In the Driver's Seat - christopher reardon

I N THED RIVER’ SS EATFive local directors reflect on their time at the helmof the national Bridges to Work demonstrationEdited by Christopher ReardonField Report SeriesPublic/Private Ventures April 2001

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSWe would like to thank the five projectdirectors for their invaluable contributionsto this report and, more broadly, to theBridges to Work demonstration. Theirthoughtfulness and candor have addedimmeasurably to the success of bothundertakings. Credit is also due to theirhardworking and talented staffs, withoutwhom Bridges would still be a blueprintrather than a reality.We also want to thank the U.S. Departmentof Housing and Urban Development(HUD), The Ford Foundation, TheJohn D. and Catherine T. MacArthurFoundation, and The RockefellerFoundation for their generous supportof the Bridges to Work demonstration.Finally, Anne Roder, Carol Clymer andJoe Tierney of Public/Private Ventures,and James Hoben, formerly of HUD,each deserve thanks for their insightfulcomments on early drafts of this report.Photos: Impact VisualsDesign: Malish and PagonisThe contents of this report are the views ofPublic/Private Ventures or, with regard toquoted material, of the individual speaker.They do not necessarily represent theviews or policies of the Department ofHousing and Urban Development or theUnited States Government.

1CONTENTS3 Foreword:Getting to Work4 Contributors7 Introduction:Voices of Experience10 Between Theory and Practice:The Reality of Reverse Commuting16 Help Wanted:Trawling for Talent in a Tight Economy20 There Goes the Neighborhood?:Dispelling Urban and Suburban Myths24 Friend or Foe:Making Collaboration Work29 Heads or Tails:The Challenges of Random Assignment32 Conclusion:Taking in the Local Landscape34 Appendix A:Site Descriptions36 Appendix B:Contact List

3FOREWORDGetting to workNo matter how carefully a demonstrationis planned, it never fully anticipates thevagaries of program implementation. Theneat design, the carefully thought-throughassumptions, the months of planningeventually must conform to local circumstancesand unforeseen events. While itcertainly is important to invest in a carefuland deliberate planning process, in theend, the success of the demonstrationmay hinge as much on the ability ofparticipating organizations to adapt thedesign to meet local needs, impedimentsand opportunities, as on the quality ofthe original design. As chronicled inGetting from Here to There and OvercomingRoadblocks on the Way to Work (two otherBridges to Work reports), many of theoriginal operating assumptions and requirementsof our Bridges to Work demonstrationhad to be modified once the sitesopened their doors to potential riders.For program staff, the experience ofmaking program changes on the fly,particularly during a carefully scrutinizednational demonstration, is never easy. Byand large the staff at the five organizationswere able to address the challenges thatemerged once the demonstration began.In the Driver’s Seat describes how it felt torun Bridges, as told by the project directorsto Christopher Reardon. The directorsfreely share their views on the prevalenceof discrimination among employers andworkers, who collaborated and who wouldnot, the effect of a strong economy andwelfare reform, and the difficulties ofrandom assignment, among otherconcerns. They do not always agree witheach other, but considering they areoperating in varied economic and socialterrain, complete consistency would besurprising. And, of course, there is muchthat the directors have in common.The full story of Bridges to Work is yetto be told; only after we complete thefollow-up surveys in 2001 will we knowwhether the initiative had an impact onparticipants’ employment and earnings.Regardless of the conclusion, however,In the Driver’s Seat will remain an importantchapter.Mark ElliottExecutive Vice PresidentPublic/Private Ventures

4CONTRIBUTORSAbout the project directorsRobert Carter served as project director of Chicago’s Bridges toWork demonstration, known locally as Job Oasis, for three years.He is currently director of development for Suburban Job-LinkCorp. He also served as a director of the Music Theatre Workshop,a performing arts company for at-risk youth, and as a trustee of theGaylord & Dorothy Donnelley Foundation. He previously headedthe Garfield Counseling Center, a treatment and counseling facilityfor substance abusers; oversaw the National Merit ScholarshipCorporation’s program for African-American students; anddirected the Inland Steel Company’s grant-making activities. Heearned a Bachelor’s degree in government at Dartmouth Collegeand served for seven years in the U.S. Air Force.Mandi Huser is deputy director of Denver’s Curtis Park CommunityCenter, where she has been developing adult training and employmentprograms for nearly a decade. Under her leadership, theCenter’s Adult Career Educational Services program achieved ajob placement rate of 95 percent and an employment retentionrate of 85 percent. She directed the Bridges to Work demonstrationin Denver from 1996 to 2001. She attended the Colorado Instituteof Art on a merit scholarship and graduated at the top of her classwith an Associate’s degree in fashion marketing in 1991. She liveswith her husband and their two children.Roz Staples-Streeter directed the Bridges to Work demonstrationin St. Louis from 1997 to 2001, and is currently directing a newtransportation initiative. Previously, she worked in the areas ofcommunity empowerment and youth education, with a focus onteen pregnancy, for a University of Illinois extension program. Sheholds a Bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SouthernIllinois University at Edwardsville, where she is now doing graduatework in public administration. She is active in the NationalAssociation for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), theUrban League and St. Alphonsus “the Rock” Church in St. Louis.She lives in East St. Louis, Illinois, with her father and son.Linda Stewart-Byrd is a transportation planner in Baltimore whorecently received her third Governor’s Citation for OutstandingLeadership. After earning a Bachelor’s degree in applied andbehavioral psychology at Morgan State University, she spent severalyears in the private sector, mostly in the insurance industry. Shereturned to Morgan State for a Master’s degree in transportationmanagement and planning, then worked for the Maryland PortAdministration and the Baltimore Metropolitan Council, theregion’s metropolitan planning organization. She directedBaltimore’s Bridges to Work demonstration from 1996 to 2000.Shortly before this report went to press, she signed on as managerof alternative transportation with the Maryland Department ofTransportation. She is an active member of Mt. Calvary AfricanMethodist Episcopal (AME) Church and lives with her husbandand four children.

5David Wilson is executive vice president for the Private IndustryCouncil, the Workforce Development Board for Milwaukee County,where he oversees research and planning, quality assurance,transportation and workforce development programs. Amongthese programs are JobRide, a state-sponsored program for jobseekers and employers, and a pair of federally funded employmentand training programs for dislocated workers and people with lowincomes. He became the local project director for Bridges to Workin 1998. He has a Master’s degree in business administrationfrom Marquette University. He lives with his wife and three daughtersin Brown Deer, Wisconsin.About the editorChristopher Reardon writes about the arts and social justice issues forthe New York Times, the Village Voice, the Christian Science Monitor, andother major publications. He received a Master’s degree in 1992from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, wherehe later spent a year as a mid-career fellow of the National ArtsJournalism Program. He has served as a consultant to The FordFoundation since 1992. He lives with his wife and daughter inBrooklyn, New York.

7INTRODUCTIONVoices of ExperienceThe shortest distance between two points,according to The Elements of Euclid, is astraight line. But as any modern commuterknows, this principle of classical geometryrarely holds true at rush hour. Gettingto and from work in most Americancities is often a circuitous ordeal, anOdyssey rewritten for an industrial agewhen braving potholes and traffic jamsqualifies as a minor act of heroism.Yet this daily sojourn can be even morearduous for the millions of working menand women who cannot afford a car. Manyof them are city dwellers who have beenleft behind as the middle class, followedby a surge of employers, flocked to thesuburbs in recent decades. In manymetropolitan areas, public transit stillfollows a postwar model designed toshuttle commuters between bedroomcommunities and jobs downtown. Anyoneseeking to travel in the other direction—and capitalize on the profusion of suburbanjobs—is likely to encounter fixedroutes and limited schedules that recallthe old saw, “You can’t get there from here.”Several years ago, Public/Private Ventures(P/PV) set out to test the idea thatimproved access to suburban jobs mightbenefit low-income urban residents. Thecenterpiece of this effort is Bridges toWork, a four-year demonstration projectthat seeks to measure the impact ofreverse-commute initiatives in fivemajor cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Denver,Milwaukee and St. Louis. Along withtransportation, these sites provide placementassistance and support services toconnect job-ready urban workers tosuburban employment.The men and women who planned Bridgesacted on a set of assumptions that, inhindsight, did not play out as expected.Most significantly, at a time when thecountry was still pulling out of the recessionof the early 1990s, they thought itwould be relatively easy to recruit participantsand relatively hard to attractemployers. Consequently, they designedthe program with a particular focus onfinding jobs and coordinating transportationto outlying suburbs.The reality, though, was quite different.What Bridges could not have foreseen wasthe unprecedented economic expansionthat has trimmed the nation’s unemploymentrate to 4 percent. With competitionfor both skilled and unskilled workersintensifying in most labor markets, the fivesites found that many of their intendedclients—jobless people who needed onlyminimal preparation for employment—had already found work.The surging economy made it necessaryfor the directors to make dramatic changesin the way they ran their programs. Aboveall, they had to redouble their efforts toidentify participants and rethink theirtransportation strategies. For example,they put more resources into short-termsoft skills training and other supportsdesigned to help riders overcome theirbarriers to work. In two cases, they alsoaugmented a few large buses with a fleetof smaller vans.Despite the many unforeseen obstaclesthey encountered, all five sites gottheir programs up and running. After aslow start, recruitment and placementfigures rose, and Bridges began to gainmomentum. The resourcefulness anddedication shown by the five projectdirectors and their staffs has allowedBridges to continue to play a meaningfulrole in helping to inform the fields ofemployment and transportation policy.

