Starting Fresh With Cleanslate

STARTING FRESH WITH CLEANSLATE

by Zoë Takaki / photos by Matt Kosterman, provided by Cleanslate

In 1997, Sam Lovett lost his real estate license and was forced to close his office. Looking for an income, he turned to credit card fraud, and by 2000 he was doing two years in state prison.

After his release, he still lacked a way to support himself. In 2012, Lovett was federally indicted for wire fraud. He was sentenced to 5 years in federal prison.

Back home in 2017, Lovett resolved to remain out of prison.

“I made up my mind that I wanted to become a productive citizen and stop with all of the fraud,” he said with a determined grin.

That’s when a friend told him about Cleanslate, a maintenance and job mentoring program – and an opportunity to earn a living doing honest work. He decided to sign up.

“My main concern was, I needed money. When I came home, I couldn't survive, you know, and I was worried about financially how was I gonna live, and I was tempted to go back to the fraud. And I said, ‘No, I'm gonna fight it out,’” Lovett said.

Lovett had tried other programs for jobseekers experiencing poverty, but he found that they required too much training and work prior to receiving money.

“You sit up all day and do work on a computer and they put us through all of these classes they required,” Lovett said. “I went to a lot of other social enterprises and programs, but no one was offering me money.”

The training required to be a Cleanslate participant involves four days of training.

Another aspect of Cleanslate that pleased Lovett was that there was no experience needed and the requirements for hiring were minimal. His criminal background wasn’t an obstacle.

“You have to be able to walk between five and eight miles a day and lift a maximum of 50 pounds,” Lovett said, simplifying it to, “You just gotta be healthy enough to walk and do the job.”

In July 2017, Lovett started as a participant at Cleanslate, sweeping the streets in neon workwear.

The work was hard. “Everyday, just about, I was ready to quit,” Lovett said, shaking his head.

But, one day Lovett had an “epiphany.”

“One night after leaving Cleanslate, working all day, completely worn out, I got home and I sat down and I thought about it. I thought about the old quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, ‘If you're going to be a street sweeper, be the best street sweeper,’ and I said, ‘You know what? I'm really going to do this,’” Lovett said, “And the very next day when I came to work, I was more enthusiastic, energetic. I was really into it. And I got into it. All of the crew supervisors wanted me on their crew.”

It didn’t take long for Lovett to be promoted for his newfound enthusiasm, being hired as a staff member, a crew supervisor, in October 2017, just three months after he had started as a participant.

His enthusiasm continued throughout his new position. He sometimes worked, “120 - 125 hours in two weeks.”

Lovett was promoted to a recruiter in 2019, a position in which he says, “I shined.”

His progression throughout Cleanslate gave Lovett a “sense of accomplishment. I tell all the participants now, every day, I started right where you are. So if I could do it, you could do it,” Lovett said.

Lovett was promoted again in 2020 to senior manager of business operations, his current position.

Lovett’s story isn’t unique at Cleanslate, which has around 50 permanent staff members who started as participants.

ORIGIN OF THE PROGRAM

Cleanslate was created in 2005 by Mark Carroll, former managing director of Goldman Sachs when he won a one-year public service fellowship. Carroll collaborated with Cara Col-

lective, a nonprofit that connects jobseekers experiencing poverty with employment, and created Cleanslate.

Carroll modeled Cleanslate after Ready, Willing & Able, a program supported by the Doe Fund that employs people experiencing poverty through snow shoveling and similar landscaping tasks.

Cleanslate is a social enterprise, an organization that differs from nonprofits because it is designed to be profitable as opposed to relying on grants or funds. Cleanslate had a surplus in 2021.

Earning a profit requires having paying customers -- something Cleanslate has developed over time. When Brady Gott, current managing director of Cleanslate, started 15 years ago, Cleanslate had “five or six” customers hiring their services. Now, they have 79.

Gott said Cleanslate “grew rapidly through business districts in Chicago, from 2005 to probably about 2013.”

