III. The Support Network in Richmond and Norfolk

Previous sections have focused on identifying and describing the characteristics of job seekers and the characteristics of labor markets that, when taken together, provide a model of the employability of mandated public housing residents. There are a number of other factors, however, that serve to affect employability, though they are not easy to quantify in the traditional sense. These modifying factors are "supportive services" that must be available if public housing residents are to make the transition from welfare to work but do not, by themselves, directly enhance employability or raise the stock of human capital. These include transportation systems that permit travel to and from work within a reasonable time and child care that is accessible and affordable. There are other programs designed to enhance job readiness and provide links to potential employers. Not only must these systems and services be available, they must also be flexible to meet the needs of residents who have children of various ages, a variety of work schedules, and different levels of job readiness. The existence of such factors and their possible impact on employability are explored in this section for Richmond and Norfolk, where data were obtained by on-site visits.

A. Transportation

At least in Norfolk and Richmond, mandated residents who depend on public transportation will not find it easy to commute to entry-level jobs, particularly those that are located outside of the two central cities. In Richmond, access to suburban jobs is not easy because of an inadequate public transit system coupled with a low rate of auto ownership among low-income households. The public transit system in Norfolk appears to be more extensive than Richmond's, but the geography of the Norfolk area presents some formidable obstacles to mobility. While plans are underway to meet the transportation needs of mandated residents, it is still too early to tell whether such local efforts will be adequate to the challenge.

The problems associated with concentrations of mandated residents in particular City neighborhoods, including the fact that they may be located far from centers of employment, are exacerbated by a reliance on a public transit system which is not adequate within the City of Richmond and is far from useful with respect to suburban locations. A 1994 survey prepared for the Greater Richmond Transit Authority (GRTA) reported that 73 percent of GRTA's riders do not have access to an automobile. The reliance was even greater for households earning less than $10,000 per year, which includes almost all of the welfare dependent population.

The shifts in the location of employment centers in Richmond points up the limits of the public transit system, especially for mandated public housing residents. Buses do not travel any real distance into suburban counties, and the suburbs to the south of the City are totally inaccessible by public transit. Also public transportation does not serve the new Motorola jobs in Goochland County and the new Siemens jobs in Henrico County. Similarly, City buses do not go into the Cloverleaf Mall just over the City line. Although many retail jobs are concentrated there, mandated public housing residents would have difficulty reaching them. Within Henrico County, bus service is confined to an express route that bypasses some employment centers there.³⁴

Attempts to modify the Richmond public transit system to reflect employment changes have so far not been successful. Further expansion of transit routes into suburban areas must receive the support of individual jurisdictions because in Virginia, cities are free-standing and not contained within counties. To piece together a regional transit plan, each individual jurisdiction has to agree to a funding formula, and such agreement is not in the offing.

In addition to transit route problems in Richmond, hours of service are also restricted by funding. Such limitations caused GRTA to cut evening and weekend service on a commuter bus it operated within Henrico County. Although bus service would have to run until 9:30 or 10 p.m. to accommodate those working evening shifts, the service actually terminates at 7 p.m. Entry-level job seekers would be especially hard hit by reductions in evening and weekend service because a disproportionate number of entry-level jobs have shifts that do not coincide with regular commuter bus schedules. For example, there are around-the-clock, relatively lower-skilled jobs in Henrico County that, by virtue of the hours, are not accessible by public transit.³⁵

Recognizing the limitations of the public transit system, and to provide help with the transportation needs of TANF recipients, Ride Finders, a regional transportation planning group in Richmond, is working with other community partners to make suburban jobs more accessible to city residents who will be affected by welfare reform. Because vans can reach areas not serviced by public transit, Ride Finders will try to establish a van network available to employers on a rental basis. The organization has mapped the location of likely entry-level employment sites, day care providers and concentrations of mandated households to see where the gaps lie. They have identified 2,500 employment sites with at least 20 enterprises apiece that have entry-level jobs. Because it is not viewed as practicable to transport children to day care on public buses and vans, Ride Finders is also considering a separate transportation system for day care providers and the schools. Ride Finders would also like to have some form of transportation available between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. to meet the needs of people working non-traditional shifts. With these plans in mind, Ride Finders is optimistic that transportation will not be a barrier to job accessibility in the Richmond Area. Whether van pool and other arrangements will be an adequate alternative to public transit cannot be assessed at this point because Ride Finders' plans have not yet been fully implemented.