8Two earlier reports looked at some of theinterim successes, concerns, and challengesof Bridges to Work. As Bridges entered itsthird year of operation, P/PV’s staffthought it might be instructive to let theproject directors describe their experiencesin their own words. And so, while meetingin New Orleans, they sat down individuallyto share their frustrations, insights, reflectionsand recommendations. The followingpages present some salient excerpts fromthese conversations and subsequenttelephone interviews, organized aroundseveral dominant themes. Here, in the oraltradition, are five voices of experience.A Snapshot of the DemonstrationBridges to Work was designed to test whether efforts to connect inner-city workers to suburbanjobs by providing transportation, placement and limited supportive services wouldresult in better employment opportunities and earnings for these workers. The goal was toserve 3,100 persons over the four-year life of the demonstration, from late 1996 to early 2001.Using a random assignment design, each of four sites—Baltimore, Denver, Milwaukee and St.Louis—had up to 24 months in which to recruit 800 persons, half of whom were randomlyassigned to a treatment group and half to a control group. The fifth site, Chicago, sought toplace 1,500 workers without the constraints of random assignment to see if a reverse commuteprogram could achieve scale.Each site targeted a residential area within the central city where participants were recruitedand a suburban employment area where participants were placed in jobs. Each person in thetreatment group was eligible for up to 18 months of Bridges to Work placement, transportationand retention services. People in the control group did not receive Bridges services but couldreapply for them 18 months after their first random assignment. In the interim, the controlgroup members could seek services from other agencies or programs. Before randomassignment, each applicant completed a baseline survey conducted on the telephone. All treatmentand control group members were interviewed again 18 months after random assignment.The first random assignment site began implementation in June 1997; the last site in August1997. The random assignment sites concluded enrollment of new participants in July 1999.Chicago began intake and placement in November 1996 and ended intake in February 2000.The sites experienced difficulty recruiting participants early on in the program. The Bridges toWork design assumed that a significant number of unemployed adults living in concentratedareas in the city were ready to work but lacked information about and access to suburbanjobs. As the directors discuss in this report, the strong economy experienced during thedemonstration meant that relatively few work-ready people were seeking employment assistance.Also, partnerships with training programs or other public agencies resulted in few, ifany, qualified applicants for Bridges to Work. The Bridges programs responded to these

9challenges by expanding and continually refining their recruitment strategies. In the end, thefour random assignment sites enrolled a total of 2,360 people, or 74 percent of their originalgoal. Chicago enrolled 845 participants—56 percent of its original goal.At some sites, staff realized early on that the applicants coming to the program were not qualifiedfor the jobs they had developed. At all sites, staff found that many applicants were lackingsome of the basic skills needed to obtain and retain a job. The Bridges programs respondedby providing limited job preparation services, such as workshops on attitudes, dress, communicationin the workplace and interviewing techniques. At the random assignment sites,760, or 64 percent of the 1,183 people eligible to receive Bridges services, obtained employmentthrough the Bridges to Work program. At Chicago, 607 people, or 72 percent of those enrolled,obtained employment through the program.Four sites continued to provide transportation, placement and retention services to Bridgesto Work participants through January 2001. The demonstration ended in Milwaukee at theend of May 2000. Sites offered re-placement services to participants who either lost a job orwanted to find a better opportunity at another company. The five sites made 389 re-placements.Some of the Bridges sites saw many participants leave their suburban jobs. Three reasonsfor this appear to be that jobs of similar quality were available in some central cities,some sites had to curtail their transportation services to reduce costs, and the participantswho remained unemployed lacked basic employment skills and the resources needed toretain a job. Retention in suburban jobs was highest in Baltimore where the wage differentialbetween city and suburban jobs appeared to be greater; transportation services were available24 hours a day, seven days a week; and the program had developed a network of socialservice providers that offered support to the participants.The Bridges to Work demonstration concluded at the end of January 2001. Data collectionon the follow-up survey will continue through Spring 2001. Two of the five sites, Baltimore andSt. Louis, have secured funding to continue providing employment and transportation servicesto link city residents to suburban jobs.

10BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICEThere’s more to it than having some vansand some drivers and knowing how to getfrom one point to another. If it were thatsimple, everyone would be doing it.—Roz Staples-StreeterThe Reality of Reverse CommutingBridges to Work was designed to testwhether transportation could span thegap between inner-city job seekers andsuburban employers. P/PV’s research hadshown that in six of the nation’s eightlargest metropolitan regions, more thantwo-thirds of the jobs created during the1980s were located in the suburbs. At thesame time, poverty rates in the inner citiesreached levels two to five times higherthan in their corresponding suburbs,where workers tended to receive betterwages and benefits.Reverse commuting offered a possiblesolution to this spatial mismatch. The ideawas to identify job-ready adults in selectedurban neighborhoods, help them findjobs close together in the suburbs, andgive them rides to and from work. Thearchitects of Bridges also envisioned arange of support services to make theproject a viable option for prospectiveparticipants. For example, workers wereto be guaranteed a ride home in case ofemergency, such as for a sick child.The project directors for the five demonstrationsites still largely agree with thisstrategy. Experience, though, has heightenedtheir sense that while transportationmay be the most apparent obstacle togainful employment in the suburbs, it isby no means the only one. Withoutexception, the sites have run up against aslew of social and systemic barriers thatincluded burdensome child care arrangements;limited literacy; and problemscollaborating with other agencies thatwere caused by the mechanics of welfarereform, the research methodology andlocal politics.Some project directors, notably Denver’sMandi Huser, have found that the suburbanjobs tended to be quite spreadout, making transportation more costlyand complicated than expected. LikeMilwaukee’s David Wilson, she has alsolearned that suburban jobs do not alwayspay well enough to warrant a long commute.In Baltimore, transportation hasbeen somewhat easier to arrange. Thetrickiest part there, says Linda Stewart-Byrd,has been grappling with recruitment,placement and other employment issues.Perhaps the greatest constant has beenthe resourcefulness that all five sites havedisplayed in keeping the demonstrationon track. The project directors and theirstaffs have frequently raced the clock todevise new ways to identify employers,recruit workers, and get them to theirjobs on time within the constraints of theoriginal design. Although the overallnumber of people recruited and placed injobs was not as high as expected, Bridgesis proving successful in generating crucialrefinements that could enable reversecommuteprograms to stand up to thestrains and stresses of the real world.Linda Stewart-Byrd (Baltimore): I think thepotential is extraordinary. There are a lotof things that need to be worked out asfar as the strategy and financing of Bridges,but overall it’s a great concept and it giveshope. Some participants say it’s an opportunityfor them to change their lives—toget jobs with upward mobility, careersthat have meaning, a livable wage, andbenefits so they can actually take care oftheir families. In the Baltimore region,it’s harder to find those types of jobs inthe city if you have limited skills.Robert Carter (Chicago): I think it’s asound strategy, too. We’ve had a lot ofexperience with using large vehicles, likebuses, to transport people in Chicago. Butthere are some severe limitations to that,

11so we’re looking at some other things. Youreally have to explore a lot of alternativesto make this work: smaller vehicles, vans,car pooling. We’re even working on anarrangement with the suburban railsystem. So I’d say it’s a good theory. I justthink that it’s challenging to work out allthe kinks—like how to cover multipleshifts and destinations without letting thevehicle costs get out of hand.David Wilson (Milwaukee): In every majormetropolitan area, Milwaukee included,the demand for workers has been in thesuburbs, so I think the overall concept is agood one. But I sometimes worry that ourfocus on getting people out there takesaway from other issues relating to housing,opportunities seem to exist more foremployers, so you have to take peoplefrom one area to another. It’s aboutempowering the work force. If companieswithin the city could offer the same wagesand benefit packages as the ones in thesuburban areas, we wouldn’t have thisproblem. But it’s something that existsnationwide. This is just a sign of the times,something we’ve got to do.Mandi Huser (Denver): It’s a good strategy,but it really depends on the method oftransportation you use to get people outto the suburbs. A lot of methods are verycostly. Putting a new bus route in is nota good solution for a small number ofpeople. Paying a lot for shuttle services isWhen a person has trouble finding transportation to work, they havetransportation barriers with regard to other quality-of-life issues. Howdo you shop? How do you get your kids to day care? —David Wilsonself-sufficiency and economic development.Transportation is a barrier, there’s nodoubt about it, but not a barrier just togetting to work. When a person hastrouble finding transportation to work,they also have transportation barriers withregard to other quality-of-life issues. Howdo you shop? How do you get your kids today care? How dependent are you on othermeans of transportation, whether it’s thebus, the cab, or that friend next door?Don’t get me wrong: It’s important thatwe do this. But we can’t lose sight of theother issues that are there and the otherproblems that a lack of transportationcompounds.Roz Staples-Streeter (St. Louis): In St. Louissome people feel we should be funnelingmore resources and people into the city,and I agree to an extent. But I alsounderstand that opportunities exist in thesuburban areas. People have confronted usand said, “Why are you helping employersto move out farther from the city?” Well,also not a good solution. So the challengeis finding a cost-effective way to help peopleget from the inner city to the suburbs.Chris Reardon: How hard was it to put thetransportation component in place?Roz: When you hear about Bridges to Work,it sounds good, but it’s not simple at all.And if you’re not ready for it—if you’renot prepared—the transportation willtake over. There’s more to it than havingsome vans and some drivers and knowinghow to get from one point to another. Ifit were that simple, everybody would bedoing it.Robert: The biggest challenge for us inChicago has been keeping the costs down,while still covering all the shift times anddrop-off points, which is pretty hard to dowith a fixed-route system. One alternativeis to have a fixed route to a certain pointand then use smaller distribution vansfrom there. That’s what we’ve starteddoing, but we haven’t had much time to

