like their family); and 22% cited substance abuse problems. Only 9% of respondents indicated that they choose to be homeless.
Nearly everyone in the ward was seeking formal employment, but many were already generating money; for example, 41% of respondents were recycling the neighborhood’s rubbish.
The Service Dining Rooms on Canterbury Street, the Hope Exchange on Roeland Street, and Ladles of Love, which operates soup kitchens at the Hope Exchange, were the most frequently utilized services, and respondents rated all three highly.
47% of respondents claimed they were on good or extremely good terms with the area’s house and apartment dwellers, while 41% said things were “okay” and 12% said they had awful or extremely negative connections with the community.
The City of Cape Town announced on Tuesday that they will be constructing two new safe spaces, a 300-bed facility in Green Point and a 30-bed facility in Durbanville, in time for this winter, for a total of 1,060 beds throughout the city.
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