Housing Worker

Fred Victor Centre • Toronto, ON

just now • CA$0 - CA$29 • Onsite

About The Position

Fred Victor has been a leader in helping people rebuild their lives in Toronto for 130 years. Our mission is to improve the health, income, and housing stability of people experiencing poverty and homelessness. We are committed to ending homelessness, one person at a time. Kingston Road Housing provides safe, deeply affordable housing for single people who are experiencing poverty, chronic homelessness, and often the long-term effects of trauma, social isolation, and varying degrees of mental health and substance use issues. Kingston Road Housing provides Housing with supports, including case management, on-site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We work from a client-centered, harm reduction, trauma-informed, anti-oppressive framework. We offer a supportive and collaborative environment, an opportunity to join a diverse team of caring professionals, and a chance to make a difference. With over 75 programs and services and more than 25 sites, there are many opportunities to grow your career with us. Many members of the management team started in relief and front-line roles.

Requirements

• Strong understanding of systems that cause and support homelessness, poverty, and discrimination and respect for those realities.
• Well-developed interpersonal skills that will produce effective, productive, and appropriate relationships with the tenants, community, external agencies, and staff at Fred Victor.
• Experience working with people who are actively using substances from a harm reduction lens.
• This position will use a trauma-informed, harm reduction, client-centered, anti-oppressive approach to all of their work.
• This position requires respect for, and expertise working with, tenants who are facing mental and physical health issues, active substance use, history of trauma, abuse, and social isolation and who come from racially and ethnically diverse backgrounds.

Nice To Haves

• Demonstrated experience in conflict resolution and crisis management.
• Extensive experience working with people who come from diverse racial, gender, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds and who have experienced varying degrees of mental health, social isolation, and substance use.
• Lived experience.
• Strong customer service skills.
• Extensive knowledge of community-based resources.
• Proven ability to challenge organization, staff, and tenant communities in a positive and creative way to effect better service.
• Well-developed interpersonal skills that will produce effective, productive, and appropriate relationships with the tenants, community, external agencies, and staff at Fred Victor.
• Strong teamwork.
• Highly developed written and oral communication skills.
• Highly developed interpersonal skills.
• Highly developed group facilitation skills.
• Highly developed understanding of and proven ability to communicate appropriate professional boundaries.
• Highly developed ability to plan and prioritize work.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.
• Literacy in Word, Pirouette, Excel.

Responsibilities

• Work with chronically homeless tenants to access and maintain their affordable housing.
• Encourage tenant participation in the development of short- and long-term goals and community development strategies, using a facilitative management approach to encourage tenants to reach their goals, maintain their housing, and take responsibility for their lives and for the safety and enjoyment of their housing.
• Provide a welcoming, friendly, and professional Front Desk for Housing and keep the Housing Office open as often as possible. This includes but is not limited to answering the phones, fielding tenant questions and concerns, signing in guests, signing out keys, taking work orders, crisis intervention, assisting with tenant medication, giving notices to tenants, and liaising with other workers and professionals.
• Utilize trauma-informed community development, facilitative management, and conflict resolution approaches to facilitate supportive, co-operative living and support tenants to develop skills to live cooperatively in their accommodation.
• Provide intake, assessment, and case management services, utilizing a client-centered, strength-based, harm reduction approach to clients.
• Maintain a caseload of 5-8 lower-need clients.
• Deal with housing-related issues such as behaviors, social isolation, mental health, substance use, hygiene, and others, by encouraging and supporting tenants to problem-solve and access community resources such as support agencies and other Fred Victor programs and services.
• Identify, intervene in, and deescalate crisis situations and work with tenants to develop crisis management skills.

Benefits

• 4 weeks of vacation to start + 1 float day
• Generous paid sick leave allowance
• A comprehensive Dental, Extended Health and LTD group benefits package includes individual and family coverage, including prescriptions, hospital accommodation, hearing care, paramedical practitioners and a wide variety of dental care.
• Additional insurance includes vision care and travel for emergency medical services.
• 6.5 % of your gross salary will be contributed to a group RRSP on your behalf after successful completion of probation; you will contribute 4% of your gross salary to the same RRSP.
• Access to employee and family assistance plan.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Entry Level
• Education Level: No Education Listed