Since its inception, Cleanslate has created 4,526 transitional jobs, 1,674 of those leading to permanent jobs.

And once people are in those jobs, they more often than not stay. Cleanslate had a 57% one-year retention rate for permanent jobs last year.

HOW IT WORKS

The program recruits participants through self-referrals, recommendations from Cara and from recruiters going out and searching for participants.

Gott explains that recruiters will “find organizations that work with individuals that would be a good fit for our program: recovery homes, homeless shelters, other community based organizations that are doing work.”

They work with people aged 18 and up; the average age is 35.

Gott said that “most Cleanslaters, they do Cleanslate 101: sweeping sidewalks, emptying trash cans. But some will graduate and work on landscaping crews, or power washing crews or snow removal crews, which is kind of an enhanced skill set for them to move forward with.”

Cleanslate is 75% sanitation work, a good transitional job for those who haven’t worked traditional jobs in a while.

“If you haven't worked in a long time, and you say ‘Hey, welcome back to the workforce,’ Most people can kind of get over the intimidation of going back to the workforce knowing that they're just sweeping sidewalks, they're running to the broom and dustpan. And, so, that's a really easy on-ramp back into the workforce for a lot of individuals coming to work for us,” Gott said.

Some participants move up to those positions over time, while some come in with prior landscaping experience.

Others make a long-term commitment to a specialized skill set. Jermaine Bufkin, for example, specifically cleans the Cleanslate office. He was hired after Cleanslate noticed how well he cleaned. These participants get a 50-cent wage increase.

Over time, Cleanslate has decreased snow removal services and increased sanitation and landscaping services.

Snow removal is hard on the staff and the participants, Gott said.

“If you live in a homeless shelter, it's hard for you to get called in at 1 in the morning when you need to go out. And so we by design have shrunken our snow contracts to decrease the amount of labor we need on them. So five, six years ago, on a snow day, we needed like 40 people. Now we're down to maybe 10,” he said.

Cleanslate did this by not plowing sidewalks, (which required a lot of labor and was slowed down due to pedestrians), to now only plowing parking lots, which can be done in a snow plowing truck.

Participants are provided cold-weather gear, and also warmweather clothes.

The amount of time participants work depends on the season, but on average, it’s four days a week, adding up to 30 hours. They receive minimum wage, $15.40 an hour.

Most of the work is done in the morning, from around 7 to 11 a.m.

Cleanslate workers meet their crew supervisor at a predetermined location close to their assignment for that day. They wear gray, reflective work vests and bright yellow long-sleeve

“IF YOU HAVEN'T WORKED IN A LONG TIME, AND YOU SAY ‘HEY, WELCOME BACK TO THE WORKFORCE,’ MOST PEOPLE CAN KIND OF GET OVER THE INTIMIDATION OF GOING BACK TO THE WORKFORCE KNOWING THAT THEY'RE JUST SWEEPING SIDEWALKS, THEY'RE RUNNING TO THE BROOM AND DUSTPAN. AND, SO, THAT'S A REALLY EASY ON-RAMP BACK INTO THE WORKFORCE FOR A LOT OF INDIVIDUALS COMING TO WORK FOR US”

shirts, a uniform that is iconic enough that, “people drive up the street and holler out the window of their cars ‘Cleanslate! Go Cleanslate!’” as participants work, Lovett said.

Crew supervisors take attendance, pass out cleaning supplies and go over what needs to be done for that day. Crew supervisors coach them, tell them what they are doing well, and how they could improve.

A sea of yellow and gray then move as a group, up and down blocks sweeping litter, whacking weeds and moving snow piles.

Once the assignment is completed, participants are off and crew supervisors return to Cleanslate to fill out evaluations. Each person is graded on five workplace competencies: professionalism, communication, customer service, time management, and conflict management.

It can take weeks to years for people to reach SOE. Cleanslate works on the participants' timeline, to be sure they succeed.

