Hammers and nails in Mt. Winans.

HAMMERS AND NAILS IN MT. WINANS

In 1984, Baltimore housing administrators made U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) officials an unusual proposal. The city would renovate 140 public housing units quickly and efficiently--for 10 percent less than a private contractor would charge. What's more, it would employ the tenants to do the renovations, even though most of them didn't know a power drill from a jigsaw. No one in the country had ever hired just public housing tenants to renovate their own apartment complex. HUD officials worried that the city couldn't supervise the trainees closely enough to ensure the quality of the work would be up to federal standards. But for several years, Baltimore had been running a program training low-income, unskilled workers to rehabilitate other city projects. While none of those projects was as big as the Mt. Winans project would be, city administrators took HUD officials on a tour of their successes and convinced them they could manage a $2.2 million contract.

The 41 resident trainees, who began work just over a year ago, have now finished one third of the units. "I loved it from the beginning,' says Diane Jones, a 34-year old mother who had been on welfare for the previous five years. "As soon as they put a ruler in my hand and let me get my knees dirty, I fell in love with it.' Everyone involved in the project--the federal government, the city, the neighborhood, and the trainees-- seems to be coming out ahead. The project has been a success in large part because it is a community project: the trainees are making a contribution to their community, and the community in turn is giving them strong support that will help carry them through.

The American public often seems to view poverty programs as one huge sinkhole into which it endlessly pours money. But state and local governments, having watched federal antipoverty funds shrink in the past few years, have become much more efficient and creative in their use of what comes to them. Many programs now quickly pay back the government's investment by getting their clients off welfare, into private sector jobs, and onto the tax rolls. Baltimore's Mt. Winans renovation project would seem to be a model of such economy.

HUD officials are pleased with the progress of the renovation. The project will have cost them $200,000-300,000 less than a private contractor would have charged, and the quality of the work, say city and HUD inspectors, is at least as good as a private contractor's and sometimes better. Although the project probably won't be finished on time, it's not likely to run much more than a few months over. Since the main object of the project was to renovate apartments for low-income residents, to do it well, within budget, and reasonably on time, you could stop right there and call it a successful public housing project. But virtually without spending any more money, Baltimore administrators have made it a far bigger success.

For one thing, the city will probably have much lower repair and maintenance bills for the apartments once renovations are completed. Many of the trainees or their relatives are residents in the housing project, and are far more likely to maintain the homes they have just renovated than if an outside contractor had done the work. And they're likely to persuade their neighbors to do the same. Sandra Ricks, a 30-year-old mother who was on welfare for a number of years, is proud of the renovated apartment she has already moved into. The walls, which used to be blue, yellow, and pink, are now a light cream. The corner kitchen has new birch cabinets and a new stove and refrigerator. The bathroom has all new fixtures, and the new ceramic floor tiles have been carefully cut around them. Gloria LeGrand, a 28-year-old mother who has been on and off welfare for the past few years, describes how Ricks had insisted that everything in the apartment be done so perfectly that the other trainees nearly threw her out. It wasn't enough that the windows were clean, says LeGrand. "They had to sparkle.' Ricks then tells how a friend, in trying to hang a plant from the ceiling, put a big hole in the drywall. The next day Ricks spackled and repainted the spot. The trainees, says Carnelious Harrison, the manager of the Mt. Winans public housing, "feel they've contributed to the community. They're very proud of what they've done.' He says that their children point to their work and say "Look what mama did.'

Most important, though, the city will have trained at least 40 of its poor, three-quarters of whom were on welfare, in the construction skills and good work habits that will not only get them a job but help them to keep it. They spent six weeks, 40 hours per week, in pretraining classes given by the Home Builders Association of Maryland through a federal Job Training Partnership grant. They were paid a $30 per week stipend, which was small enough that those on welfare retained their benefits while in class. When they started renovating the housing units, 12 supervisors carefully taught them not only how to rip out walls, floors, and windows but how to replace them. Once on the job, most of those on welfare lost their benefits. They started at the minimum wage, $3.35 per hour, and received no medical insurance or sick leave; a few were later given raises up to $3.80 per hour.

"Some of them have gotten really good,' says Tim Peach, general superintendent of rehabilitation, who oversees the project. "Others are here just for the paycheck.' Most of the trainees, however, want to work, want something more than a welfare check, and are proud of the work they've done. "I think it's fascinating,' says Ricks. "I thought it would be hard. It's easy. I love it. You learn something new every day. . . . I'm going to go on with it--high rise!'

What Mazie knew

Why has this project been so successful in building that kind of enthusiasm? For one thing, it's small. Although the project will train only 40 to 50 people, small programs, because they can be flexible and responsive to individual needs, may be the best way to reach the unskilled, long unemployed. But small, adaptable programs, if they are to work well, require that the community accept a lot of responsibility for them--which Mt. Winans did.