12experiment with it. Otherwise, I think thecosts are going to be somewhat prohibitive,and unless it’s subsidized, it’s notgoing to work. Unless you get a governmentsubsidy, you’re not going to be ableto afford it, and the client’s not going tobe able to afford it.Mandi: Transportation has been a hugechallenge for us in Denver. For quite awhile, we had excellent service; but thecounty changed paratransit providers, andthe new company they contracted withdidn’t want to participate in Bridges. Nowwe can’t find the transportation providers.Our mass transit has been excellent, butthe little providers that we needed forthe shuttle services just didn’t have anpickup points in the origin area andscheduled service based on the time thatperson had to go to work. The transportationwas the easiest part, actually, in theentire program. I thought it would be themost difficult, but it has proved to be theeasiest, most flexible part of the wholeBridges model.Chris: Can you describe some of thetransportation barriers you met and howyou worked to surmount them?Roz: A lot of transportation providersdidn’t seem to appreciate the fact thatwe’re taking people to a job, so being ontime is important. You may get riders whoare nervous or apprehensive about startingWe found a lot of employers outside of Baltimore who were willing togive on-the-job training, as long as people had a good work ethic. Sothat’s what we focused on. And people gained the hard skills right inthe work place, while they were working. —Linda Stewart-Byrdinterest and said it wasn’t cost effective.In the beginning, our employer area wasconcentrated, and the goal was to takepeople who were coming from the citystraight to a designated suburban hub.We would use existing routes and pay forthree supplemental ones. It was extremelyexpensive and there were only one or tworiders per route. And we couldn’t coverthe shifts that needed to be covered. Itjust wasn’t cost effective. Also, the employerarea was high-tech, and we were recruitingblue-collar workers, so we couldn’t connectthe two; we couldn’t find enough jobs.Linda: We were lucky in that we partneredwith a private, for-profit transportationprovider that had over 25 years of experience.We started out with one van, andnow we’re up to eight. And we were ableto coordinate it based on destination. Sowe have one van that goes to Jessup,another to Columbia, another to AnneArundel County. We had centralizeda job. Maybe they’ve never worked before.We’ve had a lot of problems with driverswho take the attitude that “These peopleare getting a free ride, and they’ll getthere when I get them there.” No, theyneed to be at their job on time just likeanybody else.Chris: So how did you get your transportationproviders, particularly the drivers, toshow more regard for the riders?Roz: I can’t say we’ve found a completesolution. We have to address it literally ona daily basis. We’ve had all kinds ofarguments and problems. Like I said, it’sa daily struggle for us. Because you’ve gotsome drivers who are like, “Hey, my job isjust to transport people from one place tothe other, and I don’t even have to care orlook at what’s going on in between.” Butyou do. You really do, and you should ifyou are a professional.

13Linda: We modeled our training after theSTRIVE program in New York, whichtakes a tough-love approach. George, ourtransportation supervisor, already had thatmentality, and he tried to instill it in thedrivers. Then my staff and I actually spenttwo weeks at STRIVE, and after we cameback, we had the drivers go throughsimilar training. We also trained them inhow to interact with riders and how toidentify problems. We even required newdrivers to sit in on the week-long trainingthat the participants went through. Thatway they got to bond with the riders. Theyalso learned how to identify problemsearly on and relay that information backto us so we could follow up and find outwhy, for example, somebody was missingwork, showing up late, having an attitudeor having a problem with a co-workeror employer.Chris: What in particular made the transportationchallenging?Mandi: What we ended up doing wasexpanding our catchment area so wecould recruit more clients and expandingour employer area so we could locate avariety of jobs. But both of those areaswere spread out all over the area, whichwas what made it so hard to get thetransportation piece to function efficiently.Chris: How helpful were employersand business groups in identifying jobopenings?Mandi: We worked a lot with the SoutheastBusiness Partnership. In the beginning,that’s where we established a lot of strongemployer contacts. We placed ads in someof the newspapers, like the Business Ledger,and I think that helped us establish a goodreputation with the employers. Then oncewe started working with an employer, theywould refer us to others. That’s how ouremployer pool expanded. In the beginning,we had a job developer. In fact, we hadtwo different job developers, and whenthe last one left, we did not replace thatperson because we didn’t need to. Jobleads were just coming in.Roz: We struggled at first because thebusinesses where we intended to placepeople needed workers with more hardand soft skills than the people we wereable to recruit. After we expanded ourrecruitment area and began targetingdifferent kinds of businesses, we were ableto make better matches, and the employersgrew more receptive.Linda: The business groups have been greatto us, particularly the economic developmentauthorities, the private industrycouncils, and the business partnershipout at BWI, the Baltimore-WashingtonInternational Airport. They all love theconcept of Bridges, and economically it’sa success for them because they need toget people to work. Employers are threateningto leave the county if they can’t getworkers. So they look at Bridges as a viableeconomic tool in getting people to workand helping the employers to be happy.Chris: How did the jobs you found in thesuburbs stack up against what was availablein the city? Did the pay and benefits justifythe longer commute?Robert: The economy has caused a lot ofpeople to fall off from Bridges becausethey can get jobs in the city. And whilesome of those jobs don’t pay as much,when they add in being closer to their kidsand being in a neighborhood that they’refamiliar with, the differential in the wagesdoesn’t seem quite as much.Linda: In Baltimore there are jobs in thecity, but they’re more entry-level, minimum-wage-typejobs with no benefits,working at a hotel. If you work at a hotelin Howard County, you’re going to bepaid three, four dollars more, and you’llget benefits.Mandi: In the beginning, everyone thoughtthat the suburban jobs were going to bethese great, high-paying jobs with excellentbenefits. I think it’s good for the clients tohave options and to give them support toget to those options, but I don’t knowthat the jobs are all that much better inthe suburbs.

14I think if it were a different economymaybe it would be different, but right nowthere are just jobs everywhere—two jobsfor every person. So it’s a harder sell tosay, “You’re going to find a better job ifyou come and use our transportation,”because they can walk to McDonald’s twoblocks from their house and make $8.50an hour flipping hamburgers.Chris: Are they getting benefits in thesuburbs?Mandi: Most of them. But the employersexpect more in the suburbs. The oneswith the better benefit packages expect abetter-quality worker, and to find that withunemployment this low is challenging.Chris: How did employers handle the factthat many Bridges participants were not asjob ready as everyone anticipated?Linda: We found a lot of employers outsideof Baltimore who were willing to give onthe-jobtraining as long as people had agood work ethic. So that’s what we focusedon. And people gained the hard skills rightin the workplace, while they were working.Chris: How has your staff been able todevelop such strong relationships withemployers?Linda: All of my staff come from the privatesector, so we realize how important it is toprovide quality service and quality management.We also all have backgrounds inthe social sciences. It’s been challenging,but I think we’ve been able to strike abalance. We stress in the training thatit’s all about what the employer wants,because you’re there to give the employera profit. That might sound harsh, butthe employer doesn’t care whether yourchildren are sick or whether you can’tcome to work because of this or that. It’snot a social program, so we have to marketit as a business. The fact is the employerwants qualified applicants who are goingto really be beneficial to their bottom line.And other than that, they’re not going tohire you.

15A Snapshot of the ParticipantsAt the random assignment sites, a total of 2,360 people completed baseline interviews andwere assigned to the treatment or control groups.* Half of these participants were women,and half were men. Only Milwaukee served a higher proportion of men (64%) than women.Overall, 42 percent of participants were under age 30 when they entered the program, 32 percentwere in their 30s, and 26 percent were age 40 and above. Denver served a higher proportionof people who were under age 30 (56%). The majority of participants (98%) were membersof minority racial or ethnic groups; 84 percent were African American. At program entry, 18percent of participants lived alone. Just over half (58%) lived with children under age 18; 31percent lived with children under age six. The Bridges programs tended to target people whohad at least a high school diploma or GED; only 16 percent of all participants had no degree.The percentage with no degree was highest in Milwaukee (34%) and lowest in Baltimore (3%).Many participants had a significant amount of work experience. Fifty-eight percent hadworked in the same full-time job for two years or more at some point in their lives; 28 percenthad done so for five years or more. In the year prior to program entry, 69 percent of participantshad worked full time at some point. Thirteen percent were working full time when theyenrolled in Bridges to Work, and another 14 percent were working part time. Twelve percentof participants had been unemployed for at least 12 months when they enrolled in the program.At their most recent job, 73 percent of participants earned less than $8.00 per hour; 48percent earned less than $6.50 per hour. The most common reasons participants gave as towhy they were not working at the time of enrollment were because they could not find work,they were recently laid off, or they did not have transportation to get to a job.Despite their work experience, many Bridges to Work participants faced barriers to obtainingand retaining a job. To qualify for the program, participants had to have a transportation needand lack access to a vehicle that could be used for commuting every day. Even after theystarted working, the Bridges participants were unlikely to rely on a private vehicle for commuting,since only 34 percent of them had a valid driver’s license. Health problems wereanother potential barrier for some participants: 5 percent said they had health problems thatlimited their ability to work and 12 percent lived with a child who had health problems thatrequired special medicine or equipment. Criminal backgrounds and drug use may have alsoprevented Bridges participants from obtaining some jobs: 30 percent said they had ever beenconvicted of a crime and 12 percent said they had used illegal drugs within the past year.While Bridges to Work does not target welfare recipients, many participants lived in householdsreceiving some form of public assistance in the month prior to enrollment: 36 percentreceived food stamps, 19 percent received TANF or welfare, and 19 percent lived in publichousing. One-third of the Bridges participants had ever been homeless for one or more nights.Participants’ median household income in the month prior to program enrollment was $850.At times, Bridges to Work staff had to help participants overcome their misgivings about travelingto and working in the suburbs. While a majority of participants had visited people,shopped or attended events in the suburbs in the past 10 years, 26 percent had not done so.Just over half (53%) had ever looked for work in the suburbs. Only 16 percent had lived in thesuburbs at some time in the past 10 years, but 28 percent said they would consider movingto the suburbs within 18 months of enrollment in Bridges to Work.* Baseline interviews were not completed with participants in Chicago.

