from the Daily Cal February 24, 2005

A Clean Street Offers Hope of a Clean Slate Program Employs Former Homeless in Telegraph Cleanup

By Preeti Piplani - Contribution Writer

For the past five years, Mary Isbell has started her day by slipping into a bright yellow vest and lugging a trash can to Telegraph Avenue before sunrise. Beginning at 6:30 a.m., Isbell and her three-person crew, part of the Telegraph Business Improvement District, walk along the Southside commercial district removing trash and painting over graffiti.

While Isbell says few students notice her on their way to morning class, business owners along Telegraph Avenue from Bancroft Way to Dwight Way have come to depend on her crew’s street maintenance services.

Established in 1998, the Improvement District aims to enhance business conditions for the 82 commercial properties that compose the 10-block Telegraph Avenue Business District. Participating businesses pay a voluntary assessment based on square footage and lot size for the daily services.

After a year of homelessness, Isbell became involved with the organization after joining the Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency program in 1998. There, she participated in the Clean City Program, a six-month training and employment program where she did freeway and storm drain cleanup that eventually led her to the Improvement District.

Business owners say the district’s services have helped with the upkeep of their storefronts.

“Before TBID, no one was paying any attention to Telegraph and the property owners were frustrated enough to form the TBID to keep the neighborhood safe and attract more people,” says Doris Moskowitz, the district’s president and owner of Moe’s Books.

But the district’s presence has made more than just aesthetic and economic impacts on the community. Isbell says her job has changed her life.

“For BOSS, TBID created full-time permanent jobs for our workers. Once BOSS participants got that work ethic from us, some ended up full-time at TBID and some have been hired by the city itself,” says BOSS Program Director Winston Burton.

Over the past 11 years, BOSS’s Clean City Program has provided more than 300 homeless individuals with temporary employment doing street maintenance. While participating in the program, workers are offered job training and assistance finding permanent employment.

Approximately 80 percent of the program’s graduates, including Isbell, have continued working.

While not every crewmember since the district’s founding has been hired through BOSS, Isbell’s team of four is made solely of former BOSS participants. Burton says the Clean City Program strives to demonstrate that the homeless are eager to work and feel included in the community.

“Some people say there is the ‘homeless community’ but we think there is one community and we make it cleaner through our street maintenance,” Burton says. The Improvement District operates on a five-year agreement among property owners within the business district. According to Executive Director Roland Peterson, about 80 percent of property owners voted to renew the district in 2003, the highest renewal rate for privately owned business improvement districts in the state at the time.

Merchants say the program has improved its services significantly since its founding.

“As a merchant, I’ve noticed a difference. I’ve been a merchant for a long time and I know that the graffiti and litter are not at the level it used to be,” Moskowitz says. “It’s not great by any means, but it’s better than it was 10 years ago.”

Isbell says she enjoys her work and is grateful to the BOSS program for helping her feel more involved in her community.

“I had to live in a shelter for a while. BOSS helped me get on my feet to work again,” she says. “Now, at TBID, I feel I’m a greater part of my community.”

Contact Preeti Piplani at newsdesk@dailycal.org.

(c) 2003 The Daily Californian Berkeley, CA dailycal@dailycal.org

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