“A REPORT FROM THE

FRONT”

Statement by Michael Blecker

Swords to Plowshares

San Francisco, California

before the Subcommittee on Benefits

Committee on Veterans Affairs

U.S. House of Representatives

October 28, 1999

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I offer my Curriculum Vitae as support for my credibility as an authority on the problems of veterans and those who provide them with services. My statement will address the following major points —

(1) The need to expand eligibility to include veterans “with significant barriers to employment” as part of any proposed legislation that concerns employment and training (E&T) benefits.

(2) The importance of “competing-out” veteran-specific Wagner-Peyser funds.

(3) The need to provide meaningful incentives for Federal contractors to hire veterans.

AN UNDERSERVED POPULATION

Swords to Plowshares has provided E&T assistance to veterans in need in San Francisco since 1974. Throughout our twenty-five history we have employed a holistic, vets-helping-vets approach toward out ultimate goal of securing the veteran a decent job. We have always been accessibly located in the inner city and currently see approximately 1200 veterans yearly. Eight out of ten are homeless when they come to our drop-in center, and all are deeply impoverished. Most suffer such problems as alcoholism and/or substance abuse, and/or mental illness (including PTSD). Recently we are seeing an increasing number with Hepatitis C and HIV maladies.

These veterans are not seen initially by our E&T unit but, rather, our Support Services Unit. At this stage the major need is to stabilize them and somehow get them housed. The dearth of residential treatment beds or other suitable housing resources is a significant problem. Swords’ own housing stock consists of 70 units of transitional housing located in a single-room-occupancy hotel and several group homes. However, since there is a homeless veteran population of 4000, it takes about 10 weeks to go from the bottom of our waiting list to the top.

Those vets who have 30 days of stable housing and 45 days of sobriety are assessed by our E&T case managers as to their job-related needs and barriers. As one might guess, ours is a population with multiple barriers to employment. It starts with a lengthy bout of unemployment and spotty work history. The majority of our E&T clients served during the Vietnam war and, hence, their ages average 48 to 55. As already noted, many have a record of substance abuse and/or alcoholism. Over 50% are members of racial minorities. In the highly competitive job market of the San Francisco Bay Area such characteristics amount to significant employment barriers.

Yet each year our E&T unit places approximately 200 veterans in jobs with a starting wage between $9.00 and $10.00 per hour. Unfortunately in an expensive locality like San Francisco such a starting wage barely amounts to a livable one. However it does represent significant progress for the veteran and still signals the greatest opportunity for the veteran’s full reintegration into society. This is the reason E&T has remained the centerpiece of our service provision and the cornerstone of our mission as an agency.

To restate the obvious, in order to secure meaningful employment & training opportunities for those veterans who are saddled with significant employment barriers, a provider must first be an accessible one with the capability of securing a full range of supportive services to include housing. Swords To Plowshares as a veteran-specific community based organization (CBO) owes its success in alleviating suffering and securing meaningful employment and training opportunities to its accessibility and vets-helping-vets client rapport , and its integration into the service-provider community.

The resources that allow us to do our work have come increasingly from HUD via McKinney funds and the State of California’s JTPO. The latter has generously overmatched its $750,000 JTPA Title IV(C) grant with approximately $10 million. As a result of the State’s investment there are effective veteran-specific CBOs throughout the state providing E&T assistance to a difficult-to-serve veteran population whose needs would otherwise go unmet.

PRIORITY OF SERVICE

Section 4215, of H.R. 364, the Veterans’ Employment and Training Bill of Rights, authorizes “covered” veterans to receive service priority “under any qualified employment training program.” This entitlement is very important because, as the Transition Commission notes, “categorical veterans’ employment programs comprise only a small portion of Federal job training funding.”

As demonstrated by the Independent Budget and our own experience in competing in the local community, veterans are perceived as being a Federal problem and are dramatically underserved at the state and local level by non-veteran-specific providers. One needn’t look any further than the JTPA Title (A) adult programs administered by the SDAs. Even taking into consideration the shrinking pot of money in this program, there is an abysmally small number of veteran-specific CBOs receiving grants. Hence the records show that veterans have been one of the two most underserved groups in the system.

Implementing and enforcing the entitlement is necessary if it is to be a meaningful benefit. H.R. 364 does require the Secretary of Labor to report back to Congress annually. However statistics in a report to Congress do not equate with action at the local level. Based on our 25 years of experience, the local service delivery systems — be they health services, housing services, or E&T services — are remarkably burdened and are inclined to screen out clients who are preceived to have other services available. State and local agencies, like the general public, assume that the VA takes care of vets. This is true even in areas like E&T and housing which, of course, the VA does not offer veterans on any meaningful level. The facts demonstrate that veterans are dramatically underserved in proportion to their need by the mainstream public health system, employment and training system, and public housing resources.

A real question is “Who” will provide the necessary monitoring of state and local qualified employment training programs? At the local level the involvement and interest on the part of veterans service organizations is nonexistent. The Workforce Investment Act does require representation on the State Board and in California we are fortunate that a veteran very experienced in the community-based model of service delivery services has been selected. However this is not the case with the local WIA boards.

