Here's A Great Story/Idea

[JimGinPA]

https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/local/outreach/homeless-program-pays-minimum-wage/91-cd31b2f6-7359-4841-8dee-8eb39a578524?fbclid=IwAR3JBGk9CW-lMl_QzXjd7DeQKYDe_k_ZhsiJV6Vqd-szp6ajkpiNOtVxJSg

Former homeless man pays for new apartment with money earned from Little Rock cleanup program

Roy paid his first month's rent for his own home with money earned/saved from the Little Rock program paying homeless people $9.25 per hour to pick up trash.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Bridge to Work program paying homeless people in Little Rock $9.25 per hour to pick up trash in the city has seen success among LR's homeless population, city and community members.

One person proving that success is Roy, who can now pay his first month's rent at an apartment he now lives in with the money he earned and saved working in the program.

~snip

The Bridge to Work program began in April 2019 and was originally planned to last six months. Mayor Frank Scott Jr. has since extended the program through the end of September 2020.

The program is always in need of volunteers willing to form a relationship with participants along with helping with transportation.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. will Roy now be fired because he's no longer homeless?

GOPers find ways to be cruel.

[Backseat Driver]

3. + yup!

[Backseat Driver]

2. Pardon my bad attitude, but "kudos" to that program

for assisting the homeless, but if one is NOT homeless and works for the same type of stagnant wages and limits career advancement opportunities or when employers have the ability to suddenly make FT into PT while also re-locating where you perform those duties farther away (increasing your transportation costs) or suspends a whole shift of workers indefinitely because it was alleged that one of them screwed up and tapes must be reviewed yet none were ever called back? Where employees are tested, hired, signed their paperwork, but never scheduled to work? Where employers can say: oops, that job posting should have been taken down off our site so we hired you for it, but (hahaha) we've just arbitrarily reassigned you to work someplace else? Don't these jobs also support not being homeless???

[Grammy23]

4. We had a program in our town for homeless people to sell newspapers on street corners.

Yes, it was the old fashioned way and seemed to be a pretty good program. They sold mostly to people on the way to work and each person had certain major intersections where they sold their papers daily. It was an honest way to make a buck and gave each seller a reason to get up and busy each day.

This went on for several years and, to my knowledge, none of the sellers ever had a safety issue. I think they were required to wear a safety vest to be more visible as they slipped between stopped cars to make a quick sale. Leave it to the bureaucrats to mess up a good thing. They decided to outlaw panhandling on street corners, as that was seen as a big problem. In their zeal to get rid of panhandlers, the law also impacted the guys selling papers, too. So that program went away.

By the way, the panhandlers eventually came back because the police got tired of running people in over and over and had bigger problems to deal with. There was also a discrepancy between. City ordinances and county. Illegal in one place (city) and not illegal in another (County) so the panhandlers just moved a few blocks away so they were in the county. I think the county eventually outlawed it, too, but the police rarely run them off any more.

Edited to add: they are out in force this time of the year, but even in the hot, broiling summer sun, a few will stand on the corners with cardboard signs asking for help or $$$.