North Carolina State University Making Work Pay Essay Please answer these 3 questions in essay format. (around 200 words per question) 1. What are the ass

North Carolina State University Making Work Pay Essay Please answer these 3 questions in essay format. (around 200 words per question)

1. What are the assumptions that led to the emphasis of the Jobs Plus program for the Washington Works organization?

2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of Alice Rhodes as a leader?

3. What is a theory from public administration that would be appropriate for interpreting this case? Describe and give a reference. How would you analyze the case using this theory?

Please answer this question, only 1 paragraph is needed. This is a discussion board post so it can be short

1. What are the main lessons from this case and the case analysis process? T he
Ele ctr on ic
Ha llw ay ®
Case Teaching Resources
FROM THE EVANS SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
Box 353060 · University of Washington · Seattle WA
98195- 3060
www.hallway.org
“MAKING WORK PAY” FOR SEATTLE PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS:
JOBS PLUS and the Challenges of Serving a Diverse Population (A)
Training Day
At 7:45 on a Monday morning in October, 1998, Alice Rhodes was hurrying to put the finishing
touches on teaching materials for an 8:00 employment training session. She was anxious to
begin the first of a series of trainings for the Jobs Plus National Demonstration Project at Rainier
Vista, a public housing site in Seattle, Washington. As she set out the teaching materials,
Rhodes thought about her role in the Jobs Plus program and the residents she had come to
know and care about. Never before had she worked in a community as diverse as Rainier
Vista or come into contact with people who had lived such complex and disparate lives.
Rhodes felt committed to ensuring that Jobs Plus reached its goal of improving the overall
quality of life for all public housing residents at the Vista. Yet, achieving that goal in a
community where twenty-two different languages were spoken and a wide array of cultures,
ethnicities, nationalities, and religions were represented was sure to be a challenge.
The Jobs Plus National Demonstration Project aimed at “making work pay for public housing
residents” through the implementation of rent incentives, employment training, and supports for
community mobilization activities. Jobs Plus administrators hired a local nonprofit, Washington
Works (WAW), to provide employment training to Ranier Vista residents. Nationally
recognized for its high retention and graduation rates and for its innovative “personal
transformation” approach to moving women on welfare into gainful employment, WAW struck
Jobs Plus administrators as the most qualified organization to deliver the training. Thus, in the
summer of 1998, WAW sent Rhodes to serve as the Employment Coach for Jobs Plus at
Rainier Vista.
________________________________________________________________________________________________
This case was prepared by MPA candidate Tia Morita under the supervision of Professor Marieka Klawitter and with
the support of funding from the Ford Foundation for the Ford Diversity Case Studies Project at the at the Daniel J. Evans
School of Public Affairs, University of Washington. Quotes were drawn from interviews conducted by Ed Liebow,
principal evaluator for Jobs Plus at Rainier Vista, and by the case author. Names and personal details have been
changed to protect the privacy of people associated with this case. All data and program descriptions of Jobs Plus
come from Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. The case is intended for classroom discussion and is not
intended to suggest either effective or ineffective handling of the situation depicted.
The Electronic Hallway is administered by the University of Washington’s Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. This
material may not be altered or copied without written permission from The Electronic Hallway. For permission, email
hallhelp@u.washington.edu, or phone (206) 616-8777. Electronic Hallway members are granted copy permission for
educational purposes per Member’s Agreement (www.hallway.org).
Copyright 2005 The Electronic Hallway
“MAKING WORK PAY” FOR SEATTLE PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS (A)
A native of Washington in her fifties at the time of the Jobs Plus contract, Rhodes had
considerable service delivery and management experience. Prior to working for Washington
Works, she had managed professional wait staff for high-end restaurants around Seattle. She
took pride in the notion of serving others, yet was unfulfilled by that particular area of service.
To realize her desire to work in communities of need, Rhodes had volunteered with various
nonprofit organizations in Seattle on the side. She eventually took her service-oriented
management style to WAW, where she worked on contracts with the Department of Social and
Health Services and the Port of Seattle. Although she had been with WAW for a few years, the
Jobs Plus contract was the first instance in which she had worked away from the WAW office
in downtown Seattle. Indeed, Jobs Plus was the first contract where WAW ever located an
employee on-site for a particular client.
