While walking down Kirkwood Avenue, the homeless can be seen in the park or on the sides of the street. Some hold signs asking those passing by for help. A new Bloomington program aims to help these residents earn money while helping keep the city clean.
The city’s Parks and Recreation Department is collaborating with Centerstone to create a program to employ people who are homeless or in unstable homes.
Those in the pilot program will be hired to clean up some of the downtown parks in Bloomington.
According to their website, Centerstone is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit providers of community-based behavioral health care. They offer a full range of mental health services, substance abuse treatment and intellectual and developmental disabilities services.
Paula McDevitt, an administrator at Bloomington Parks and Recreation, said in a City of Bloomington press release that Centerstone has been engaging in conversation with the Downtown Outreach Group since early 2016.
McDevitt said the idea for the parks and maintenance pilot program came about during a conference with a small group of parks directors from across the country when one of the presenters said they had run similar programs in New York and Colorado.
“Just in conversation with them and knowing back home the challenges we were facing, I started to think that there is potential to at least try this out,” McDevitt said.
For this project, Centerstone will hire three to five individuals to complete assigned custodial work in Seminary, Peoples, Building Trades and Butler parks.
The city also recently added Waldron, Hill and Buskirk Park. The staff at the Parks and Recreation department will be providing those hired with training, equipment and general oversight so that the parks are maintained correctly.
“It’s our intention to hire people who are homeless or unstably housed,” Greg May, administrative director at Centerstone, said. “Centerstone is also providing a supervisor who will be on site with the folks hired to do the park maintenance.”
The crew will do things like pick up litter and clean restroom facilities at all of the parks. The funding will come from the Bloomington Parks and Recreation Department, and they will be contracting custodial services with Centerstone to pay the staff.
“I applaud the partnership between Centerstone and our Parks and Recreation Department,” Mayor John Hamilton said in the press release. “This is one of several recommendations from our Downtown Safety, Civility and Justice Task Force’s preliminary report we will implement.”
The program will run from June to December, seven days a week for 20 hours a week. The program will then be evaluated to determine whether or not it should continue.
How the program will be evaluated is to be determined.
However, they will look at things like the effect the program has on helping people out of homeless and unstable housing, whether or not people are satisfied with the work, and whether the service from Centerstone is beneficial to Parks and Recreation.
They will also be observing the amount of custodial work the crews are currently facing in the five parks.
“It’s exciting to hear about a program that’s happening in another communitya and then bring it home to our own community and tailor it for our needs, so we’re excited to get this going,” McDevitt said.