16HELP WANTEDMost of the participants who came to usneeded the money. They didn’t want togo through a long, drawn-out trainingprogram when they needed to buy a boxof Cheerios for their children.—Linda Stewart-ByrdTrawling for Talent in a Tight EconomyOne of the assumptions in designingBridges to Work was that the demonstrationsites would be able to identify largenumbers of city dwellers who were readyand willing to commute to the suburbs.Just as significantly, Bridges anticipatedthat the sites would be able to locatecorrespondingly large numbers of entryleveljob openings in the suburbs.However welcome the nation’s economicboom has been for the newly employed, itcompounded the challenges of directingthe local demonstrations. It was not simplythat qualified participants became scarce;Bridges also faced unexpected competitionfrom urban employers, some of whombegan ratcheting up their pay scales inorder to attract and retain workers.The attractiveness of suburban jobsalso varied greatly within each regionaleconomy. Some employers in the suburbsdid not pay much more than their urbancounterparts, or they did not providebenefits, or their businesses were tooremote for parents to justify the extratime spent commuting.A few sites responded to these problemsby expanding the areas in which they triedto recruit and place clients. But in doingso, they made it harder to provide transportationefficiently and affordably. Betterresults came from efforts to develop newrecruiting strategies. St. Louis and Denver,for example, saw their recruitment figuressoar after placing advertisements in themass media.Mandi: Unemployment is very low, so wewere really scraping to find people. Thegoal of this project was to bring in jobreadypeople who had skills. In Denver,things are very spread out, so if you’ve gotskills and a job, you’re going to get a car.It’s a car city. People use cars as theirmode of transportation 9 out of 10 timesover the bus because public transportationis just not laid out the way it is in manyother cities. So it was really difficult to findpeople who had skills and did not havetransportation.Robert: When Bridges was designed, thethought was that there were a lot of workreadypeople out there. But that’s not thecase now, so we’ve had to burrow downdeeper and deeper into the local population.We’ve run into trouble because we’vecontinued to recruit from the same areafor such a long time, and because there’sa lot of competition for clients. Everybodyis after the same group of folks. So we’vehad to look at other population groups,like the homeless. I’m sure Bridges had noidea originally that we’d be dealing withthat population, or with ex-offenders.Currently, about one-third of our clientsare ex-offenders on work release, and theretention has been better there than inthe general population.Linda: I don’t have a background inemployment, so I never realized therewere so many barriers to it. I alwaysthought it was the transportation piecethat was the problem. I used to doresearch, and that’s what employerstold me: “We can’t get people to workbecause they don’t have transportation.”But actually there was a lot more thatwent into the equation than just thetransportation.Chris: Like what?Linda: Early on, we found there were anumber of barriers that go along withpoverty and permeate the neighborhoodsour clients live in. Crime affects everybodyin the community. Substance abuse is a bigbarrier; if your husband is coming home

17drunk or whatever, that affects the entirefamily. And literacy is a big factor. We hadto turn a number of people away becauseof their educational levels—not having ahigh school diploma or GED, not beingable to read or write, not being able to fillout an application.To help participants overcome some ofthose barriers, we’ve instituted a numberof support systems: to deal with domesticviolence, to help workers whose childrenhave asthma, to help workers who are alsotaking care of their mothers or fathers,and to build self-esteem. For example, weimplemented a program to help peopleprepare themselves for the interview andto secure the job.Robert: We’ve had to change our recruitmentstrategy, too. Most work-ready peoplewere already working, so we developed acommunity-based outreach effort tofind people who might not normally beconsidered for this kind of program. Weexpanded the geographic area a littlebit, but the main thing was looking for adifferent character of person: ex-offenders,homeless people. It’s completely differentfrom what the framers of the programanticipated, but we felt it was the best wayto go given the current economic climate.Chris: How do your clients view theeconomy? Are they heartened at therange of opportunities or discouragedby not reaping the benefits sooner?I think if you’re going to do “work first,” you’ve got to have a verystrong retention system built in on the back end, a lot of hand holdingonce they’re on the job.—Mandi HuserChris: In what ways did you revise yourrecruiting strategies?Mandi: I finally had to lay off the tworecruiters and use the money from theirsalaries for mass media. That’s where wegot our people, because there wasn’t someperson from another agency saying, “Uh,uh. That’s not a very good service.” Butwhen they heard it on the radio, peoplewould be like, “Hey, I just heard it on theradio. Let me call Bridges to Work.” It wasamazing the difference we saw.Roz: We’ve advertised on the radio, passedout fliers, rented billboard space. Nothingout of the way or fabulous or so new thatno one ever thought of it before. Justthe basics, and it’s doing quite well forus. We’ve gone to grocery stores andLaundromats. We’ve considered what kindof radio they listen to, whether it’s rap orChristian, and placed ads on those stations.You have to reach people where they live.David: I think some clients view it as, “Oh,I can pick and choose. If things don’t workout for me here at this job, I can get—oryou will get me—another one.” I think theeconomy has spurred a false sense thatthey can be relocated anywhere.On the flip side, I think there are somepeople on the outside looking in. Theyhear everybody talking about how goodthings are: demand is high and paperbillionaires are popping up everywhere.Yet when that person gets a job at $8 or $9an hour, he finds out that he’s payingmore in taxes and losing child care andhealth care subsidies. In the meantime,his employer is getting a tax credit foremploying him. Even with the earnedincome tax credit, the person still isn’tany better off.Chris: Does that create cynicism orconfusion?

18David: I think it’s confusion. Since thiswhole welfare reform piece came intoplay, no one has ever really told thesefolks, “This is what you need to make anhour to support a family.” We just said,“You gotta get off welfare and go to work.”So now they’re working and finding outthat they’re worse off.Mandi: Although the economy was reallystrong, our participants could not get jobs,which is insane. There are thousands ofjobs out there, yet our people could notsecure any of them. We had to really sellour product; we had to go in and say, “Irealize this person has two felony convictions,but let me tell you why he wouldbe a good candidate for you.” SomeWith Bridges, you’ve got a handful ofpeople who do really well just getting ajob. But I think if you’re going to do“work first,” you’ve got to have a verystrong retention system built in on theback end, a lot of hand-holding oncethey’re on the job. I think we learned toolate that you’ve got to do a lot of careerplanning: “This is your first step. This ishow we’re going to help you move up andup and up.” But with Bridges we had tofocus on one thing at a time: first transportation,then recruitment, then jobplacement, then retention. It was never asituation in which we could develop allthese systems so they run really welltogether. So we lack in retention, and IWe’ve gone to grocery stores and laundromats. We’ve considered whatkind of radio they listen to, whether it’s rap or Christian, and placedads on those stations. You have to reach people where they live.—Roz Staples-Streeteremployers told us, “We normally wouldn’thire this person, but we’re going to take achance because you said you think he’llwork out.” But a lot of them still couldn’tget in, so I don’t know whether they feltthat the economy was booming, becausethey were still unemployed.Chris: What has your experience withBridges taught you about when it makessense to provide employment training andwhen it’s better for people to work first?Mandi: I come from a training andemployment background, so my philosophyis training, then employment. Thelast program I managed provided 10weeks of extensive services, with a 95percent placement rate and an 85 percentretention rate. Those rates were highbecause we hit them on work ethics, jobreadiness, and self-esteem day after day,even after they were employed.think that’s because we focused more onrecruitment and placement than on howpeople were going to retain their jobs.Chris: If given a choice between a jobtrainingprogram or Bridges, what doyou think your clients in Baltimorewould prefer?Linda: Most of the participants who cameto us needed the money. They didn’t wantto go through a long, drawn-out trainingprogram when they needed to buy a boxof Cheerios for their children. So itworked out well. We have one employerthat trains people to become certifiednursing assistants. It paid for their books,their state certification—it even paid themto do the training. All they had to do wasagree to work there for a year. So theparticipants are getting a paycheck soonerand gaining valuable work experience

19because it’s the kind of training theemployer needs, not what an agencythinks employers need.Chris: How do you reconcile your dualloyalties to the clients and employers?Linda: We’re fair; we understand thatthere are other social issues that affectsomeone’s ability to be successful on thejob. That’s why we set up systems where wecan be supportive. They can come to us ifthey have a problem. We can go out andtalk with the employer and the employeeand provide conflict resolution andnegotiate on behalf of the employee.We’ve been successful in that area. But upfront we let the employees know, you can’tgo out there and act a certain way. Thereare already barriers and stigmas andstereotypes of how city people are. Youcan’t go out there and play into that.

20THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD?Our main job developer is a white guy,and sometimes employers level with himand say they’re not very keen on doingbusiness with us. It was fairly clear why.—Robert CarterDispelling Urban and Suburban MythsAs Bridges got under way, one recurringconcern centered on the prospect thatinner-city workers, most of them membersof a minority group, might face discriminationin the suburbs. These fears wereborne out most trenchantly at a restaurantoutside Baltimore, shortly after severalBridges participants began four weeks ofpaid training in food service and restaurantmanagement. The training was meantas a prelude to jobs at a related franchisein a neighboring county, but a small groupof white people who lived near the trainingfacility found the mere presence of blackmen from East Baltimore intolerable. Inprotest, they circled the restaurant anddelivered a message warning the trainees—who were not there at the time—not toreturn. They identified themselves asmembers of the Ku Klux Klan.There may be legitimate reasons to questionthe merits of reverse commuting. Eventhe project directors, after investing afew years of their time, expressed somequalms. Yet the form of opposition thatposed the greatest threat to Bridges wasneither the informed criticism of transportationand workforce developmentprofessionals nor the avowed racism ofthe Klan. Rather, it was the more subtleapprehension that many suburbanresidents, employers, and co-workersmight feel toward outsiders of anotherrace or social class.As it turns out, 95 percent of the Bridgesparticipants were members of minoritygroups. But while each of the projectdirectors reported some isolated problemswith cultural biases, these incidents didnot always conform to expectations. Forone thing, the stereotypes sprang fromevery direction, coming from suburbanresidents, employers, co-workers, andclients alike. Denver’s Mandi Huser evenrecalled how a well-meaning staff member,by raising the issue of discrimination sofrequently, sowed doubts in employers’minds and nearly made it a self-fulfillingprophecy. The most frequent problemsarose between co-workers, as with blacksand Hispanics at a hotel near Denver andat a factory just west of Chicago. On thewhole, though, the cultural biases thatBridges encountered proved to be temporaryobstacles, not insurmountable barriers.Linda: We probably spent the first yearbreaking down those barriers of perceptionand stereotypes. When the Ku KluxKlan came out, people were frightened.We said, “How are we going to deal withthis?” After consulting with the trainees,we decided to avoid further confrontation,and we stopped sending them out there.We found someplace else for them to gobecause we didn’t want to put anybody’slife in jeopardy. Actually, the employerlet the Bridges participants completetheir training at the franchise in HowardCounty, where they soon joined theregular staff.Chris: What about more subtle forms ofdiscrimination?Linda: They exist, but I think over the lastcouple of years the situation has improved.Initially, we were viewed as a social programthat bused people from the city and to theemployment sites in the suburbs. What theemployers recognized, after they gave usa chance, is that our clients are just likeanybody else. They were actually moreambitious than some of the employeesthey were hiring on their own. After awhile they forgot they were Bridges toWork participants. That’s why we don’twant to market it like a social program.Don’t do us a favor. Our participants arejust as good as anybody else if you givethem a chance.Chris: Did their co-workers know they werepart of this program?