City officials certainly were careful in picking Mt. Winans. It is a poor neighborhood that sits partially isolated just south of the Patapsco River and just north of a railroad line. It is more a part of the suburbs than the city; residents who work usually have to travel far out of the neighborhood. The rows of public housing, two-story brick apartments that were built during World War II, are interspersed with privately owned homes. The city owns and manages the apartments; the last major repairs were made almost 20 years ago.

It is a close community. Many of its residents are born there, marry there, and stay there. Everyone knows everyone else; the trainees grew up together or with older or younger brothers and sisters. There are brothers and sisters and cousins among the trainees. "We always got along,' says Mazie White, president of the Civic Interest Group, a local community organization for public and private housing residents. "It's just like family.' City administrators knew they would have to gain the support of such a tight community to keep the project together for the full year and a half it would take to renovate all 140 units. In part, they were compensating for mistakes they had made in Remington, a community in north Baltimore that had been their first choice for the project. There, because they had failed to get full community support early on, city officials couldn't stop rumors that residents would be evicted or workers exploited. In Mt. Winans, city officials reassured residents, who had many of the same fears, at open meetings. And they took seriously community members' ideas. The six-week pretraining classes, for instance, were held in the local community center instead of downtown because residents said the trainees would be more likely to attend if they didn't have to find transportation. The tenants, who were temporarily moved to other housing while their apartments were renovated, had their own suggestions. The stairwells in some apartments were opened up because they said they couldn't get queen-size boxsprings up them. When that proved too expensive, long windows in the upstairs bedrooms were added instead. The community also set up its own task force to recruit trainees and to keep an eye on the renovations; every month task force members inspect the buildings before the HUD inspector comes through.

City officials gained the support of the community largely because they had the early support of its leaders. Mazie White of the Civic Interest Group was one. For ten years, she has been the heart of this organization that collects food and donations for the poorest in the community, calls businesses to find the unemployed jobs, and refers those with other needs to outside agencies. Elizabeth Wright, chair of the public housing's Resident Advisory Board, was another. As a member of the board, she scrutinizes the city's policies on public housing. Both women are on the task force. Sharing power as they do, they might have divided the community if either had sided with those who had misgivings. But these two women both believed that the chance for some of "their' unemployed to get trained for a real job was more important than anyone's doubts. Disagreements could be settled; jobs were hard to come by. "The key point is the leaders in the community have to be involved, have to want it to work,' says White.

The two have been the trainees' best cheerleaders. Wright talks to the trainees who come by the day care center she runs. White goes to the project site every working day. Wearing her hard hat, she talks with the supervisors and trainees, listens to their problems, encourages their progress. She has talked some who were discouraged into staying, and cooled more than one hothead. "I love 'em, but you have to be tough,' says White. "I'm like a mother to them all.' Is she? Jeff Reese, a 19-year-old trainee who's been on the project for two months, doesn't answer. Instead, a grin slides first onto one side of his face and then spreads onto the other. He nods and looks at his feet.

In some ways the smartest thing city officials did was to simply get out of the way and let those in the community who valued work and self-sufficiency shepherd the trainees. "I believe that people should work for whatever they receive,' says White, who is a nurse. "I wanted to get as many people enrolled in the program as possible so they could be independent.' The community leaders helped recruit and screen the trainees, looking for those who were not only interested in construction but were eager to work. A number of those chosen had refused to go on welfare even when they had been eligible. They lived with their parents or scraped by on what they made when they found work. Others wanted the chance to get off. Ella Anderson, a 41-year-old mother of two sons, had been on welfare for nearly ten years. She has now been a trainee for more than a year. "It takes a lot of willpower sometimes. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning . . ..' she shakes her head. "But when I think of all my options, I get here. . . . I don't want to be on [welfare] anymore.' Not everyone came in so determined. Some, says White, "just stood on the corner getting high. That's the miracle . . .. It changed their attitudes. Now they want to work.'

Because the project is smack in the middle of the community, trainees have no excuses for not making it to work. They also know the contribution they're making to their own community. Friends and neighbors see what the trainees have accomplished, and their praise delights the trainees. "A lot of people tell me that we're doing a great job,' Anderson says proudly. Her children, she says, think her job is "fantastic.' The trainees have also become the envy of their peers. "When we first started . . . there were people who laughed at us for making only $30 a week,' says Larry Johnson. "Now they're asking, "Are they hiring?''

