Our annual Homeless Workforce Conferences provide specialized professional training and public education available nowhere else. We strive for Conference participants to gain the necessary knowledge and skills to empower the homeless and those at risk of homelessness to re-enter the workforce and sustain employment.

Since our first Conference in 2010, scores of experts from the Bay Area and across the nation have shared their insights and experience. Hundreds of professionals, volunteers, and others who work with vulnerable populations have participated in our unique programs.

• 2016 — Working with the Homeless: How to Survive & Thrive in the Trenches
• 2015 — Moving Beyond Barriers and Back to Work
• 2014 — Let’s Get Serious: Skills, Jobs, Careers as Paths Out of Homelessness and Poverty
• 2013 — Developing the Homeless Workforce: What Will It Take?
• 2012 — Defragmenting the Homeless Continuum: Linking Pathways to Self-Sufficiency
• 2011 — Sustainable Solutions to Homelessness: Integrating Employment, Health Care & Housing
• 2010 — Bridges Out of Homelessness: Vocations, Health and Housing

A low national unemployment rate distracts from the growing problem of long-term, chronic unemployment and underemployment. To stem the rising tide, the homeless, hard-to-employ, and long-term unemployed need job skills and work-related social skills to match employers’ needs in  dynamic, technologically sophisticated job markets. They also need access to health care and housing. Their success in gaining marketable work skills and re-entering the workforce depends on the job performance of those tasked to help them.

Our Conferences serve all disciplines and levels of management, from employment services specialists and homeless program staff to public health providers, social workers, and substance abuse and mental health counselors. Public agency administrators and elected officials learn innovative approaches to meeting the local and state-wide challenges of homelessness. Conference participants from diverse fields learn they can collaborate in new ways to help get the homeless and those at risk of homelessness off the streets and back to work.

The Homeless Workforce Conference also helps those who work with the homeless and others learn to rekindle their compassion and dedication to this difficult, demanding work. They network with their peers, public officials, and concerned citizens who care deeply about sustaining and improving services for society’s most vulnerable.