Ready to Work: Workforce and housing program breaks ground in Englewood

Third location will add onto Boulder and Aurora's success

Nina Joss
njoss@coloradocommunitymedia.com
Posted 6/5/23

By this time next year, an old roofing company building on South Windermere Street in Englewood will be a vibrant home, workplace and resource center helping people find their way out of homelessness.

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Ready to Work: Workforce and housing program breaks ground in Englewood

Third location will add onto Boulder and Aurora's success

Posted

By this time next year, an old roofing company building on South Windermere Street in Englewood will be a vibrant home, workplace and resource center helping people find their way out of homelessness.

Elected officials and community leaders from Englewood, Littleton, Sheridan and other areas of Arapahoe County gathered on June 2 for the groundbreaking ceremony of the third location of Ready to Work, a workforce training and housing program run by the organization Bridge House.

With funding from many community partners, including Englewood, Littleton, Sheridan, Arapahoe County and donor foundations -  the new location will house about 48 individuals, Bridge House CEO Melissa Green said.

“The most incredible part of opening up this house is we’re gonna have roughly 150 beds in the Ready to Work community,” she said at the groundbreaking ceremony.

When individuals enter Ready to Work, which currently operates out of Boulder and Aurora, they live in a private bedroom with shared dormitory-style bathrooms, Green said.

On their first day, participants are employed by one of the program’s social enterprises, either landscaping or the culinary program, which offers catering and other food services.

Trainees from Community Table Kitchen, Bridge House's catering service, prepared and shared appetizers, lunch and dessert at the event. Photo by Nina Joss.

In addition, trainees receive personalized support services including recovery groups, job readiness classes, financial management guidance, career mentoring and on-site medical and dental care.

“Every individual has the core of the program, but then what do they need to remove the barriers?” Green said. “And that's where the real magic has been. Being able to customize and take down those barriers so when they leave here, they don’t leave with the same barriers that they came in with.”

Participants can enter the program through referrals from jails, service providers or just by walking in the front doors, she added.

After graduating the program, trainees are assigned an after-care case manager who checks in with them, continues to provide resources and keeps them engaged in a supportive community.

“When I'm asked what is really the reason this model works, what I can honestly say – it’s the community,” Green said. “We work every day so hard to build a community that is supportive, that is loving … that holds everybody accountable … but we have fun, and we laugh, sometimes we cry.”

The program has an average graduation rate of 75%, with 80% of graduates maintaining a stable job and housing one year after graduation, Green said.

Board of Directors member Marques Ivey speaks at the groundbreaking event. Photo by Nina Joss.

Marques Ivey, a member of the board of directors, said the program is successful because it not only provides immediate housing and employment, but also teaches sustainable skills and life practices.

“You can give somebody a job — but if you don't teach them how to maintain that job, if you don’t teach them how to operate that checkbook or get a checking account, they’re gonna fail,” he said at the ceremony. “You can give a person food for a little bit — but if you don’t teach them how to earn funds so they can take care of themselves, they’re gonna fail.”

Mike Sandgren, Tri-Cities Homelessness Services Coordinator for Arapahoe County, reflected on the impact Ready to Work could have on the number of people experiencing homelessness in the region.

According to the Point in Time Count, there were 514 people experiencing homelessness in Arapahoe County on Jan. 24, 2022. The Point in Time Count is an annual, unduplicated count of people experiencing literal homelessness on a single night in January, according to its website.

“In the facility that we're standing in … being able to take up to 50 individuals per year from the streets and creating that pathway out of homelessness into self-sustainability, you can start to see, year over year, what type of substantial impact that's going to have for our region in terms of responding to issues related to homelessness,” he said.

Sandgren said the process to add the Englewood location started in 2018. With the building about to undergo renovations, Bridge House hopes to have residents living there by early 2024.

ready to work, bridge house, housing crisis, workforce training, services for unhoused, homelessness

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