“We really stick with people until they get placed. During my tenure here, we've had people here for two years,” Gott said. “We've had people here for a few weeks, because they might have come here, and they were hungry and ready to work.”

Once participants get hired in a permanent position, their caseworker stays in contact with them for a year, to ensure they are doing well.

If permanently employed clients are ever struggling with housing or childcare, Cara will be there to support and offer solutions to ensure they are able to work.

And if someone finds themselves jobless again, they can return to Cleanslate as a participant. A graduated participant lost his job during the pandemic, for example, and needed to re-engage to find another before he was ultimately re-employed.

A LONG-TERM COMMITMENT

For participants to reach Send Out Eligibility (SOE), when they are ready to graduate from transitional work to permanent employment, they must show proficiency in the same five workplace competencies. Each participant has a caseworker who tracks their performance and guides them towards this goal.

Bufkin says that his case worker has helped him to gain the required skills to be SOE.

“He just taught me a lot how to better myself, how to keep my composure and how to hold my temper on certain things,” Bufkin said, “So he just guides me in the right way.”

CLEANSLATE AND THE COMMUNITY

Cleanslate hires people all over the city of Chicago, Lovett said.

The social enterprise matches participants with work near where they live, to keep their commutes short. Transit passes are provided to minimize the cost of travel.

Having participants cleaning spaces in their community not only benefits them, but also the businesses' partners. Hiring people from their community allows for community bonding, and increased local income, which helps local spending.

“Communities wanted their business corridors cleaned up and looking great, and also saw the social fit by working with us, as we would recruit individuals from their communities to work on those crews and make their business districts look nice. They

saw the win-win,” Gott said, “So now the business districts are cleaner, they have individuals who may have been homeless or not working, now working so now they have money to pay rent and shop at Walgreens and be part of the local economy – and in a new way.”

Customer satisfaction is important to the social enterprise.

“We have well over 90% customer retention rate, people renewing their contracts with us and continuing with us,” Gott said.

Big Buzz Idea Group, a business management group for nonprofits, has hired Cleanslate since 2008 to clean up after festivals it organizes. Melissa M. Lagowski, CEO and founder of Big Buzz Idea Group, said that Cleanslate’s participants will “leave the communities we serve cleaner than we found them.

“They are some of the hardest working people we have met,” Lagowski said.

While Big Buzz and other customers know the quality of their work, some are initially skeptical about hiring people with criminal backgrounds. However, Gott has found that customers have come around.

“I remember one, they said, ‘We don't want anybody with a felony on our properties.’ And I said, ‘We have a great history of working with organizations and companies, if you just take that for this first year, give us a shot, if there's an issue that we can revisit next year. And they've been a customer of ours now for seven, eight years, because they were open to listening to us and being more inclusive in how they view their

vendors. So, I think it's great. Right now, there's a lot of push for inclusiveness, not just hiring, but employment.”

Cleanslate used to have restrictions on hiring individuals with violent backgrounds, but no longer does, Lovett said.

“I had an older gentleman that did 30 years in prison for murder. He's went on from Cleanslate. He's working as a building maintenance man in a building now. I talked to him often,” Lovett said. “He came to me, I was a recruiter, and he had lost all hope. He said, ‘With this background, I know I'll never get a job.’ And I coached him along and told him about the program and Cleanslate and Cara. And he's happy now, I still keep in touch with him. He's working.”

Gott appreciates how Cleanslate “can show, a social enterprise can do this. Somebody who may have a background that's different from what you're typically exposed to, can be successful and do a really good job as well.”

For some clients, the social enterprise makes Cleanslate stand out amongst other landscaping competition.

“We hired somebody to do some research for us, and they came back and said they surveyed a bunch of our existing customers, former customers and prospective customers. When we bid on a contract, if our prices are equal or better, and our services are equal or better, sometimes our mission is a tiebreaker,” Gott said, “Some people love our mission. Again, some people were deterred by it. I would say that's changed. I think more people are embracing organizations like Cleanslate.”