The City of Bloomington and Centerstone are partnering on a pilot program to give people suffering from homelessness a chance to work with the parks department.
"This is a win-win," says city spokesperson Mary Catherine Carmichael. "We need help keeping our parks clean and Centerstone as a not for profit that helps people with mental illness issues and substance issues get back into the workforce and recover."
Centerstone will hire the people – and the workers will do custodial work at Seminary, Peoples, Building Trades, and Butler Parks. The city will pay their hourly wage.
"By them spending time doing custodial work in the parks that will free up our usual parks employees then to do maintenance in other parks and kind of the more complicated things," Carmichael says.
The program will employ three to five people for an average of 20 hours per week. Officials will monitor the pilot program's success each month.