The Home Builders' instructions for the six-weeks pretraining course encouraged that pride from the beginning by making it clear that no one was being given anything other than an opportunity. The rewards, when they came, would then belong entirely to the trainees. The instructors insisted that the trainees would be important enough to their future employers that they had to learn to get to work on time. They made it clear that any trainee who was late to class three times was out of the program. Nobody had to be expelled. Community residents were asked what the trainees could do to fix up the community center where the classes were held. By the end of the six weeks, the center had new paint, new floor tiles, new kitchen cabinets, and two playhouses, one of which was given to the school for handicapped children next door. The 26 women and 15 men who finished also had a new sense of themselves. "We were so hyped,' says LeGrand. "You feel like someone needs you, wants you.' At the graduation ceremony, the cheering left everyone in tears.

Once on the job, the trainees' task was enormous; there is nothing "make-work' about this project. They were staring at 140 apartments, some of which had been vacant and badly vandalized. Walls, floors and kitchens had to be ripped out. Drywall had to be put up, spackled, and painted. Doors had to be hung, outlets rewired, plumbing replaced. Later, tile would have to be laid, kitchen cabinets put in, and then everything cleaned. They had only 18 months to do the work. Every construction skill a trainee might want to learn had to be done; they were shifted from one job to another until they found something they liked and were good at. The work was heavy, dirty, and often discouraging. More so, perhaps, for the women. "I was fussin' every day. My back hurt. I ached all over . . .. It was cryin' time,' laughs Ricks. But the women found that they could do almost anything except the heaviest lifting. "A lot of guys want to help you,' chuckles Anderson. "You hate to disappoint them, but you tell them to move out of the way.'

Not surprisingly, the trainees' enthusiasm didn't immediately make them efficient. Although they were being taught by 12 supervisors--one for every four trainees--the first block of eight apartments took the green trainees almost seven months. They were also way over budget on the per unit costs. Fortunately, the supervisors had been hired because they wanted to teach and were willing to be patient. They, too, are fairly strict about the few rules they have: no drugs or alcohol on the job; you go back home if you're late; and you work until it's time to quit. But they also want their students to make it. Their concern can be touching. Joe "Baby' Bryant, a gruff, old, cigar-smoking supervisor of finish work who's reluctant to say why he teaches for the city when he could be making twice as much working for a private contractor, pulled me aside and asked me to find out if LeGrand really liked laying tile or was just saying so. He then waited for me after work to hear that, indeed, she did. But they're not all so sweet. At least one supervisor harrassed the women for doing "men's work' when they should have been at home.

Low wages, high hopes

The true test of the success of this project from the trainees' point of view will be the job they find when it's over. None of them will come out a carpenter or an electrician; those trade apprenticeships take far longer. But their ability to work steadily and with a minimum of supervision, combined with the skills they have learned, could land them an entry-level construction job. The trainees say that they push those who don't pull their own weight harder than the supervisors do. "I've done something in every house, so I feel responsible,' says LeGrand. Larry Johnson now frames and sets windows all on his own. Joe Bryant is proud that his crew can lay a line of tile across a floor and then lay branching rows off the original line while keeping them perfectly square--something he says a lot of contractors' help can't do. Some of the trainees are already hiring themselves out on the side to do repairs for their parents and neighbors. Desmond Williams, a 22-year-old father, was offered a construction job but turned it down because he was afraid it wouldn't last. He starts carpentry school this month. Many want to stay in construction; others want less back-breaking work. Driving a truck is the current dream of a number of the women. At the end of their training, the city's placement office will give them workshops on how to handle an interview with a potential employer. It will also try to find them a job. "If they don't, I'll find one on my own,' says Donalyn Partlow, a 24-year-old mother. The placement rate for trainees who have completed the city's other trainee renovation program, City Builders, is now 82 percent; 92 out of 112 who wanted jobs in the last fiscal year were placed. The remaining 20 have gone on interviews and not been hired or could not find transportation to jobs they might otherwise have had. The city is still trying to place them, as it will any trainee who later loses his or her job. While construction workers are often hired only by the job, the city places trainees in jobs that are permanent. Their average starting pay has been $6 an hour, the minimum $4.50.

Gina Bridges, the aggressive "marketing specialist' the city hired last November to place trainees, says she now has more jobs than people to fill them. In part, that is because construction is booming in Baltimore. Most of that boom is in private, residential construction that offers plenty of the kind of entry-level jobs the trainees could fill. Because there is enough work in the area, they won't run into the competition for jobs they might in another city. Nor, because the demand is high, will they have to worry about employers who are reluctant to take on low-income trainees because they had bad experiences in the past with CETA trainees.

But the side benefits of this renovation project--the special training, the community's pride--would not have been possible if the city hadn't been allowed to pay low wages. Because the training takes so long and the work goes so slowly, the city could offer a competitive bid only if its labor costs were low. Usually, when the federal government contracts with state or local governments to do housing construction or major renovations, the localities are required to pay the Davis-Bacon Act federal wage scale. That scale is an average of the wages local firms pay for each category of construction job. Had the city been required to pay the Davis-Bacon rates, trainees would have received between $6 and $8 per hour. And that would have been the end of the project. But the funding for this project came from HUD's Comprehensive Improvement Assistance Progam (CIAP), which pays for public housing maintenance. Since the Department of Labor has ruled that Davis-Bacon rates do not apply to CIAP work, HUD was allowed to set starting rates at the minimum wage.

There is one way the project could pay slightly higher wages to relieve some of the hardship on the trainees and still get funding from HUD. The federal government could simply amend its regulations so that bids from programs that train unemployed welfare recipients would be viewed with a more sympathetic eye than those from other contractors. That would cost the government a little more, but since it would be meeting two important social goals--renovating public housing and training the poor--it would be an efficient use of resources.

Running in place

To improve upon the Mt. Winans model, it's important to understand its failings. The project's attrition rate has been high. For each person that has left, the city has had to hire and train a replacement, which has set the construction schedule further back. One year after the project began, half of the original trainees had dropped out. Five were fired for attendance or attitude problems; one was in jail; five simply resigned without saying why. One went into the Army; two left for medical reasons; two transferred to another city training program; five found private sector jobs, four in construction, one in a warehouse. One-quarter of the trainees, then, can be seen as having failed in the program. The trainees say that the five who were fired were disruptive and couldn't work well with their supervisors and coworkers. Yet they believe that some of them might be reached if a program that taught other skills was available to them. It is less clear why five simply left. Some had attendance problems. Some said they couldn't handle the pressure, or couldn't make it earning so little. Had the city had the personnel troubleshooter it now has, perhaps it might not have lost so many. Nonetheless, of these ten people, most have asked to come back into the program.

The low wages have been hard on most of the trainees, though when asked what would be a more reasonable wage, they say $4 an hour. Most of the parents who had been on welfare are receiving more in gross income than they had before. But it is a bitter irony that the way the welfare system is structured, their new jobs have put them barely ahead of where they had been. Within four months of starting their on-the-job training, parents with one child lost almost all their welfare benefits, including Medicaid. They then lost a chunk of their wages to taxes. Then another chunk to raised rents; HUD requires public housing residents to pay one-third of their income in rent regardless of their circumstances. Sandra Ricks is typical of the trainees who support one child on their own. Making $3.80 per hour, she takes home $470 each month and is eligible for $25 in food stamps. On welfare, she received $256 per month through AFDC, $110 in food stamps, and was eligible for Medicaid. Since her rent went from $63 to $155 per month, she takes home only $37 more each month--and has no medical insurance. Like other Americans who don't have insurance, many of the trainees live in fear that they or their children might be hurt or become ill and they won't be able to pay the bills. With that kind of pressure on them as the providers for their family, it is not surprising that some of them gave up. Yet most did not.

Much of the current discussion about the problems with our welfare system has focused-- rightly so--on absurd welfare and tax laws and the disincentives they may create. Often, as in Sandra Ricks's case, the only way welfare recipients can see a real standard of living improvement is by landing a job that pays far better than the ones usually available to them. Some critics go on to conclude that since the poor have welfare to fall back on, they don't want to work. There are undoubtedly some individuals like that. But many, if this program is any indication, want to work--even if it brings them little immediate gain. "You get me the job, and I'll get you the people,' says Mazie White. Given a chance to learn skills that could let them earn a decent income someday, the trainees have been eager to work--and work hard--for low wages and without benefits. "Further along the road, that's where I look,' says LeGrand. "It's hard, but if you're not happy, the money isn't anything.'

One of the most troubling aspects of the Mt. Winans project--and other small poverty programs--is that it succeeds, in part, because it "creams' off the most motivated and energetic of the poor but fails to reach the rest. Ninety-five applied for the original 41 places. Mazie White says she knows probably 200 young people and more than 250 who are over 30 who are out of work. It is true this project has pulled along a few of the underclass, but there are so many left.

Still, the project continues to meet the hopes of city administrators, however small its success may be when held up next to the need. The work is getting done, the trainees are proud of that work, and the community is proud of them. The city, in fact, it now negotiating with HUD officials about starting a similar project on another public housing site. The question is whether they'll get the funds to do it. Not only are deficitreduction cuts threatening housing programs, but the Reagan administration has "deferred' nearly $7 billion of housing and community development grants. Since Community Development Block Grant money funds a significant portion of the City Builders program, that program is likely to be cut. These cold fiscal realities may result in fewer stories like that of Darlene Gibson, a shy 26-year-old who started with the original class of trainees. Her last full time job was with K-Mart in 1981. She now hopes to stay in construction, maybe drive a truck. She says of the day she completed the six-week training course, "I didn't think I would graduate. I didn't think I would go that far. I thought it would really be hard . . . I'm so happy. I'm so happy.'