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You Op To Know: Business columnist discusses Syracuse’s Hire Ground homeless work initiative

Welcome to You Op to Know, The Daily Orange Opinion section’s weekly podcast.

This week, Assistant Editorial Editor Michael Sessa and Business columnist Patrick Penfield discuss the Hire Ground initiative, a job program Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh and Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon hope will help homeless individuals get off the streets.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to submit a letter to the editor at opinion@dailyorange.com.

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TRANSCRIPT

MICHAEL SESSA: Welcome to this week’s addition of You Op To Know, The Daily Orange’s Opinion section podcast. I’m Assistant Editorial Editor Michael Sessa and we’re joined by our Business columnist Patrick Penfield tonight.

PATRICK PENFIELD: Thanks for having me.

SESSA: Tonight we’re going to talk about the Hire Ground initiative, which was a recently-announced job program by Syracuse and Onondaga County. What does the program look like, and what made you want to write about it?

PENFIELD: So the program was announced last year. It’s essentially an initiative to hire homeless people and kind of get them started in a jobs creation program. So, you know, anyone who’s walked down Marshall Street in Syracuse has been asked for spare change, and usually, you know, in today’s day and age, no one has change. So this program is kind of created to, especially for these people, who maybe don’t have a resume or the resources to kind of get started and start looking for a job, and it gives them the opportunity to really get out there and get some experience. And not just experience — benefits, connections and resources as well.

SESSA: You mentioned in your column that there are up to 425 homeless single adults living in shelters in Onondaga county. How do you think a program like this can tackle an issue that’s so complex and widespread?

PENFIELD: Yeah. So, 425 people, that’s obviously a lot. And I think, it’s a pilot program in Syracuse specifically. So, while they’re partnering with Onondaga County, it’s going to start in the city of Syracuse. And so once it takes off there, I think it can really start to expand throughout Onondaga County. And there’s obviously a lot that goes into this, you know — transportation and paying these people and giving them benefits. And so I think once it gets started in the city of Syracuse, it can really begin to blossom.

SESSA: You brought up some other cities like Fort Worth or San Diego where they’ve tried out similar programs. So, what did you find about those and what worked there and how Syracuse might be able to adapt some of what they did?

PENFIELD: Yeah, so it’s actually been in Fort Worth, Texas for about three years now, and it’s just started in San Diego a few months ago. And in Fort Worth, it’s really been taking off. So the homelessness rate is down, the unemployment rate is down and the city is just a lot cleaner because a lot of these jobs that these people are doing, they’re not exactly the greatest jobs, but they’re jobs. Mostly, it’s picking up trash or, you know, things that beautify the city. And so, in Fort Worth especially, they’ve really been seeing results with cleaner city, cleaner streets, things like that. I think San Diego can really benefit from that too. They don’t have any measurable results yet in San Diego, but I think they’re going to see some pretty positive results.

SESSA: Cool. Thanks for joining us. As always, if you have any comments or questions, or if you want to send us a letter to the editor, you can email us at opinion@dailyorange.com. We’ll see you next week!

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