A complaint I hear a lot when people talk about homelessness is how dirty the streets are due to homeless people throwing their waste everywhere. With no personal garbage and recycling bins, people who are homeless have to rely on city garbage cans which can be few and far between. The city of Fort Worth in Texas is trying to combat this problem. Their program called Clean Slate offers paying jobs to homeless people staying at one of their local shelters. The workers earn $10 an hour and receive benefits and vacation time, all while collecting trash around homeless encampments. City-funded, the goal of this program is to employ homeless people and eventually get them employed in stable, long-term positions, even though they are allowed to work for the program as long as they like.

Other cities have decided to replicate this program and I think there’s a large benefit to it. While it is subjecting homeless people to “do the dirty work” and city funding could be going to improve sanitation services, I think that it’s a step in the right direction. Helping these people who are down on their luck by offering a low-wage job adds to a resume and gives work experience and a reference for when they are ready to move on to other work.

The article says that L.A.’s city council signed off to replicate this program in November though I couldn’t find any follow up information on if the city is moving to actually create this program.

Ballor, C. (2018, January 27). Fort Worth pays homeless to help clean up city’s streets. Dallas News. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from https://www.dallasnews.com/news/fort-worth/2018/01/27/fort-worth-pays-homeless-help-clean-citys-streets

L.A. considers hiring homeless people to clean up litter on the streets. (2017, November 1). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved January 28, 2018, from http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-homeless-trash-20171101-story.html