Rhodes spent the summer situating herself within Rainier Vista and working alongside Jobs Plus
administrators to reach out to the community and publicize the future WAW employment
training sessions – a voluntary program for residents. They were also successful, in creating,
along with residents, a Jobs Resource Center (JRC) at Rainier Vista. A small building next to
the Jobs Plus office, the JRC would not only house the job training program and Employment
Coach, but would also provide seven computers for residents to conduct job searches and learn
new computer skills. Despite the development of the JRC and other outreach efforts, some
residents remained skeptical of Rhodes and the WAW training. Residents had seen programs
like this arrive at the public housing site before, offer valuable services, and then leave.
Yet, the innovative rent incentive of Jobs Plus piqued the residents’ interest, and toward the end
of the summer Rhodes noticed that they were starting to respond more positively to her
outreach efforts. They began to recognize her and call out to her by name, and they appeared
more receptive when she knocked on their doors to share information about the employment
training. By early October, Rhodes was confident that the Jobs Resource Center was ready to
offer its first WAW employment training session. She approached this first session as a trial run,
understanding that she might have to modify the training to suit residents’ needs. Given the
positive personal responses from residents and the housing community’s general interest in the
Jobs Plus program, Rhodes was sure at least thirty people would attend the workshop. At
8:30, Rhodes was thoroughly dismayed when only five residents had arrived for the first day of
training.
Rainier Vista: A “Garden Community”
Located within the Rainier Valley of Seattle, Rainier Vista was one of forty public housing sites
owned and operated by the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA). Consciously landscaped into
what SHA called “Garden Communities,” the site resembled a quiet, urban, residential
neighborhood. The Vista’s 1,200 residents lived in cozy, tree-shaded, duplex housing units
situated around common courtyards or community spaces. During the day, the neighborhood
appeared safe and clean, but this contrasted sharply with insidious nighttime activities that
sometimes seeped into the community from surrounding areas.
2
“MAKING WORK PAY” FOR SEATTLE PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS (A)
Once an area of mostly white, middle class households, since the late 1960s the Rainier Valley
had come to be Seattle’s most diverse neighborhood, home to recent immigrants and refugees
from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and to other ethnic-American minorities, altogether sixty
different cultural and ethnic groups. The Rainier Valley also had the greatest concentration of
low- and moderate-income households in Seattle, with many pockets of poverty.1
Compared to other public housing sites participating in the Jobs Plus Demonstration, Rainier
Vista was distinct in the ethnic, linguistic, and national origins of its residents. Besides speaking
twenty-two different languages, they represented many religions and cultures. More than half of
all residents were born outside of the United States; a majority of these emigrated from East
African or Southeast Asian nations. (See Exhibit 1: Country of Origin.) Such a rich diversity
had not only proven to be challenging to service providers, but for residents as well. While
some SHA administrators assumed the Vista was a “community,” residents self-segregated, and
it was not uncommon even for residents of the same nationality to avoid socializing with one
another, owing to differing political ideologies, ethnicities, or other backgrounds.
Jobs were a major concern for both foreign- and U.S.-born Vista residents, who faced a
multitude of challenges in securing better, or any, employment. Although 53 percent were
employed, on average they worked less than twenty hours a week. Many complained that their
jobs were unstable, with constantly changing hours or unhealthy or unsafe work environments.
Many cited lack of qualifications, not understanding the Seattle job market, problems in their
personal lives, and lack of English proficiency as the main obstacles to improving their
employment status. Some people tried English as a Second Language classes, but others were
discouraged when they saw everything as strange and new, and they could not acclimate to this
country. Both foreign- and U.S.-born residents said racial, ethnic, or age discrimination
impeded access to jobs. According to one resident, “The majority of each people that come
here cannot find a job because if they are forty, fifty, sixty years of age: no company wants to
accept them as a worker.” Further, a handful of recent immigrants were highly educated, yet
because of language barriers and poor understanding of the job market, they were unsuccessful
at attaining proper employment. Others were highly trained and carried professional
qualifications, but these were not always officially recognized in the U.S. A few even had prior
experience as a successful entrepreneur, but as new residents, were unfamiliar with markets and
opportunities for small business financing. (See Exhibit 2: Characteristics of Household
Heads.)
