PeakDash

correction

A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to the Peer Case Management Institute as Howard University's. The program was helmed by D.C.'s Department of Human Services in partnership with Howard. The article has been corrected.

Almost 10 years ago, Charlynn Green walked with her two children into a D.C. family homeless shelter, out of options and short on hope. She had been working minimum wage at a grocery store, triaging the last $20 of each paycheck — “trying to figure out if you want to put gas in the car or you want to eat” — when she lost housing, too.

But on Wednesday, Green walked onto the stage of a Howard University auditorium in a graduation cap, and took the lectern to address the 34 other graduates of D.C.’s first peer case management program seated before her.

“I’m nervous,” Green said.

“It’s okay!” a few yelled.

Like Green, the students had known homelessness. That was why they were here. In a first-of-its-kind program, the D.C. Department of Human Services’ Peer Case Management Institute is intended to prepare the graduates to bring their “lived experience” to work as case managers, helping to pull others out of homelessness by connecting them with the services they need. The program, in partnership with the Howard University School of Social Work, will expand D.C.’s capacity in the homeless services system, administrators said — particularly at a time when homelessness is on the rise and D.C. is struggling with a shortage of social workers, hampering the city’s efforts to end chronic homelessness.

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“I just feel like, with my experience — I lived it — I can be a successful caseworker,” Green, 32, said in an interview, “because you got some people that’s caseworkers that never been through anything, and just don’t know how to navigate for that person or help them navigate. I feel like I’m that bridge to the community.”

DHS, which oversees many of the District’s homeless services, pitched the program for formerly homeless students to Howard University administrators with a double benefit, said DHS Director Laura Zeilinger: training more specially qualified case workers to join a stretched-thin workforce struggling to meet the demand for help — while also creating economic opportunity and career paths for dozens of formerly homeless residents. “This is something that was a natural coalescence of all those values,” she said.

The caseworker shortage had been a serious hurdle for many of D.C.’s housing programs, which can be difficult to navigate without assistance. Historically, Zeilinger said, the problem was getting enough funding for housing subsidies — but after the D.C. Council funded hundreds of new vouchers in recent years, DHS struggled to scale up the programs to respond to the hundreds of new applicants.

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While housing officials have made improvements, at one point last year more than 3,000 vouchers were sitting unused, as applicants endured long delays or paperwork snags in the multistep process. Sometimes they turned to case workers for help but did not get it, and high turnover rates among case workers stymied housing aid recipients relying on them.

D.C. officials tried to get creative with recruitment. In addition to the new program, the D.C. Council passed legislation by council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) to create a free master’s in social work degree at the University of the District of Columbia.

“We are eager to expand to meet the needs of people still experiencing homelessness — but we don’t have the workforce,” said Christy Respress, president and CEO of Pathways to Housing, which helped develop the program. “We literally don’t have the capacity to serve more people.”

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But now she was looking at the graduates as potential hires, she said.

Working with DHS, nonprofit the Community Partnership and Pathways to Housing, Howard professors created a seven-week program in the classroom, plus four weeks of training in the field. They got 600 applications and selected 40 for the inaugural class, with all but five completing the program.

They focused on skills ranging from motivational interviewing to de-escalating conflict — and using lived experience not to tell people what to do but to connect with them, said Tracy Whitaker, associate dean of Howard’s School of Social Work.

“What we talk about is where that lives in you, and where it comes out in your professional practice,” she said.

Numerous graduates said their own experiences in homeless shelters or with inattentive social workers motivated them to pursue careers in the field.

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Teanna Anderson, 36, said she experienced a bout of homelessness two years ago and went to a pair of shelters. On one visit, she said, she overheard two employees passing judgment on the homeless woman who just left the cubicle, questioning how she afforded her clean new pair of Nikes and whether she really needed help.

“And it just was like, this is how they see us. You know what I mean?” Anderson said.

She was assigned a case worker — but the experience didn’t feel personal, she said.

“Even if at that moment I have hit my rock bottom, I would like to see that someone who helps me understands me,” she said. “And I think having lived experience is so important … . Most people in social work have not ever been homeless — they don’t really know what it’s like. All of us have been homeless. All of us know what it’s like. And we also know the system and how it affects your mental health, trying to scratch the surface of where you need to get.”

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Sabrina Mathis, 30, said her family experienced homelessness in Maryland when she was in high school, but they didn’t have anyone to help them navigate into stability. “I wish it was someone like me,” she said.

“Getting to know other homeless people, they really do want to change. They do want to get better,” she said. “It’s just they don’t know how, and it takes people like us to give them the how. … I’m glad that they gave us a chance so that we could give other people a chance as well.”

In her journey out of homelessness, Green said she entered the District’s rapid rehousing program, a short-term housing subsidy, before getting a D.C. Housing Authority voucher, finally giving her stability to keep her housing.

They are the same types of programs she will be helping her clients navigate, she said — work she has already begun after her training led to a job opportunity as a part-time case worker, in addition to a job at the Department of Behavior Health. And as she walked behind the lectern to address her classmates, she reflected on how far her journey had taken her since she walked into the Virginia Williams Family Resource Center nine years ago.

“Before being accepted into the program, I would often feel like a failure due to the trials I encountered in my life,” Green told her classmates, thinking of her children the most.

The class, she said, “gave me my hope back. ”

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