21Linda: Yes, they saw the van when it pulledup. Some of the co-workers are callingus and saying, “Can we get a ride?” AndBridges workers have established goodworking relationships with their co-workers.So I think there wasn’t a lot of peerpressure. There might have been a coupleof isolated incidents of discrimination, butoverall it didn’t affect us.Roz: We face discrimination quite a bit.It’s an ugly thing, but there are a lot ofstereotypes actually on both ends,among the clients we serve as well as atthe destination or employer area. If wefound an employer who thought ourpeople only should have been housekeepersor laundry room people—anddo this and this and that. You need toapply for this job.” We give them a peptalk and remind them, “You’re going toface this kind of adversity almost anywhereyou go in this world. But you need to focuson your attitude, the attitude you portraywhen you’re interviewing. If you’re a nononsensekind of person, if you really wantthis kind of job, and if you’re not caughtup in all these different stereotypes, thatimpression is what’s going to be shown.”We try to encourage them not to dwell onnegative stereotypes because that’s alreadya given. You try to look beyond that. But ifyou get out there and discrimination isapparent, then that’s something you needto look at. Is it the kind of environmentIt’s an ugly thing, but there are a lot of stereotypes actually on bothends, among the clients we serve as well as at the destination oremployer area.—Roz Staples-Streeterthey may have associate degrees or 6, 7, 10years of experience—and that’s the bestthey could offer them, then we chose toplace them elsewhere.On the other hand, many of our clients saythey don’t want to go out there. Why isthat? Our destination area, Chesterfield,has a reputation as an upwardly mobilesuburb: 95 percent white, upper upperclass.A lot of our commuters automatically thinkthe only jobs out there are for dishwashersand room-keepers and things that “they”—the people who live there—do not want todo. And they think they’re going to bemistreated out there.Chris: How do you persuade them to tryit, and how do you prepare them for themistrust they may encounter?Roz: We tell them, “Yes, this is whatChesterfield is known for, but there areother jobs out there.” And we look attheir skill levels. We say, “Okay, you havecustomer service experience, and you canyou can work in? Is it the type of environmentthat you want to work in? And it’snot for everybody, because some peoplejust cannot deal with racism or prejudices.Not that they have to. Some people candeal with it better than others. Somepeople just have an attitude: “I’m here towork. I want to put my eight hours in, getmy check and go.” If you can do that, fine.If you cannot, you need to think about it.Maybe this area is not for you. That’s howwe handle it. It’s not a matter of forcinganybody to go out. It’s a personal choice.But we try to help them focus on the goodthat’s within them, what they have to offer,more than the stereotypes or reputations orthe stuff that’s going to linger regardless.Chris: In retrospect, has discriminationbeen more or less of a problem than youexpected?Roz: Actually less. I don’t know whether it’sbecause it’s passing or whether it’s justhidden, to be honest. But we really didn’t

22have to deal with it a lot—either becausewe were very selective about the employerswe worked with or because we wereselective about the people we referredout there. But we really never had a lotof problems.David: That is one of the pitfalls whenyou’re moving central-city residents out tosuburban areas. It’s not unique to Bridges;it’s unique to any transportation programwhere there’s a reverse commute. You’vegot people who are integrating not onlyinto the workplace but also into thecommunity of that workplace. And let’sface it: there are going to be issues. It’s justthat few of them reached the level wherethey couldn’t be resolved in the workplace,where they had to come to us.makes it a point to speak Spanish mostof the time. So where does that leave theAfrican Americans? Even though it maynot be an intentional prejudice, it leavesthem feeling out of the loop in terms ofbeing part of the organization. We’ve hada number of employers who have embracedthe ex-offenders, most of whom are blackalso. So I would say for the majority it’snot a problem. Once in a while you runacross it. Our main job developer is a whiteguy, and sometimes employers level withhim and say they’re not very keen ondoing business with us. It’s fairly clearwhy, and sure, you’re going to have that.We’re in a suburban area where a lot ofpeople who run companies moved to getaway from the city.What the employers recognized, after they gave us a chance, is thatour clients are just like anybody else. They were actually more ambitiousthan some of the employees they were hiring on their own.—Linda Stewart-ByrdRobert: There’s some discrimination inChicago, too. Out in the suburban ringaround O’Hare Airport there are anumber of employers who make it veryclear that they want Latinos, not AfricanAmericans.Chris: Do employers assume that Latinosare going to work harder because more ofthem are recent immigrants?Robert: Well, some of them are illegals.We would not become any part of that,but it goes on. It’s not supposed to, but it’sgoing on. The other thing we find in thefocus groups is that some of our clients—who are mostly African American, like thecommunity we recruit from—indicate thatafter they’re hired and on the job anddoing fine, they feel like they’re isolated.What will happen is there’s a largepercentage of, say, Mexican employeesand the foreman speaks Spanish. So heChris: Have you encountered discriminationor discomfort with hiring the populationyou’re serving in Denver?Mandi: The only difficulty we saw was withco-workers at hotels, between blacks andHispanics. That was on a co-worker level,but not as far as the hiring authorities orsupervisors. No legitimate complaints.We’ll have people say, “Oh, they discriminatedagainst me,” but once we got downto the meat and potatoes of it, it wasn’tdiscrimination. It was that they weren’tdoing their job. But we had nothingconcrete, which was surprising. Peoplewere extremely concerned about that inthe beginning. I think it depended on thestaff person’s approach.The first job developer I had really thoughtthere was going to be a problem withdiscrimination. Her attitude was that we’resending these low-income city people out

23into the suburbs and employers are notgoing to be receptive. And some of theemployers that she recruited weren’t. Idon’t know whether it was because of theaura she was sending, signals she wasgiving to the employers. But with the lastjob-placement person I had, it didn’tmatter what color you were or what youreconomic status was. When she was doingplacement, she was simply placing peoplewith employers. It just wasn’t an issue.We had one employer who was labelingour people, saying, “The Bridges peoplearen’t getting here on time” or “TheBridges people are having these problems.”We had to tell them, “You knowwhat? These are your employees. They’renot ‘the Bridges people.’ We provide themwith transportation, but they are youremployees. So if you want to label themanything, label them your employees.”And they agreed and corrected theproblem. So if we saw anything that couldhave started to be a problem, we tried tostop it right up front.

24FRIEND OR FOE?The employers needed workers, theagencies needed to meet their numbers,and we were really the only one in townwho could provide the transportation.So we focused on explaining where thebenefits lie and how we could helpenhance somebody’s services withouttrying to reinvent the wheel.—Linda Stewart-ByrdMaking Collaboration WorkBridges to Work actually dates back to1993—more than three years before theformal demonstration project began—when nine sites took up P/PV’s call tobuild strategic partnerships, or “collaboratives,”within their metropolitan areas.The rationale was that reverse-commuteprograms would succeed only if keystakeholders were willing to share information,resources, and political support.Over the course of two years, the nineoriginal sites attempted to forge ties withchurches, community groups, businessalliances, transportation providers, metropolitanplanning organizations (MPOs),private industry councils (PICs), servicedelivery areas (SDAs), and other city andsuburban institutions. Five of the siteswere then selected to take part in thedemonstration based on their capacity tobuild, manage and sustain these complexnew relationships.In principle, these partner organizationswere expected to assist with recruitment,transportation and support services. Yetonce the demonstration got under way,many of them appeared to lose interest inthe project or feel threatened by it. Insome cases, the project directors foundthat persistence, diplomacy and a successfultrack record could rekindle thesealliances. But often they had to reorientthemselves, seeking out new partners andforging more meaningful relationshipson the fly.With a few notable exceptions, publicagencies and nonprofit job training andemployment programs tended to be theleast helpful. Community-based organizations(CBOs) proved far more responsive.Linda: The overall model was set upwhere referral partners—like the nonprofitprograms that did job trainingand placement—would steer individualsdirectly to Bridges to Work. Basically, allwe would have to do was the placementand transportation. But that didn’thappen. It became very competitive,where programs were just trying to controltheir own resources and they wanted tomeet the numbers. We were all going afterthe same pool of people, so they wouldn’trefer people to us.Chris: Was that because the job-trainingand employment programs were goingafter welfare-to-work money by placingpeople themselves?Linda: Yes, they wanted to get placementcredit. I’m thinking of those that reallycontrol the money. A lot of the programshad contracts directly with the Departmentof Social Services (DSS), or Health andHuman Services, or the Department ofLabor to place individuals who are comingoff of welfare into work opportunities.They didn’t want to refer them to Bridgesbecause it would look like they weren’tdoing their job, like we were doing it forthem. We had to prove our credibility andshow that we weren’t trying to compete.Chris: How did you do that? If you placedthem, did you get the placement credit?Linda: Not really, because we didn’t havea contract with DSS. So we were providingservices even though we weren’t gettingpaid through DSS. We have the money forthe transportation, but it was throughHUD. Over time we established thoserelationships, and they started trusting usbecause we would provide the transportationand help boost their numbers. Andthey still could get credit for the peoplethey served.