Language barriers were especially salient for refugee residents who had experienced the travails
of war. Some suffered from post-traumatic stress or other psychological and physical afflictions
that they often could not articulate with limited English proficiency, or they obeyed cultural
norms that made it difficult to express details of one’s life. Traditional gender roles, religion, and
other cultural norms also contributed to difficulty in obtaining employment, as customs and ideals
1. From Seattle City Hall “Rainier Valley Fact Sheet” and 1990-2000 Census.
3
“MAKING WORK PAY” FOR SEATTLE PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS (A)
about family sometimes clashed with American work ethics and business practices. Alice
Rhodes noted this when she observed a WAW trainer asking another nonprofit’s staff member,
who was Muslim, “if she had to wear that scarf to work.” Rhodes, being a Caucasian woman,
was keenly aware that some residents might feel hesitant in approaching her. She consciously
tried not to make the same mistakes as some of her WAW colleagues, yet as she came to learn
more about the Rainier Vista community, Rhodes realized it would take more than sensitivity to
help residents overcome employment challenges and attend her training sessions.
Welfare and Work
Despite efforts in the 1990s to reform public housing and welfare, many public housing sites
continued to represent the most economically disenfranchised communities throughout the
United States.2 Under the restrictions of time-limited welfare, there had been a push to find
employment for public housing residents, yet higher incomes also meant rent increases under
most public housing rules. Furthermore, with the federal welfare system that operated through
1996 under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), residents on welfare were
threatened by the potential loss of Medicaid coverage and increased childcare costs as they
took on new employment3 While the federal government placed a strong emphasis on jobs and
income to effectively move people out of poverty, through the 1990s the system offered welfare
recipients few incentives to work.
Rainier Vista’s residents were no strangers to this situation. Le Tram, a resident hired by Jobs
Plus to serve as the Community Organizer, described the realities facing welfare recipients at
Rainier Vista, “People [didn’t] want to go work because welfare was [important] to them.
Right now, the people are very sensible to know that even a poor job [means] higher rents. But
no more welfare is too little to live on. Most people have a skill in their hands already yet don’t
use them because the jobs are poor.” A colonel in the Vietnamese military, who had
immigrated to the U.S. with his wife during the height of the Vietnam War, Tram had lived in the
Vista for almost twelve years before being employed as the Community Organizer. In Tram’s
mind, if he was going to have to pay for higher rents, he would prefer a job that paid more than
the average wage of $5.15–$7.75 an hour.4 Yet attaining such employment required training,
skills, or levels of education that many residents did not have. Tram explained, “Jobs Plus could
help us to move up to better jobs and be independent soon. If Jobs Plus opens, maybe in about
three or four years, newcomers could move out. Now, what can we do?”
“Making Work Pay” at Rainier Vista
2. Linda Yuriko Kato, “Special Challenges of Offering Employment Programs in Culturally Diverse Communities: The
Jobs-Plus Experience in Public Housing Developments” (Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, New York
City, 2002).
3. Steven Bliss, James A. Riccio, “Policy Brief Making Work Pay for Public Housing Residents: Learning from the
Jobs-Plus Demonstration.” Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, N.Y. 2002
4. These figures were taken from baseline data (sample size of 160 residents) prior to the implementation of Jobs
Plus.
4
“MAKING WORK PAY” FOR SEATTLE PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS (A)
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), a nonprofit conducting research on
low-income communities in the United States, received funding and support from the
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Rockefeller Foundation to
better align incentives for becoming gainfully employed.5 MDRC’s program would take a
more holistic approach to transforming low-work, high-welfare public housing developments
into high-work, low-welfare communities.6 The five-year project, which began in 1996, was
called Jobs Plus.
