The spot on a résumé normally reserved for an address can be a land mine for residents of Catholic Charities’ Samaritan House. While trying to find work, they’re also struggling to overcome the stigma attached to homelessness.
John Gore, who provides job- placement services at the halfway house in downtown Denver, gives residents another choice. He gives them phone numbers and e-mail addresses they can use on their résumés. That way, prospective employers can contact them without having to know where they’re staying.
“It’s not an intentional effort to hide it from people, but there is a little bit of discrimination against homeless people,” Gore said. He is employment director with Bayaud Industries, a nonprofit that works to develop jobs for the disadvantaged.
Not all potential employers are leery of people who have no home. Hyatt and Marriott hotels routinely send lists of job openings within their organizations, Gore said.
Hyatt hotels throughout the country send available job lists to a number of social-service agencies each month or so as part of the company’s affirmative- action program, said Terry Holden, human-resource director for the Hyatt Regency Tech Center.
“You can find good, qualified candidates,” Holden said.
Samaritan House is the Rocky Mountain region’s largest shelter, accepting families and single men and women. No matter how the residents got there, its goal is to get most out within 120 days.
Last spring, the shelter contracted with Bayaud to help residents get jobs. Gore has been averaging about 17 placements a month.
He found that many of the residents were seeking day labor rather than full-time jobs. That kind of work pays poorly and isn’t a path to self-sufficiency, Gore said.
“There is a perception that day labor is good. As long as you can keep money in your pocket to eat or to get short-term housing, that is enough. It is my philosophy to shoot higher.”
Gore said his facility is a smaller version of workforce centers run by the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment where residents can look for work. Computers, telephones and fax machines needed for a job search are available to the residents.
Many of the Samaritan House residents arrive with job skills, Gore said. “We have talented people with a really broad range of skills.”
Some are placed in training programs run by unions such as Ironworkers Local 24.
“I don’t put too much stock in where you have been. I am interested in where you want to go,” said Ricky Bryant, training director for the Ironworkers union.
Ironworkers can make $20 an hour or more in the first year, but working on a narrow steel beam high above concrete in all kinds of weather isn’t for everyone.
Employers who hire the Samaritan House residents get highly motivated employees, Gore said. “They get someone who is very eager to work. A lot of them are here because they lost a job and had nowhere to go. They are motivated to get out of here.”
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