Coverage under the entitlement provisions should include those veterans with significant employment barriers. They are not covered in H.R. 364. Despite our record-breaking low unemployment rates, for those veterans with significant barriers the rate remains 100%. Please note that in partial recognition of this need, Section 168, Veterans’ Workforce Investment Programs, formerly Title IV(c) of JTPA, includes “veterans who have significant barriers to employment” along with service-connected disabled, war-time, and recently separated veterans.

The Transition Commission recognized the importance of prioritizing veterans with employment barriers for E&T services and included this category of veterans in their own recommendations.

COMPETING-OUT VETERAN-SPECIFIC WAGNER-PEYSER FUNDS

Past performance has shown that a community-based, support-service enriched, vet-helping-vets model has, by far, the best chance to make a difference in the lives of those veterans burdened with significant employment barriers. The current One Stop Models are doomed to fail this population of veterans unless veteran CBOs are part of the service continuum. In the first place hard-to-serve vets are unlikely to get past the security guards in many of the planned centers. This is a population where trust and rapport must first be established; it requires substantial hands-on assistance.

The Transition Commission recognized this need when it recommended reengineering DOL Veterans’ Employment and Training Service (VETS) Programs. Essentials to enable veterans to become job-ready include case management services like assessment, job development, job-search assistance, tracking/monitoring, referral to training services, and referral to supportive services. Those are the very services that are provided by most CBOs, including Swords. Wagner-Peyser public employment services should focus funding on these very activities. Were CBOs allowed to compete for case-management funds, such activities would be readily integrated with the vast array of other support services an agency like Swords can offer the veteran. It’s difficult to imagine a more efficient leveraging of Federal money.

Unfortunately, Swords and other vet CBOs have been left with inadequate E&T funding options. VETS HVRP has averaged barely $3 million nationally, despite achieving a remarkable service and placement success with homeless veterans. The other Federal E&T sources for CBOs are Title IV(C) from the State and Title II(A) from the SDAs. Swords has been a successful II(A) program operator since JTPA’s inception in 1982. However like all the other local providors, we have seen our funding reduced. Ten years ago we received $225,000; today our grant is $88,000.

Funding under WIA will undoubtedly be even less then it has been under JTPA. This is part of the ugly truth that Federal E&T assistance to urban areas has been reduced 70% since 1980. Moreover JTPA has been a bureaucratic nightmare, requiring a mountain of paperwork even to access (The JTPA Client Forms Handbook Reference Manual contains over 150 pages!). Such a system is an obvious turn-off, especially to homeless veterans who are required to amass an enormous amount of documentation. Likewise, a service provider is forced to expend a great deal of time and money maintaining a management information system, as opposed to focusing on client services. As a member of the San Francisco WIA Transition Team, I foresee that WIA may turn out to be even worse.

Just this past week in San Francisco the Private Industry Council announced some $6 million in Welfare To Work Formula Grants to local service providers. Be assured that less than 1% of those receiving services from these grants will be veterans. The obvious reason for this is that veterans comprise a very small percentage of former AFDC recipients, who continue to be the primary population targeted for such funds. I raise this not to denounce such Federal funding as unfair but to place in perspective the extremely limited funds available to provide E&T services to low-income veterans.

Competition among employment and training services to veterans is surely a healthy and long-overdue concept. The accomplishments of HVRP have established what can be done with a paltry amount of Federal E&T dollars. These agencies, many of whom are vet CBOs, are deeply integrated with their local service communities and therefore able to leverage resources to an extraordinary degree. Were this service community given the opportunity to compete for a meaningful level of funding, those vets most in need would benefit.

EMPLOYMENT OF VETERANS BY FEDERAL CONTRACTORS

The Transition Commission in its report to Congress addressed this as “Issue II. G — Provide Incentives for Federal Contractors to Hire Veterans.” As a member of the Commission, and especially as an E&T provider, I support wholeheartedly the analysis, findings, and recommendations contained in the report. Regrettably, H.R. 364 repeats the errors of the past by devising a program that is “complaint driven, rather than compliance oriented. The objective is to create an incentive through the competitive award process for contractors to want to routinely hire veterans … to earn points in the evaluation of future contract proposals.”

It’s difficult to imagine that the complaint provision contained in the Bill is likely to influence the hiring behavior of federal contractors, since, as noted by the Commission, “a requirement to take affirmative action is not the same as a requirement to hire. Nor does it provide the same protections and benefits as a civil rights statute. Essentially, affirmative action requirements, as contained in H.R. 364, are so ambiguous as to make enforcement very difficult.

Clearly, H.R. 364 does not do the trick in getting Federal contractors to do the right thing. The provision of incentives, as discussed in the Transition Commission report, needs to be incorporated in future legislation.

Mr. Chairman, we thank you for the opportunity to present our views on the above matters to you and your distinguished colleagues. We thank you for your leadership to meet the vital needs of veterans.

Back to Witness List