I'm a housing specialist. I've only been doing it about a month and a half but I'll try to tell you what it's like.

There are different kinds of housing programs and I'm not sure which one you're applying for. For example, the program I work for is a rapid re-housing program. Our goal is to rapidly get people into affordable housing, work with them on any barriers that might get in the way of them sustaining housing (employment, applying for SSI, mental health, etc), and then successfully discharge them. This may take anywhere from 3 months to nearly a year. (also, it never goes that smoothly because.. people are gonna people. Most will have bumps in the road as they 'recover' from homelessness)

Some people have much higher needs and wouldn't be successful in our program because we're less hands on. There are other programs where the housing specialist is much more involved in their life. Instead of meeting once monthly they might be meeting weekly or even more than once a week. Sometimes, people are in these program pretty much for life because of intellectual disabilities or mental health or whatever their individual case may present.

So case management is a beast. It's a lot of responsibility. It requires a certain level of organization. This doesn't necessarily mean your desk is clean, this means you know what's going on with your clients and you're mostly caught up on paperwork. You might enter the office on Monday and have 18 missed calls (and quickly find that half were from the same client). You have to learn about community resources that will help out your client. In this position, you'll need to know about pantries, donations, mental health, free clinics, help with reinstating licences... etc. And don't worry about that now, I'm sure your agency will have a list or something and I bet your coworkers already have a wealth of knowledge. A big part of case management is connecting clients to resources that are already in the community. The goal of any social work job is to get clients to a point where they don't need you. Connecting them with other resources allows this.

Working with landlords is still something I'm getting comfortable with. I do everything I can to advocate for the client but I have to be realistic and let landlords know that if that client doesn't follow through on goals then we can no longer give them rental assistance (as per our government funder guidelines). It's really important to have good relationships with landlords. It sucks when clients or past clients stop paying their rent and the landlord feels as though it was us who burned them. It's important to do damage control at that point so that we can keep referring clients to their properties. Finding housing for an unemployed mother with four kids, or someone who only makes 700 from SSI monthly is really hard. Landlords are very wary when it comes to renting to certain people. Some clients encounter almost no problems and others encounter a lot. Finding a place that will take them is half the battle.

Sometimes people aren't accepted in our program. This is my least favorite part. It sucks telling someone that, "hey I realize you're homeless but you're just not high need enough." No one who is experiencing homelessness wants to hear they're not needy enough! But when you have to follow the guidelines of a grant or the government department that is funding you, you have to play by their rules and a lot of times they don't want their money to go for someone who is able to get out of homelessness on their own. A lot of times the rules they set make sense, and sometimes the rules they set suck. I also hate telling clients that basically they're too high barrier so i'll put you on another waitlist.

So many waitlists. Clients get frustrated with them and understandably so. There's just so many homeless people and not enough programs to adequately serve them. So they get put on the various waitlists and bounce around the shelters until they get called. And I live in a city where homelessness isn't as prevalent as other cities, so I can only imagine the struggle in other places.

Getting someone into housing is one of the most rewarding things. I got my first client housed and then took them to various donation places. Now when I come for our monthly meetings I can see their homes with furniture and things when two months ago they were on the street with nothing. They are out of homelessness but they aren't out of poverty yet. We often have to discharge them once they reflect that they can sustain housing on their own and often they're still living very very tight. If we've done everything right we have hooked them up with resources so that they can continue climbing out of poverty. If you have a client that has a bachelors degree but just needs support with mental health, it's manageable. If you have a client who has a 9th grade education and has trouble reading and writing, it becomes a lot harder to turn them onto a path that's going to be more lucrative than where they currently are. That doesn't mean they can't get out of poverty, they totally can, you just have to remember that you can't fix everything or fight all the battles. Your job is to get people out of homelessness, hook them up with other agencies and community resources that are dedicated to fixing the other issues they face.

Case management is a lot of responsibility but you have to remember you're not a miracle worker. Some clients will return to shelter. Clients will not always complete their goals. Clients will lie to you. Clients will get fired from their jobs you helped them get. Some clients are highly motivated and successful and some are just not. You can't take the client's failures personally. Failure looks and feels bad when it happens, but maybe 6 months from now they will re-enter your program and because of what they learned from past failures they are successful this time.

In case management you'll get to work with all kinds of problems and all kinds of people. I used to want to work at a domestic violence shelter. I've quickly learned that I get plenty of experience working with domestic violence in this position. I don't know if this is typical or not since I've only been there a month, but i'd say 90% of the women I talk to are homeless because they're fleeing domestic violence. Mental health is very prevalent. I would say addiction is another prevalent one, but more often than not addiction is a symptom of untreated mental illness. Men, women and children. All races and ethnicities. You'll need translators sometimes. A 20 year old and then a 68 year old. People who didn't graduate high school and others who graduated college. People who have only been homeless a week and others who have been homeless for years.

Also, be prepared for paperwork. Any social work job is full of it. Do it as you go and avoid getting behind at all costs.

Before you take any social work job, make sure you practice good boundaries. You're going to hear sad things. You're going to hear about a woman who was beat unrecognizable by her boyfriend. You're going to see homeless children. You're going to hear about a man who was living a happy, middle class life and then his wife tragically died and his world fell apart. Do not take this shit home with you. If you take this home with you and you get bogged down, you're not going to be as effective at your job and you're not going to last long in your position. Take comfort in the fact that you're helping them and, again, don't take those sad things home. You might need to meditate or journal or whatever to make sure you process it all and are at peace.

If you have any other questions just let me know. I love it. I love working with people and all the challenges they present. I love helping them find housing. I love getting homeless children in a home. I love helping their parents. I love helping a sick person on disability finally get their diabetes under control because they're not in a shelter anymore where it's hard to control illnesses.

For the Interview: It is important to demonstrate you are good working with people. Any customer service in your past is a huge benefit and should be discussed during interview.

It's important to show that you have good time management skills. Give an example of a time you had to juggle many things at one time and how you handled it.

It's important to show that you can manage stress. Show that you have good emotional and physical boundaries and don't get over involved.

It's important to convey that you are resourceful. Share a time that you didn't know how to do something, and what you did to find the answer. Do you have the ability to problem solve?

Teamwork is a big bonus.

I think those are the important things that I would look for in someone who wanted this position.