In the Norfolk area, greater cooperation among jurisdictions permits one regional agency, Tidewater Regional Transit, to operate the transit system for all five area cities. However, two-thirds of the service is provided only within the City of Norfolk where the levels of service and the hours of operation are more extensive than in the suburbs. There are some major bus routes connecting Norfolk and Virginia Beach, including one line that runs at 60 minute intervals from Norfolk to a major retail center in Virginia Beach. Although there are also some express routes, many commutes by public transportation in the Norfolk area would involve City residents in 10-to 12-hour days. Like Richmond, many of the major retail centers that could form an employment base for mandated residents are in suburban locations.

There are special commuting difficulties in Norfolk created by significant water barriers that exist between cities. Although there is one passenger ferry, most traffic must move through a tunnel to get to adjacent cities to the north. According to NRHA officials, transportation access may be particularly poor through the tunnel, especially from the South Side of Norfolk, where three of the public housing family developments are located. Though on a fixed schedule, there are two bus routes connecting Norfolk with nearby cities via the tunnel. Although most tunnel traffic is by car, the majority of assistance recipients do not own one.³⁶ Even among those who do own or have access to cars, these may provide a less than reliable mode of transportation because lower income households have less to spend on their maintenance and upkeep. At least public transit is more reliable even though its service range may be limited.

There is not the single coordinated effort in Norfolk to address the transportation needs of TANF recipients comparable to that in Richmond. Yet Norfolk residents trying to make the transition from welfare to work do receive some help with their transportation needs. Subsidies are available to low-income households through the purchase arrangement that DSS has with the transit authority. Clients participating in work preparation or who are working can also receive gas vouchers. Moreover, there are ride sharing arrangements available involving cars and van pools. Tidewater Regional Transit (TRT) will lease vans to individuals or companies, and employers are expected to partially subsidize the service. TRT has applied to the State to be included in a demonstration called From Welfare To Work: Public Transportation's Role. If chosen, free ride tickets would be made available for people attempting to transition to work.³⁷

B. Child Care

During regular working hours, the problem faced by parents looking for child care in Richmond and Norfolk will be mainly one of finding the money to pay for it. Federal welfare reform eliminated the entitlement to child care after TANF assistance terminates, and, although Virginia does have a child care assistance program apart from VIEW, access to it is poor because of high demand and limited funding. Subsidized child care programs in Richmond and Norfolk are heavily oversubscribed, although long waiting lists have been sharply reduced. Aside from cost, finding child care at other than regular working hours is difficult in the two cities and the problem is aggravated by the fact that a disproportionate number of entry-level workers are employed at jobs that have irregular schedules.

In order to find someone to take care of their children while they work, RRHA and NRHA residents can choose between day care centers and day care homes, or they can decide to make informal arrangements. In either case, considerations of availability, convenience and cost undoubtedly are important decision criteria.

Overall, there are estimated to be about 23,000 child care slots in the City of Richmond, close to 11,000 of them in day care homes and 12,400 in day care centers (see Table 6).³⁸ Assuming that most day care slots in family homes and centers are intended for pre-school age children, each of the close to 1,000 pre-school age children of mandated RRHA residents could have as many as 24 slots to choose from. However, altogether there are more than 16,000 pre-school age children in the City of Richmond who could require these slots. Even so, there are likely to be sufficient slots in the City for all. The convenience, cost and quality of the care, however, are another matter.

Simply because it is more convenient, parents generally prefer to find child care near their homes. But this very preference creates imbalances, with shortages of day care slots for pre-schoolers in the vicinity of some of the public housing family developments and more than enough near others.³⁹ Again, this does not account for other neighborhood children who might be competing for these slots.

Pre-schoolers are not the only children for whom care is needed. Many school-age children also require some kind of care arrangement, but as a group, their needs are not well served anywhere. Some of the 1,765 children between the ages of 6 and 17 living in Richmond's family developments will also require before and/or after school care if their parents are to participate in work activities. But the Richmond public schools operate on a 6 hour day with a 3 p.m. pickup and provide no wraparound care. Thus, even a mother spending only nine hours a day on work activities, including travel, might need wrap-around care for her child.

Child care is also in scant supply for children whose parents work at jobs with irregular shifts, including nights and weekends. Home providers often close their doors at 5:30 and day care centers do not usually keep open beyond 6 or 6:30.