25Mandi: In Denver, very few programswould say, “Oh, you know what? You canplace this person. You can give themtransportation for 18 months. It’s awin/win situation here. Let’s take advantageof it.” It was more competition,which was very odd because Bridges is notcompetitive. They would still get credit forall of the placements, and we would dothe follow-up services with that client. Butwe had to try to find job-ready people.And there is so much territorialism thatother programs are not going to send ustheir best clients. Why would they do that?Then they don’t have that person. Thatwas their philosophy: Why would we sendyou our best clients and then not be ableWe finally just said “forget it.” It was toohard to work around all of their new rules.They were going through so many changesthat it was easier for us not to use them asa recruitment source. If people came fromwelfare, yes, we would serve them. But wedidn’t use the welfare department as areferral source.Robert: In Chicago, too, the originalcollaborative mostly involved other jobprograms. It turned out to be a substantialbust. That became very clear even beforeI got there, and we started to developrelationships with CBOs and churches andministers and alliances with the aldermanand the congressman up there. They havethese job fairs all the time. There are soNo matter what approach we used, no matter who went out andtalked to them, no matter what benefits we could show them, about 1in 10 would say, “Okay, we’ll send you some clients.” Then if theydid, it was the people they didn’t want to serve. —Mandi Huserto count that person? And no matter howmuch we explained it to them, they stillthought we were stealing their clients.Chris: You’re talking about public agencies,like the ones charged with moving peoplefrom welfare to work?Mandi: Right. It was extremely difficult towork with the welfare department. Wewould have interviews set up for theclients and they would say, “Oh, no. Theyhave to be at a meeting over here today.”So do you want them to go to a jobinterview or do you want them to cometo one of your mandatory meetings? Letthem go to the interview and they’ll havea job tomorrow. I told one of the welfarecaseworkers, “I can guarantee you thisperson will have a job tomorrow if sheshows up at the interview.” And shesaid, “No, we won’t excuse her fromthis meeting.”many other avenues that we’ve had tolook at; we can’t rely on referrals fromthe one-stops.We recently moved one of our orientationsites to the Chicago Department of HumanServices building, where they’re lettingus operate at no charge because we areserving some of their emergency servicefolks. These are people who were basicallyhomeless. The good thing about that isthat they have a caseworker, and if we’reable to get them a job, then the kind ofsupport services that our staff wouldn’thave enough time to provide can beprovided by the caseworker. So we’ve hadabout five or six good placements, and wejust started doing this in the last month.They’re pretty solid too—no problems.They’re really motivated.Chris: It sounds like there were realcommunication barriers at some of thesites. How did you and your staff in

26Baltimore succeed in conveying thestructure and goals of Bridges to yourpartners and get them to really buy into it?Linda: Well, it took a lot of hand holding,a lot of favors. By favors, I mean reallytrying to get in there with people likeOED, the state Office of Employment andDevelopment, and other members of ourcollaborative. For instance, OED may havea delegation coming in from anothercountry, and they need somebody to pickthem up from the train station. If we had avan available, we would charge a small feeto cover our operating costs, but we woulddo it. We would do things like that toencourage collaboration. You scratch myback, I’ll scratch yours.invite people to come out on the next day.Members of their congregations helpedwith recruitment and doing the applications,and with the training and support.A number of congregation members hadsocial-work degrees and volunteered todo counseling. They offered clothing,suits and dresses for people to wearwhen they went on interviews. So theywere really supportive.Other organizations we tapped into thatpeople in training programs traditionallywouldn’t think about were the missions,the shelters. They were able to help someof our individuals who were in transitionfor housing, and we were able to help anumber of their residents get jobs and getWe built up our relationship with them by exchanging staff visits andhaving them come out to see what we do and just get familiar with theprocess. They quickly realized that, unlike a lot of programs out there,we actually had something to offer. It was not just talk. We had jobs.—Robert CarterChris: Did that pay off in any tangible way?What did OED do for you in return?Linda: They started referring people tous. We used their training rooms for ourorientation. We did joint job fairs. So therelationship really grew over time. Samething with the Baltimore MetropolitanCouncil, the MPO for the Baltimore region.We did a couple of panel discussions downthere and they eventually helped us obtainAccess to Jobs funding. It got to be a real,true collaborative.Chris: How helpful were churches andother community-based organizations?Linda: The other CBOs were absolutelygreat to us. We partnered with thechurches, which were our number onesource of referrals. When we did job fairs,they would announce us during theSunday morning worship service andon their feet. Now they have their ownapartments, and they’re self-sustaining.So the CBOs and the churches and theneighborhood associations were prettygood. Everybody on the grassroots levelpretty much saw that we were havingan impact on unemployment in EastBaltimore.We have a list of a good 60 partners—likecommunity-based organizations that startedfeeding people to us and providing othersupport services. If they offered child care,we could refer people. It wasn’t that theywere in competition with us, but they sawthe advantage of partnering and teamingup together.Chris: “Collaboration” has become quitea buzzword in recent years. But how doyou get partner organizations to seeyour relationship as an integral part oftheir work?

27Robert: Well, take the Safer Foundation,which works with ex-offenders. We built upour relationship with them by exchangingstaff visits and having them come out tosee what we do and just get familiar withthe process. They quickly realized that,unlike a lot of programs out there, weactually had something to offer. It wasnot just talk. We had jobs, and whenthose connections were made, they couldsee results right away. That was certainlyan attractive situation.Plus we built on existing relationships.We had a person on our staff who hadbeen with Safer earlier in his career, sothat was a natural in terms of his ability tocommunicate with them. Our staff wouldexchange phone calls and visits withtheir counterparts at Safer, so any timeany of their clients had a need—theseare ex-offenders on work release—wewould be notified. After a while, theyended up providing us with as much as50 percent of our clients.Chris: In Denver, how well did you farewith collaboration?Mandi: In the beginning P/PV reallywanted us to focus on schools, churches,CBOs, and training and employmentprograms. And no matter how much wetold them “this is not working,” it seemedlike they kept pushing: “Go after thesegroups. It makes more sense.” Which itdid. I was right on the same page withthem in the beginning. But in reality, itjust wasn’t going to happen. No matterwhat approach we used, no matter whowent out and talked to the organizations,no matter what benefits we could showthem, about 1 in 10 would say, “Okay, we’llsend you some clients.” Then if they did, itwas the people they didn’t want to serve.Chris: Do you think potential partners weremore receptive to smaller community-basedorganizations like you had in Baltimoreand in Denver, or to a larger MPO like inSt. Louis, or to a PIC with closer businessties in Milwaukee?Linda: That’s a tough one. I imagine thereare advantages and disadvantages to each.As a CBO, we were able to reach out tothe community a lot easier without havingto establish a lot of new relationships. Butwe also already had relationships withsome of the larger organizations, and wehad the buy-in of the city, the state, andJohns Hopkins. All of that helped withgetting press coverage, and the kickoffwith the governor showed that we weren’ta fly-by-night organization, that we hadsome real potential. So we were prettymuch on both sides.Chris: In your view, did the nature, size orhistory of the host organization have anyimpact on the quality of collaboration?Roz: I don’t want to speak for the othersites, but as part of an MPO we have agood reputation in St. Louis, and thatreally helped. The popularity of East-WestGateway opened a lot of doors for uswhere otherwise people would not havepaid much attention. Even though thereferral agencies didn’t send us as manypeople as we wanted, I think they weremore receptive than they would have beenotherwise. And employers in the destinationarea were definitely more receptive.If we had been a smaller program comingout of the community, I think it wouldhave been harder to get them to listento us and take us seriously.Chris: What did other training and employmentprograms think about Bridges?Roz: I’d say at first it was easy to sell, andthen it got very difficult because theresults were slow. Now this is strictly forSt. Louis, of course. But once we finallymade it—once we finally started placingsome of their people, developing a nameand actually showing that we were makinga difference—they began to think highlyof us. They see us as a no-nonsense kindof program because that’s what we hadto become.Chris: How did you overcome the challengesof collaboration?

28Linda: With a lot of blood, sweat and tears.It was hard work. How did we do it? Wehung in there. We kept the lines ofcommunications open. We tried not to letpeople feel so intimidated. We tried toreach them at the human level, not at theorganizational level. Again, with trust.Another element was showing that wewere meeting a need with this collaborative,explaining what the services are, whatthe benefits are, the options. I think that’swhat made it successful. The employersneeded workers, the agencies needed tomeet their numbers, and we were reallythe only one in town who could providethe transportation. So we focused onexplaining where the benefits lie andhow we could help enhance somebody’sservices without trying to reinventthe wheel.

