Employment Assistant Coordinator

The Boston Public Health Commission’s Homeless Services Bureau (HSB) provides emergency shelter, job training, behavioral health support, and housing services to unhoused individuals in Boston. We serve close to 5,000 individuals every year, and are one of the largest providers of emergency shelter in New England. We aim to make homelessness in Boston rare, brief, and one time.  We do that by problem-solving with new guests at the front door to try to prevent anyone from entering homelessness to begin with. For individuals who do become homeless and use our shelters, we help them quickly move out of homelessness and find a safe place to call home. Once housed, we provide in-home supports to ensure someone does not return to homelessness. We use a Housing First and racial justice framework, which is built on the foundation that housing is a social determinant of health, a basic need that everyone deserves, and does not require sobriety. We believe that everyone, with the right support, can succeed in housing. We foster evidence-based approaches such as trauma-informed care, harm reduction, and motivational interviewing in the delivery of our services, and ensure services are low-threshold and accessible to our guests.

Our workforce development team helps clients in a supportive environment to build skills to earn income and secure competitive employment. Through our Serving Ourselves program (SOS), we hire shelter guests as Client Workers who receive six months of paid on the job training in custodial or food services, on the job supervision, employment-focused case management, and classroom training and workshops on resume-building and interviewing.  The team also works with external partners to identify community-based resources and opportunities.

• Bachelor's degree with a minimum one (1) year human services experience. College level course work equivalent to an Associate’s degree with two (2) years human services experience or High School diploma/GED and three (3) years human services experience may be substituted for above requirements.
• Commitment to racial equity, housing first, trauma-informed care, and harm reduction.
• Previous experience working with homeless, diverse ethnic and racial, or low-income populations with an understanding of barriers posed by mental health, substance use immigration status, and criminal record.
• Knowledge of Boston area housing resources and social service agencies.
• Strong organizational and communication skills.
• Computer proficiency including writing, sending, and managing emails, using and entering data into an online database, completing electronic assessments, entering and updating data on Excel.
• Valid driver's license
• Bilingual English/Spanish preferred