Purpose of Veterans Housing and Employment Assistance NFP

Provide access to affordable housing To provide support and help to veterans and their case workers in order to create long term rental/ownership agreements of affordable housing buildings. To locate safe, supportive housing where Veterans and their children thrive, living in harmony with other supportive neighbors, while they endeavor to attain personal growth and enhance life and job skills, in order to re-establish themselves as active members of their community and regain self-sufficiency in their lives through empowerment. Create best practices of permanent supportive housing To co-create best practices of permanent supportive housing and employment creation through strategic alliances and effective collaboration of many courageous and dedicated people, where every Veteran and their family who have needs the level of care available in permanent supportive housing will leave the darkness of homelessness and enjoy living self-sustaining lives. To provide support and create a job skill development and employment opportunities workforce program called Keep Illinois Veterans Working. This program will provide unemployed, under-employed, and underskilled Veterans from underserved neighborhoods and backgrounds, the skills and abilities required to obtain a job. Create and implement a job development pilot program for low-income workers, employers, and small business development and support The job development pilot program will provide job development services to public and private employers and low-income workers in the following ways: By securing employment, and teaching and enhancing transferrable job skills, and by providing gainful employment opportunities for struggling families by having Veterans, homeless and at-risk homeless lowincome workers hired through various job development programs, such as subsidized job programs. Subsidized job programs are attractive to businesses that need economic help covering payroll expenses during training and teaching skills to low-skilled workers, thus helping the business to grow in taxable income, while retaining qualified low-income workers in permanent, full-time positions. This pilot program fits with the Illinois Department of Human Services mission to provide employment resources to Veterans, homeless and low-income adults and youth to help them become permanently self-sufficient. Create information clearing house We will create an information clearing house to present public and private employers existing federal and state hiring incentivesjob programs such as on-the-job training (OJT), and tax credits for employing lowincome workersand proper workplace policies including workmans compensation, health care, and payroll operations. The primary purpose of the information clearing house will be to make businesses aware of the benefit of hiring low income workers including TANF recipients and homeless individuals. This information clearing house will be created and shared with employers through town hall meetings, forums, and information and training sessions The job development pilot program can efficiently and cost-effectively stimulate Illinois economy by giving public and private businesses an opportunity to permanently employ low-income workers.

Teach hard and soft skill training We will also conduct hard and soft skill training workshops to provide any low-income worker the hard skills necessary to work with a business in our information clearing house. Provide benefits for low-income workers To work with employers to provide low-income workers full-time employment, paying hourly wages of at least $9.60 per hour. We will accomplish this by tapping into an underutilized federal resource in Illinois called on-the-job training programs and subsidized employment programs. Create community outreach and job creation specialists Our community outreach and job creation specialists will be hired to manage and maintain an outreach team with at least one University graduate student and four undergraduate students from pre-selected candidates. Each team will conduct community and business outreach focused on job development, job placement, vocational training, and on-the-job training by sharing our information clearing house (see job development pilot program). Each team will be strategically placed among pre-selected community-based organizations to provide services to small businesses, non-profit organizations, and low-income residents of 20 targeted communitiesincluding Chicago Lawn, Pilsen, Little Village, Robbins, Harvey, Englewood, and Albany Park, West, North, and South side of Chicago, as well as, Western and North Western suburbs of Chicago and Illinois. The community job creation specialists will be required to actively participate in a weekly meeting and training session to create and share best practices, conduct an open forum to discuss problems, and create solutions collectively. Community job creation specialists will also learn from an on-going curriculum taught by invited, experienced experts in various job-related fields. The job development pilot program can efficiently and cost-effectively stimulate Illinois economy by giving public and private businesses an opportunity to permanently employ low-income workers. Provide an environmentally friendly, green program of recycled, repurpose, reuse, home and office furnishings, as well as computers for Veterans ----warehouse, classrooms, trucks, computers, To offer quality home furnishings, office furniture, computers, printers, and copiers, essentially everything a Veterans home or office requires, including modernized technology, available to disabled or recently homeless Veterans for free or at an impossibly low, cost-recovery fee. The majority of these donated items will be recycled from corporate, government, and business sponsors, and will be diverted from landfills. To reclaim, recycle and reuse home and office furnishings and computers, copiers, using an environmentally safe model by diverting from landfills. This will be done, by creating an environmentally friendly program, and increasing the constant skill development workforce program. This program will provide unemployed and under skilled laborers from underserved neighborhoods and backgrounds, the skills and abilities required to obtain a job in this field. Veterans non-emergency medical transportation for disabled and elderly 100k subsidy start SAFEVET Transportation provides medically needed individuals a professional, reliable, dependable, safe, and courteous, non-emergency medical transportation thats free of charge to the veteran and family. Non-emergency medical transportation businesses transport individuals, generally the elderly and disabled Veterans, who are not in an emergency situation but need more assistance than a taxi service provides. These businesses are typically equipped to transport those in wheelchairs and in stretchers. They also transport ambulatory individuals- people who can walk but much more slowly, use a cane or a walker, or simply need some form of additional assistance in getting from point A to point B.