Public housing residents who do have access to automobiles would be hard pressed to take advantage of the concentration of 24-hour, entry-level jobs in Henrico County mentioned above, or any other suburban jobs, because of the lack of evening child care.⁴⁰ Competitors from county locations may have even more difficulties than City residents with respect to wraparound and off-hours child care.⁴¹

In Richmond, the cost of day care may overshadow its supply as a concern, with respect to mandated public housing residents, especially since the number of family day care providers can expand to meet the growing demand. Indeed, there are some unfilled slots among City providers. But in Richmond, day care costs between $45 and $55 a week for a preschooler cared for in a home, rising to $65 to $75 a week at a day care center.⁴² Although representatives of the Richmond day care community suggest meeting child care needs with less costly family day care providers rather than day care centers, even the cheaper option is not very feasible, as seen above.⁴³

Even the somewhat lower cost of family day care would place a strain on the budget of a very low-income household. Under the Virginia welfare reforms, participants are only entitled to subsidized child care until their transitional assistance terminates. This assistance, provided during the third year of VIEW participation, covers day care costs. But after this point, the cost of day care can become an out-of-pocket expense if a low-income family cannot receive a child care subsidy from the State's Fee-Based Child Care Subsidy program.⁴⁴ TANF recipients earning the minimum wage, which many who find work can be expected to earn, could end up paying one-quarter or more of their income for child care. Costs would multiply if low-income wage earners have more than one child requiring care, and fewer than one-quarter of mandated residents in Richmond have only one child. For the majority of households, child care costs could easily eat up one-half or more of their wages.

There may be as many as 4,000 slots in day care homes available in the City of Norfolk. There are an additional 4,500 slots in 56 day care centers for a total of about 8,500 day care slots in the City.⁴⁵ Just in Norfolk's public housing developments, mandated residents have 711 children under six.⁴⁶ If most slots in day care homes and day care centers are actually intended for pre-school children, there may be as many as twelve slots available for each pre-school age child of mandated residents. When pre-school and school age children of all working parents in Norfolk are taken into account, there are still an adequate number of slots although no surplus.⁴⁷

As in Richmond, Norfolk parents prefer care that is closer to home, and some child care is available to residents right in their public housing neighborhoods. In the Bowling Green Development there is a Boys and Girls Club providing after-school care and a day care center with a Head Start program providing wrap around care. There are a couple of other day care centers near other public housing developments.⁴⁸

According to representatives of the child care network in Norfolk, creating child care slots is not the problem. There are people in the community already trained to provide such care and training others takes just six weeks. There are even people prepared to provide child care outside of the normal day-time hours. As in Richmond, the problem is the inability to pay for such care. In Norfolk, the weekly cost in a family day care home is $65 for an older child and $75 for a younger child. In a center, such costs would be more like $85. Before- and after-school care in a day care home costs about $40 and $60 for the same care when it is provided in a center.⁴⁹ But because of the lack of money to pay for day care, either through public funding sources or from parents' income, many children are not receiving adequate care when they need it. The Planning Council estimates that about one-quarter of all children between 6 and 14 have no adult supervision when they are not in school.

Although Block Grant funding for working parents exists to subsidize child care, and there is money from the State as well, in the Norfolk area, there were already 9,000 people on subsidized child care waiting lists before the enactment of welfare reform. And in the At Risk Child Care program, which provides a deep subsidy to working parents who have incomes below $22,000, there are 1,400 families on the Norfolk waiting list as well as 200-400 on the waiting list in Chesapeake. The average time on these waiting lists is 2 to 3 years.

As a way of satisfying their work requirements, some DSS clients in Norfolk have become day care providers themselves. The Day Care Clearinghouse works with the Housing Authority to identify public housing residents who would make good providers and a training program is provided for residents who sign on. After going through the training program, residents become regulated and licensed providers.⁵⁰ However, the Clearinghouse is concerned about provider income given that most of their clients are earning salaries at or near the minimum wage. Although they are not encouraged to do so, some providers do lower their rates to accommodate people who cannot afford the market rates.

C. Special Assistance

Unlike many other entry-level jobs seekers, Richmond and Norfolk public housing residents are the targets of organized efforts to improve their employment prospects. In some cases, programs have been created specially for them and in other cases they, along with other TANF recipients, receive special program assistance. In both Richmond and Norfolk, mandated residents who live in Enterprise Communities are also the targets of special efforts to help them get jobs. By and large, these efforts are oriented toward getting mandated households into the work force as quickly as possible as required by welfare reform. Mandated residents are not likely to receive extensive training excepting for that which may have occurred prior to the implementation of welfare reform. Some mandated residents have already succeeded in getting jobs because of the help provided by the programs that target them. However, the numbers are so far small compared to the number of those who will need to find jobs.

Well before the April 1, 1997 welfare reform implementation date, RRHA was offering its residents a number of training opportunities to compensate for vocational deficits. By taking advantage of such opportunities prior to the implementation date, residents were able to receive training not available under the welfare reform guidelines which emphasize job search activities.⁵¹ Job readiness and job search programs that currently target public housing residents and other TANF recipients conform to the welfare reform guidelines. The life skills curriculum run jointly by DSS and the Richmond Career Advancement Center (RCAC), under contract to the Housing Authority, is an example. RCAC provides skills assessment and a three week pre-employability workshop for those found to require such preparation.⁵² It also provides help with job placement. Staff job developers work to convince employers to hire people who do not have a work history, and so far RCAC has been successful in moving a number of enrollees into the workforce. Virginia Works, another local organization with which the Housing Authority is a partner, has also established ties to local business and helps public housing residents and other assistance recipients and low income households find jobs. Neither RCAC nor Virginia Works provides vocational training.