In 1997, MDRC selected eight public housing developments in seven cities across the United
States to serve as Jobs Plus demonstration sites. (See Exhibit 3: Cities in Jobs Plus.) The
main goal of Jobs Plus was to improve the overall quality of life at participating public housing
locations. MDRC labeled the project “a place-based, ‘saturation’ initiative,” proposing that
“‘saturating’ a housing development with services, incentives, and social supports will result in
steady employment for a substantial majority of working age residents.”7 The guiding principle
of the program was to take a step back from previous stereotypes of public housing residents
and welfare recipients as “lazy” or unwilling to work. Jobs Plus assumed all working age
residents wanted and needed jobs, and that with the right supports would be able to maintain
gainful employment.
Jobs Plus at Rainier Vista focused on three integrated objectives (See Exhibit 4: Jobs Plus
Logic Model):
•
•
•
Rent incentives—reforming rent regulations at the housing sites so that rents do not
increase as wages grow. 8
Employment related services and support—job search assistance, job development,
education and training, childcare, and transportation assistance (under the guidance of the
Employment Coach and the Job Developer).
Community support for work—increasing support and communication among housing
community residents, and increasing community participation and input for the Jobs Plus
program.9
5. Financial support also came from: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Labor,
The Joyce Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, Surdna Foundation, Inc., Northwest Area Foundation, The Annie E.
Casey Foundation, Stuart Foundation, BP, Washington Mutual Foundation, and Fannie Mae Foundation
6. Kato, “Special Challenges.”
7. Susan Philipson Bloom (ed.), “Jobs-Plus Site-by-Site: An Early Look at Program Implementation” (working paper,
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, New York City, 2000), 2.
8. The Seattle Housing Authority and the Department of Housing and Urban Development negotiated the guidelines
for this initiative. All demonstration sites wanted to establish rent incentives, but Rainier Vista was one of the first to
receive approval and successfully implement them. An early survey of residents indicated this was the most popular of
all program activities offered by Jobs Plus.
9. In 1994, Rainier Vista residents established the Rainier Vista Leadership Team (RVLT)—a self-sustained
community organization governed by participating residents. In 1998, with the help of Jobs Plus administrators, the
RVLT became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The RVLT became a member of the Jobs Plus Collaborative
and was essential for community mobilization. The team held meetings on the first Monday of every month.
5
“MAKING WORK PAY” FOR SEATTLE PUBLIC HOUSING RESIDENTS (A)
Located at Rainier Vista, the Jobs Plus “Site Team” shared office space with the Seattle
Housing Authority. Staffing included the Program Administrator, MDRC’s on-site Operations
Representative, a Community Organizer, one full-time Employment Coach (Alice Rhodes), and
a full-time Job Developer. Additional support came from an advisory board referred to as the
Collaborative, which assisted the local housing authority and Jobs Plus administrators in
program planning and implementation throughout the demonstration period. Although these
advisors had no direct authority over the project, Jobs Plus administrators highly valued the
Collaborative’s input, as its members represented key social service providers and government
and nonprofit agencies in the Seattle area. (See Exhibit 5: Jobs Plus Collaborative
Members.) Washington Works was first introduced to Jobs Plus as a Collaborative member
and later became the service provider for the employment training component.
Washington Works: Employing “Rigorous Compassion”
Started in 1992, WAW had a simple mission: “[I]n partnership with employers and
communities, Washington Works creates opportunities for people to achieve and maintain
successful futures through employment.”10 The organization was founded by three women who
believed strongly in moving beyond providing jobs to preparing people individually, personally,
and spiritually for employment. This focus on “personal transformation” served as the core of
the organization’s activities and employment training programs and distinguished WAW from
other agencies and organizations providing similar services.
WAW’s application of “personal transformation” evolved from est,11 a new age organization
that emphasized, through a strict sixty-hour training and inquiry, a self-realization of the way
one’s life has functioned versus the potential of one’s future. Conducted in large groups of up to
two hundred people, est trainings encouraged participants to “dis-identify” from their problems
in order to liberate themselves from their pasts and realize their futures. Participants were
encouraged to talk about their personal lives and histories as a mode for improving
communication. Effective, or “win-win,” communication, was seen as a necessary skill for
“getting what you want” out of life. These trainings had a profound effect on the founders of
WAW, who were convinced that if women on welfare could “dis-identify” with their often
tumultuous pasts, they could achieve fulfillment and success in their personal and professional
lives. Their approach was described as “rigorous compassion.”12 WAW sessions were held
Monday throu…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment