|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|||
 |
 |
Excellence in Community and Faith-based Social Entrepreneurship (cont.)
St. Patrick Center is working on an innovative program to capitalize on St. Louis’s steady economic growth. This concept, as part of the vision of St. Patrick Center to combat chronic homelessness through employment, is Project BEGIN (Businesses, Employment, Growth, Incomes, and Neighborhoods). Project BEGIN calls for the creation of a small business incubator and trades training center as part of the programs offered at the agency. It is anticipated that this model, which pairs St. Patrick Center with Ranken Technical College, will enhance the local economy by creating opportunity for the disenfranchised and training the currently unemployable to become permanently employed. This small business incubator will be housed alongside St. Patrick Center and its partner agencies at its headquarters, the Partnership Center. The brainchild for this program came in response to numerous interviews with local union leaders and construction business owners who stated that they cannot find enough “laborer” employees with the basic job knowledge and skills necessary to carry out the work that is below the journeymen in their respective trades. Downtown St. Louis is currently experiencing a residential boom, and many estimate that over 2,000 new construction jobs will be created in the next three to five years to handle this redevelopment surge. As a part of Project BEGIN, the trades training center will create introductory trades programs to give low-income homeless individuals and ex-offenders the necessary skills to attain entry-level construction and automotive jobs. These 10- to 12-week courses will include instruction on carpentry, plumbing, drywall, interior painting and light automotive repair training, with the goal of moving 200 unemployed and underemployed individuals annually into better-paying, high-demand jobs in local unions and specialized automotive shops. The average salary range for these types of positions is from $10 to $13 an hour. Assuming that the trades training center moves 150 individuals per year into full-time employment and another 50 into seasonal, part-time positions, the center will create over $3.2 million annually in new, taxable income. The small business incubator will allow start-up and small companies to operate with little or no overhead cost. With commercial rents escalating in St. Louis’s downtown area, the low-rent, centrally located facility (also housed at the Partnership Center) would have incredible appeal to new and small businesses. In addition to affordable rent and location, each company will have a built-in incentive for hiring and promoting clients of St. Patrick Center, through an in-house employment services department (St. Patrick Center Employment) that can provide a steady pool of candidates. With a projected seven to 10 small businesses housed in the small business incubator, this new development has the potential of creating between 35 and 50 full-time jobs for currently unemployed and underemployed individuals. At an estimate of 43 workers earning an average of $21,000 per year, this would generate nearly $1 million annually of taxable earnings, in addition to removing these individuals from the rolls of taxpayer programs such as welfare, TANF and Section 8. The long-term impact of Project BEGIN is potentially far-reaching. The trades training center will prepare homeless and impoverished individuals for higher-wage, higherskill jobs, moving them from tax burden to taxpayer and lowering area unemployment rates. The cost of prison recidivism for our criminal justice system would be offset by successful reentry into society by ex-offenders. And the economic impact of the small business incubator and the trades training center may amount to as much as $4.2 million of new, taxable annual income for the St. Louis area. |
 |