The Department of Social Services (DSS) arranges for placements through its full employment program for all assistance recipients who do not get unsubsidized jobs within ninety days of the date at which their job search begins. Client benefits are cashed out and given to an employer who uses them to pay the employee's salary. In addition, if some clients can only function at a 5th-to 7th-grade level, DSS will try to get them into a work experience program to help them compensate for educational deficits.

Although the Enterprise Communities do not specifically target public housing residents in Richmond, program efforts are concentrated in three areas of the city -- North, East, and South Richmond -- where large numbers of public housing residents are concentrated. The City, which manages the State's program, oversees assistance to businesses that provide on-the-job training to new and existing employees. Businesses are eligible for tax credits and grants for employing low- and moderate-income persons residing in the Enterprise Communities.

As in Richmond, the Department of Social Services in Norfolk has developed a system for assessing the job readiness of TANF recipients. While the agency takes the position that just about all of its clients should be work oriented, it recognizes that clients will follow different paths depending on their backgrounds and aptitudes. To direct people appropriately, DSS operates a Needs Center to assess clients, a process that takes seven weeks to complete. Those who have been recently employed do not need to go through the assessment process and are, instead, provided with child care assistance to facilitate job searching. All other clients are given the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE) to ascertain their educational level and the California Adult Student Assessment Test (CASAS) to ascertain their suitability for various occupations. A class is held for people who perform below the 8th or 9th grade level and who possess minimal skills.

Because the lack of previous work experience is recognized as a barrier to employability, Norfolk's DSS has identified about 300 slots which will provide on-the-job training. Although DSS has been willing to solicit the non-profit sector for job slots, it is reluctant to subsidize wages paid by private sector employers who, it thinks, might take advantage of such a program. Nevertheless, the TWA Reservation Center is one large, private sector operation in Norfolk that has stepped forward to help train people who lack job experience. Of the 150 people enrolled in TWA's initial training class, only nine got hired with four still on the payroll. Overall, 25 DSS clients have been hired by TWA. But DSS also believes that it will be smaller firms that will end up providing the bulk of the jobs for the TANF population.

Another organization of importance in providing help to entry-level job seekers is Norfolk Works, an organization created and spun off by NRHA. It is charged with providing coordinated job training and placements for Enterprise Community residents. Since all eight of the family public housing developments lie within the Community, public housing residents are among the beneficiaries.⁵³ The organization was able to sponsor vocational training programs to prepare people in such fields as customer service, word processing and data entry, computer technician, home health care, food service, and the shipyard worker and building trades, including building maintenance. For example, in a program sponsored by the Air Conditioning and Heating Association, which has agreed to hire trainees, Norfolk Works offers a non-traditional training class for women in the repair and installation of air conditioning systems. However, Norfolk Works now is under pressure to adapt its training programs to reflect the greater emphasis being placed on getting a job rather than preparing for one. It was for this reason that the organization tried to get as many people trained as possible before the October 1st welfare reform implementation date in Norfolk.

For those with a GED who are relatively job ready, Norfolk Works provides a ten-week career development class which covers life skills, attitude issues, proper dress, etc. Of the participants in this program, 156 have been public housing residents. For those without a GED, Norfolk Works will pay for GED classes, and the organization is encouraging employers to facilitate GED training for their employees. Area businesses that employ Norfolk Works participants receive special incentives, including $1,000 job grants, for each permanent full-time job created. So far, Norfolk Works has been able to put more than 300 people into jobs and over 50 employers have committed to create and/or fill 1,500 jobs over five years by hiring participants of the Urban Apprenticeship Program operated by Norfolk Works. Overall, of the 810 persons receiving services through Norfolk Works since 1995, 310 have been public housing residents.

Either directly or under the impetus of Section 3 of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968,⁵⁴ the Public Housing program is itself a conduit to a limited number of jobs for residents, including TANF participants. At RRHA, for example, about $150,000 a year goes for wages to residents temporarily hired to work in the Housing Authority's maintenance program. And, RRHA has hired a general contractor for some of its modernization work who, following Section 3 guidelines, employs some residents as subcontractors. With funding from the Drug Elimination Program, some residents also work full-time at the Housing Authority. However, both RRHA and NRHA do not view their mission as being employers of last resort. They lack the resources to provide jobs for anything like the number of TANF participants who will be needing them when the welfare reform clock runs out.