Bulletin Board
The place where you can stay up to date with the latest events, stories, news, and opportunities for our City Relief community.
Would you leave your sick child to keep your job?
Tasha was working as a cashier at a grocery store in Queens. Every week, nearly half of her paycheck went to childcare for her two young kids. It was barely sustainable, until her youngest came down with a fever. Because her job was hourly, she had no paid time off. That meant two impossible options: call out and lose income she couldn't spare, or go to work and leave her sick child unattended. Neither option was really an option at all.
The High Cost of Getting to Work
Let me tell you about Carlos. He'd just landed a dishwashing job in Midtown. The hours weren't glamorous, but he was grateful for the opportunity. The challenge? Carlos was living in the Bronx, and the only way to keep that job was an hour-long subway commute—at a cost of $127 a month for a MetroCard. That was more than a third of his first paycheck. And with fares set to rise again next year, that burden is only going to grow heavier.
Working and Homeless: Lies About Laziness
About ten years ago, my wife and I were visiting a church in Manhattan. After the service, we wandered through Union Square Park on a perfect spring day. Vendors, artists, and musicians filled the sidewalks, and the trees were exploding with new life and vivid colors.
That's when I noticed a man sitting on the ground with a cardboard sign that read:
"Need money for work, anything helps."
Understanding a Living Wage
This month I have been focusing on employment and specifically on how simply "getting a job" when you’re experiencing homelessness is rarely as easy as it sounds. Today I want to talk about the meaning of a "living wage" and its profound connection to homelessness
A New Hope with Open Hiring
Today, I’d like to tell you about one innovative solution to this problem that some companies are starting to explore and implement to create more equitable access to some kinds of jobs that don’t require specific training or experience: “Open Hiring.”
The Working Unhoused: A Reality That Needs Our Commitment
For the month of September, we turn our focus to an often misunderstood and overlooked aspect of homelessness: employment. The notion that all homeless folks need to do to get off the street or out of a shelter is just work hard and “get a job” and their problems will be solved is deeply ingrained in our society. Unfortunately, it’s rarely that simple.
Breaking Barriers: Helping our Friends Have Access to Equal Job Opportunities
As the seasons change, we at City Relief are shifting our focus to a pressing issue that connects directly to homelessness: employment. This month, we want to unravel the intricacies of how the current employment system inherently discriminates against unhoused people.
Unseen Barriers: The Reality of Finding Employment while Unhoused
Today, I want to take a moment to discuss a topic that often remains unseen, yet significantly impacts those we serve at City Relief – the profound difficulty of securing employment when you're unhoused.