There are jobs in homeless services. This community college has launched a program to fill them

Tai Harris breathes and lives music. The Van Nuys resident worked in the business side of that industry for many years, but said she became "jaded" several years back. So she made a big career change seemingly out of left field — by diving headlong into working with Los Angeles' unhoused population at a local nonprofit.

"I saw the position either on Craigslist or Indeed, and I was like, 'Wow, that sounds interesting,' you know, helping homeless individuals obtain resources," Harris said.

In four short years, Harris climbed the ranks, becoming an associate director focused on housing the unhoused.

But this year, she decided to go back to school to supplement the hands-on experience she's gained working in the sector. Harris is one of 20 students in a pilot certificate program — the first of its kind in the state — launched this year by Santa Monica College to train a workforce that is integral to solving this vexing challenge.

"There's education around social work, there's education around music, but to have something specific to homeless service work, it was like, 'Whoa, I definitely want to know more about this and be involved,'" Harris said.

Help wanted: Homeless service work

There are some 1,300 jobs in the homeless services sector in L.A. County that have remained unfilled, according to SMC and others working in the sector. These jobs cut across a variety of roles, particularly entry-level positions on the frontlines.

The passage of Measure H in 2017 helped fund the creation of these jobs — something that Measure A, which voters approved this November, will continue to do.

"What's often overlooked is all the heroes that work behind-the-scenes and on the frontlines and work as case managers or work in outreach," said Steven Sedky, associate dean for career education at SMC. "But there's not enough of them to do the work."

The Homeless Service Work program was created to fix that need — a model the college hopes will be replicated throughout California.

"We have close ties to our local communities, we have close ties to industry leaders," Sedky said. "Community colleges are well positioned to do this work."

A program years in the making

The concept to create a pipeline was brought to the school in 2019 by a trustee, Nancy Greenstein, who was holding a series of conversations among residents in the Westside and those working in the sector on finding solutions to the crisis. An issue quickly came to the fore: staffing.

"One is burnout," said Patricia Ramos, dean of academic affairs at SMC. "The work is really hard."

Another reason is the mismatch in skill sets.

"They seem to be getting a lot of students out of social work school and other places, and the education felt like it needed to be more hands on and more kind of helping students to become more resilient in all of the, you know, trauma that they were going to be facing in the job," Ramos said.

The pandemic hit, but eventually these discussions regained steam, tapping into a bigger network with a more fleshed out vision that led to a partnership between the college and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which provides funding to offset costs like faculty salaries, student laptops, counseling and other student services under the certificate program.

"We were, as a college, prepared to help scale and develop this workforce development system. And LAHSA came to us because they do training themselves and they are not able to develop and scale an academic program," Ramos said.

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Michael Owen Baker

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Courtesy LAHSA

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A curriculum designed for students to hit the ground running

In turn, industry leaders led the design of the four-course certificate curriculum that includes an internship to get on-the-ground experience — all combined to give students the training they need to engage and work with individuals while navigating a complex bureaucracy of services and government entities.

"We really relied on the experts in the field who have decades of experience on what the skills, knowledge, and abilities needed to put into the curriculum," Sedky said. "Then one step further in the curriculum development process is thinking about how those fit into classes, what those classes are, and what that sequence is."

The program has also brought in sector veterans to teach classes, including Leepi Shimkhada with L.A. County Department of Health Services, who is leading a course in health equity.

"A lot of times in homeless case management we find people who have various degrees, which is great, right? It brings people from multiple disciplines together, but rarely do we have that person who has had formal training in what it means to be a case manager in homeless services, because it's really a complex space to be in," Shimkhada said.

Often, she added, challenges facing unhoused people are often multifold, including health, mental health and substance abuse disorder.

"There are funds for outreach teams, for interim housing programs, to provide ongoing supportive services when somebody moves into permanent housing, to do benefits advocacy, but we just need this workforce that's ready and willing and able to come in and do the work very quickly," Shimkhada said.

Tai Harris, a student in the new Santa Monica College certificate program on homeless service work.

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Courtesy Tai Harris

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Cultivating the next generation of leaders

The program has drawn students from all walks of life, said Sedky at SMC. They include high school graduates and mid-career people who are considering a career change after having volunteered in the space.

"We have a Ukrainian refugee. We have a bus driver who drives through Skid Row and wants to do more," Sedky added. "We have a few people that are already working in the sector and they want to move up in the sector."

Harris from Van Nuys would fall into that category. She said the program has opened access to a wealth of knowledge from those who've worked in the industry for decades.

"For me, it was to be able to learn more about policies and, you know, to have my pulse even more so on things that are going on and things that are coming in the future," Harris said.

But it's also about being in a cohort of like-minded people — committed to the cause — who the program hopes will become next generation of leaders in the sector. Because the work is hard, burnout is real. The pay scale for entry level jobs, said Harris, is typically between $20 to $25 per hour.

"It takes a certain type of individual to work in this field. No two days are the same. No two seconds, honestly, are the same," Harris said. "You have to be someone that really has a passion for this work. It's a great thing that this program has come about to be able to help get those next groups of people into this field."