29HEADS OR TAILSMany of them would not send their clientsto us because they did not like the randomassignment. They felt like we were settingtheir clients up for failure.—Mandi HuserThe Challenges of Random AssignmentThe purpose of a demonstration project isto put good intentions to the test, to seewhether programs and policies that looksensible on paper can function in the realworld. Ideally, the knowledge that is gainedalong the way can then be used to shapefuture initiatives and inform decisionsabout how best to allocate funds. It is atricky enterprise, though, as the empiricalaims of social science often brush upagainst the more immediate concernsof serving people in need.tested their own commitments to policyresearch and social service.In all likelihood, these problems weremagnified by the scarcity of job-readyclients. If recruitment had not been sodifficult, the projects would have had toturn some people away to avoid havingtoo many participants. In that case,designating some of them as membersof the control group might have beeneasier to accept.Linda: The fact that we had the randomassignment was a stigma in our partners’eyes, because if they referred a client tous, we might refer them right back as acontrol anyway. They didn’t want to putpeople through that process, so that wasa big barrier. We kept trying to explainthat you have to have something tocompare it with.I don’t think any of my staff liked random assignment. The clients we’reserving already deal with enough rejection.—Roz Staples-StreeterThis tension is reflected in Bridges toWork’s design. In Baltimore, Milwaukee,St. Louis and Denver, half of the candidatesrecruited were randomly assignedto a treatment group and provided withBridges to Work services. The other halfwere assigned to a control group and wereineligible for these services.Random assignment was used at thesefour sites because it has the greatestcredibility with policymakers. If a programcan show a positive impact, as measuredagainst a control group, then it can havea powerful impact on how public fundsare allocated in the future. Yet randomassignment poses a real dilemma for thestaff trying to implement a program. TheBridges directors in Baltimore, Milwaukee,St. Louis and Denver quickly found thatrandom assignment weakened theirrelationships with potential participantsand partner organizations and at timesChris: But it’s hard on the people youdon’t get to serve.Linda: They feel like guinea pigs, especiallyin our community. That’s why we changedthe name. We didn’t say “treatments” or“controls.” We made it “commuter” versus“non-commuter,” and it didn’t sound aslethal. That was a big change.Chris: Did you meet any resistance inDenver to the fact that some people wereassigned to a control group and were notgetting served?Mandi: Yes, especially from the CBOs,training and employment programs, thosetypes of things. One reason some of themwould not send their clients to us wasbecause they did not like the randomassignment. They felt like we were settingtheir clients up for failure. We were veryup front with our people. During theorientation we laid everything out on the

30line and said, “This is the deal. Do youwant to take advantage of it or not?” Wehad people get up and walk out in themiddle of orientations because they didn’tfeel like taking that 50/50 chance—abetter chance of getting a job than goingto an employer and being 1 out of 100applicants.Chris: Was random assignment themain reason you weren’t able to collaborateeffectively, or were there othersignificant factors?Mandi: It was a factor, but randomassignment was not an excuse for ourinability to bring in the amount of peoplewe needed to. What really made it hardfor our partners to refer people to uswas the economy.Chris: But isn’t that part of doing socialscienceresearch?Mandi: Right, that’s what it was, research. Westarted sending our controls $10 gift certificatesto a grocery store, just for spending thetime completing the survey. That seemed tohelp some. We got a little bit of bad word ofmouth at the beginning because peopleweren’t very happy about random assignment.But as we went along, we got betterat explaining it and calming people down.I guess it’s always going to have an impactbecause there’s no happy, positive way youcan explain random assignment.We had to get to the point where weaccepted that it was a research study.We’re a human-services agency; we try tohelp people. And it didn’t feel like youWe told people their participation could help promote reversecommuting in the future…And we reminded them that Bridges wasa test case that could make a real difference in their community.—Linda Stewart-ByrdChris: How did your staff feel about it?Mandi: It was really hard for them at first.Every time we had an enrollment, we’dsay, “Okay, if this person is a treatment, wecould place them here, here, and here.”You’d see these great people come in, andyou knew where you were going to placethem. Then they’d end up being a control.Our service coordinator would have tocall and tell them they were in the controlgroup. Left and right, people would beirritated: “I don’t understand why Ididn’t get in the good group. Was it howI answered the questions?” No matter howmany times we would explain it to them,they would get upset. It was frustrating forthe staff as well because an employer mightneed six people to do a job, and the sixwho would have been a perfect matchmight be assigned to the control group.were helping people when you had to kickhalf the people back out. Once the staffgot past that, it was easier.Chris: How did random assignment goover in Milwaukee?David: I didn’t like it any more than theother directors. There were some misunderstandingswith participants who thoughtthey were going to get a job and thenended up as controls. But even when theydid understand, it was hard. Here you are:controls are calling for referrals, but you’relimited in what you can do. Since Bridgesis part of the Milwaukee County PIC, thereare lots of other services we could tie themin to. But in theory they would have to goout on their own to find employment ortraining. The problem is that in MilwaukeeCounty we’re tied into all of those programs,or at least a good portion of them.

31The concern was the integrity of the data,skewing it in some way, and I totallyunderstand that. It’s a demonstrationgrant, and it’s a study to make a determinationfor future funding and for futurepolicy. But what are you going to do? It’sone of those things where you’re damnedif you do and damned if you don’t. Howdeeply do you get involved? When controlscalled, we communicated with them. Insome cases, we’ve worked with them ontheir resumes, or said, “Okay, this is whatyou need to do.” We made referrals to theone-stop system. But that was as far as wewent. There was nothing else we could do.Chris: Was random assignment a problemin St. Louis?Roz: I did not like it at all. I don’t thinkany of my staff liked random assignment.The clients we’re serving already deal withenough rejection. To scoop them up andget them excited about a new, innovativeprogram and then tell them that you haveanother selection, another criteria, or thatsomeone is going to determine your fateat a push of a button, did not sit well. Inever enjoyed telling people. I didn’t likethat at all. Look at the clients we’reserving: they get rejection all the time.Chris: How did you overcome the challengesyou faced as a result of randomassignment?Linda: We established trust. We gave thebig picture of why you needed randomassignment. We didn’t just do it; wethoroughly explained it in the orientationand with our collaborative. We really hadto make sure that people understood whatwe were doing, and we explained the longrangebenefits.Chris: And what did you tell them thosebenefits were?Linda: Well, we told people their participationcould help promote reversecommuting in the future and help changepublic policy as it relates to transportationand employment in the suburbs. Wetold them they could help influence thedecision makers in Maryland publictransportation, in local jurisdictions, andeverybody who was involved. And wereminded them that Bridges was a testcase that could make a real differencein their community.

32CONCLUSIONIt takes so long to get things moving,we’re planning for the year 2020 now.That becomes really frustrating whensomebody needs to get to work tonight.—Linda Stewart-ByrdTaking in the Local LandscapeRunning a demonstration project is hardwork. Site directors and their staffs have tobuild the capacity to pull it off, operateunder constant scrutiny, produce resultswithin a narrow time frame, and then facethe possibility of having to scale back orshut down just as things start to hum. Yetthe reality of this struggle, and what it saysabout the strategy being tested, is oftenoverlooked in reports about initiatives likeBridges to Work.Like any national demonstration, Bridgesbegan with years of careful planning. Thegoal was to develop a model that stood areasonable chance of success and—equallyimportant—that could provide meaningfulinformation about how and why thingsturned out as they did. Yet the dominantchord that the five project directors strikein this report is how difficult and howcritical it was to adapt the original designto make it work in very different contexts.Time and again they found that economic,political, and cultural dynamics variedgreatly from suburb to suburb and site tosite. These differences were anticipated inthe program design, but they could not bedealt with in the abstract.As the demonstration got under way, theproject directors also wrestled with conditionsthat had changed considerably sinceBridges was designed. The economy ralliedand unemployment plummeted. Localpartners that had promised to refer clientsto Bridges seldom delivered, and a fewtransportation providers bailed out whenthe jobs were too far away or ridershipdropped. The prospects for survival andsuccess ultimately hinged on how effectivelythe five project directors managedthese complexities and how shrewdly theyadapted the blueprint to fit their locallandscapes. These are some of the lessonsthey learned along the way:• Transportation: It may not be the onlybarrier to employment in the suburbs, buttransportation does pose some formidablechallenges. The challenges and costs ofproviding transportation services wereone of the biggest surprises for some ofthe directors. Among the many logisticalissues to be resolved were the needs ofemployers (covering staggered shifts,making provisions for overtime) andemployees (coordinating child care,running a household) and the relativedistribution of jobs and people indifferent metropolitan areas. Most ofthe sites also found they could not takequality service for granted, which ledBaltimore, for example, to train itsdrivers to show more respect for riders.Given these complexities and the costsassociated with them, many directorsfelt that reverse-commute programsmay only be feasible if governmentor employer subsidies are availableto supplement the costs to riders.• Recruitment and Placement: With thenation’s economy surging, the sites had tomodify their strategies to attract and serve aless work-ready population than anticipated.As labor markets tightened and thenumber of job-ready workers dwindled,it grew increasingly hard to recruitqualified participants, place them injobs and keep them employed. Severalsites expanded their recruiting areasbut found that such action exacerbatedthe problems with transportation. Theyalso explored new approaches torecruitment, like radio advertisementsin St. Louis and Denver and outreachto homeless people and ex-offenders inChicago. Baltimore, meanwhile, foundit helpful to provide riders with softskillstraining based on the STRIVEprogram in New York, which emphasizesa positive attitude and goodcommunication skills.

33• Discrimination: The marketplace, whosedominant ideology is the profit motive, cansometimes be a catalyst for racial tolerance.The project directors noted that manyemployers, out of concern for theirbottom line, did not seem to care whatrace their workers were so long as theywere industrious and reliable. Denverand Chicago reported that a numberof Bridges participants experiencedconflicts with co-workers, whileBaltimore had one memorable run-inwith some suburban dwellers: a groupof restaurant and hotel workers drewopposition from the Ku Klux Klan. Butoverall, the sites encountered far fewerproblems with racism and stereotypesthan expected.• Collaboration: Partnerships that look goodon paper may not bear fruit in the real world,particularly if they lack provisions forincentives or accountability. All five sitesstruggled, in varying degrees, to developmeaningful relationships with otherpublic and private organizations. Theoriginal collaboratives often brokedown on account of communicationbarriers, perceived competition,confusion over welfare reform andresistance to random assignment.Baltimore was able to revitalize thesepartnerships by trading favors andgaining trust, while other sites forgednew alliances that were both morestrategic and more viable.• Random Assignment: Despite its nobleintentions, social-science research can appearheartless and drive away potential partnersand participants. Coping with resistanceto random assignment when recruitmentlagged was one of the toughestchallenges the sites faced. In a weakereconomy, with higher unemploymentand more job-ready workers, it mighthave been less problematic. Butbecause the sites were struggling tomeet their recruitment goals, turningaway qualified participants was doublyhard. Denver found that it helped tothank applicants who fell into thecontrol group by offering them giftcertificates, while Baltimore sought toexplain their vital role in informing andshaping public policy.As the Bridges demonstration nearscompletion, the five sites are lookingahead to new services and new sources offunding. The organizations that operatedBridges in Baltimore, Milwaukee, and St.Louis continue to provide transportationservices. In Chicago and Denver, theagencies plan to redouble their effortsto provide job training and employmentservices. Whichever path they take, theywill be sure to remember one messagethat underlies all of the observations inthis report: the need to adapt the project’soriginal design to better suit current needsand real communities. “It’s an inevitablepart of any grant, demonstration or otherwise,”said Milwaukee’s David Wilson.“There are some changes that you makemidstream. You’re always tinkering. Thefolks putting together the design haveno control over the external factors oncethat program has been launched. You’llsee that with any demonstration, anygrant, any product. They call it continuousimprovement, and it’s a wayto address the changing nature of achanging environment.”

34APPENDIX A: SITE DESCRIPTIONSThe five Bridges to Work demonstration sites shared a number of characteristics. In eachcase, participants from designated urban neighborhoods (the origin) were driven toand from jobs in specified suburbs (the destination). Each project provided a targetedcommuting service—typically a ride on a van or bus, or both—that connected the originand destination using routes and schedules that reduced commuting time and distanceas much as possible and that filled gaps in public city-to-suburb transit services. In casesof illness or personal emergencies, workers were guaranteed a ride home from work in themiddle of their shift. Each project also provided limited support services to participantsand employers. Each site had a project director, who managed all day-to-day activities,and a convener, who executed the cooperative agreement with hud and had overallresponsibility for the project.Baltimore. In East Baltimore, Bridges to Work staff ran the program from a renovatedrow house near the Johns Hopkins Hospital complex. Baltimore Bridges was part of theHistoric East Baltimore Community Action Coalition, one of six entities that administerprograms in the city’s federally designated Empowerment Zone. Baltimore recruitedparticipants in East Baltimore and helped them find jobs in Howard and Anne Arundelcounties, often near Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Fourteen-passengervans transported riders from designated points in East Baltimore directly to their workplaces. The vans were owned by Bridges and leased to Yellow Transportation Inc., anexperienced, private, for-profit transit company that trained the drivers, handledmaintenance and insurance costs, and worked closely with the Bridges staff to managethe routes and schedules. Riders paid $37.50 per week for this seven-day-a-week,24-hour-a-day service.Chicago. In Chicago, Bridges to Work was operated under the aegis of the SuburbanJob-Link Corporation (sjl), a job-placement and transportation service that has beenserving disadvantaged workers since 1971. Job development, placement, and supportactivities took place primarily at sjl’s facility in Bensenville, a community that abutsO’Hare International Airport. Participants were recruited in several neighborhoods onChicago’s West Side and placed in jobs near O’Hare, in one of the nation’s largestindustrial parks. Participants commuted on 50-passenger buses which were operated bySJL. The buses brought riders to the SJL offices from which point they took a smallervan to their place of employment. Riders boarded the buses at locations in their neighborhoodsand paid $4.00 per round trip.Denver. Bridges operated under the auspices of Curtis Park Community Center, undercontract to the Mayor’s Office of Employment and Training. The program operated inDenver’s Five Points-Curtis Park neighborhood, 10 blocks from the heart of downtown.Participants were drawn from low-income neighborhoods in Denver and ArapahoeCounty and placed in jobs primarily in the South Side I-25 corridor, the Denver WestOffice Park, and other suburbs. The targeted commute combined bus services providedby the Regional Transit District, the metro area’s public transit provider, and shuttlevans operated under a contract with a private, for-profit vendor. In the Spring of 1999,the vendor discontinued these services, and a suitable replacement could not be found.The remaining Bridges participants rode the public transit buses to and from work forfree for 18 months.

Milwaukee. The Milwaukee Private Industry Council operated Bridges out of its downtownheadquarters. Participants resided in neighborhoods in the northern and southernsections of the city and were placed in jobs in Washington County to the north, WaukeshaCounty to the west, and Racine and Kenosha Counties to the south. Almost all commutedto their jobs on 14-passenger vans owned by, and operated under contract with a numberof providers throughout the demonstration, including Goodwill Industries of SoutheasternWisconsin, a private, not-for-profit transit provider and three private, for-profit providers:Transit Express, J & W Transport and TW Transport. Vans departed from three majorpick-up points and took riders directly to their suburban work sites. Bridges participantsreceived free transportation for 18 months.St. Louis. The East-West Gateway Coordinating Council, the region’s metropolitanplanning organization, ran Bridges from offices in downtown St. Louis. Project staffrecruited participants primarily from neighborhoods on the city’s north central, northwestern,and south end sections, as well as several inner-ring suburbs of neighboringSt. Louis County. Workers were placed in jobs west of the city in the Chesterfield Valley.The targeted commute combined bus service operated by the Bi-State DevelopmentAgency, the region’s public transit agency, and van service operated by AbbottTransportation Services, a 30-year-old, private, not-for-profit ambulance and Medicaidtransportation provider. Workers gathered at a Bi-State transit hub, where a Bridges vanpicked them up and took them to work. Riders paid $1.25 each way for the Bi-Stateportion of the trip. The Bridges van services were available for free for 18 months.

36APPENDIX B: CONTACT LISTBRIDGES TO WORK BALTIMORELinda Stewart-ByrdManager of Alternative TransportationOffice of Planning and Capital ProgrammingMaryland Department of TransportationP.O. Box 8755BWI Airport, MD 21240-0755P: 410-865-1308F: 410-850-9263lstewart-byrd@mdot.state.md.usRosena JonesProgram DirectorHistoric East Baltimore CommunityAction Coalition, Inc. (HEBCAC)2026 McElderry StreetBaltimore, MD 21205P: 410-614-5791F: 410-614-8674rjones@hebcac.orgBRIDGES TO WORK CHICAGORobert CarterDirector of DevelopmentSuburban Job-Link231 South Jefferson Street, Suite 700Chicago, IL 60651-5613P: 312-612-7600F: 312-612-7610JobOasis@aol.comBRIDGES TO WORK DENVERMandi HuserDeputy DirectorCurtis Park Community Center929 29th StreetDenver, CO 80205P: 303-295-2399F: 303-295-2030huser@uswestmail.netBRIDGES TO WORK MILWAUKEEDavid WilsonExecutive Vice PresidentPrivate Industry Council of MilwaukeeCounty101 W. Pleasant Street, Suite 201Milwaukee, WI 53212P: 414-270-1731F: 414-225-2375dwilson@milwjobs.comBRIDGES TO WORK ST. LOUISRoz Staples-StreeterProject ManagerEast-West Gateway Coordinating Council4144 Lindell Avenue, Suite 108St. Louis, MO 63108P: 314-531-1716F: 314-531-1780roz@ewgateway.org

37U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING ANDURBAN DEVELOPMENTJennifer StoloffSocial Science AnalystOffice of Policy Development andResearch451 Seventh Street, S.W., Room 8140Washington, D.C. 20410P: 202-708-3700, ext. 5723F: 202-708-5873Jennifer_A._Stoloff@HUD.GOVPUBLIC/PRIVATE VENTURESCarol ClymerSenior Program Director2005 Market Street, Suite 900Philadelphia, PA 19103P: 215-557-4495F: 215-557-4469cclymer@ppv.orgAnne RoderSenior Research Associate2005 Market Street, Suite 900Philadelphia, PA 19103P: 215-557-4471F: 215-557-4469aroder@ppv.org

38Public/Private Ventures is a nationalnonprofit organization whose missionis to improve the effectiveness of socialpolicies, programs and communityinitiatives, especially as they affect youthand young adults. In carrying out thismission, P/PV works with philanthropies,the public and business sectors, andnonprofit organizations.Board of DirectorsSiobhan Nicolau, ChairPresidentHispanic PolicyDevelopment ProjectAmalia V. BetanzosPresidentWildcat ServiceCorporationYvonne ChanPrincipalVaughn Learning CenterMitchell S. FromsteinChairman EmeritosManpower, Inc.Susan FuhrmanDean, Graduate School ofEducationUniversity of PennsylvaniaChristine L. James-BrownPresidentUnited Way of SoutheasternPennsylvaniaMatthew McGuireTelesis CorporationMichael P. MorleySenior Vice PresidentEastman Kodak CompanyJeremy NowakChief Executive OfficerThe Reinvestment FundMarion PinesSenior FellowInstitute for Policy StudiesJohns Hopkins UniversityIsabel Carter StewartExecutive DirectorChicago Foundation forWomenCay StrattonDirectorDepartment for Educationand Employment,London U.K.Marta TiendaProfessor of SociologyPrinceton UniversityGary WalkerPresidentPublic/Private VenturesWilliam Julius WilsonLewis P. and Linda L.Geyser UniversityProfessorHarvard UniversityDesign: Malish & Pagonis - www.malishandpagonis.com

Public/Private VenturesThe Chanin Building122 East 42nd Street, 41st FloorNew York, NY 10168Tel: 212-822-2400Fax: 212-949-0439For additional copies of reportsor for more information:One Commerce Square2005 Market Street, Suite 900Philadelphia, PA 19103Tel: 215-557-4400Fax: 215-557-4469Url: http://www.ppv.org