New Job-Mart Hands Out Free Jobs to Local Homeless People

TRIADELPHIA - A large crowd of homeless people and young teenagers eagerly waited outside the new Job-Mart (right) in the Highlands today, as the highly anticipated arrival of the store brings many new job opportunities to local homeless people. Job-Mart was founded in 1992 to give people who are down on their luck something to do.

"There's a ton of things that people don't understand about getting jobs," said regional director Ferdinand Marcos. "They tell homeless people to get a job but they don't realize the roadblocks that being homeless brings. Businesses usually don't like to hire homeless people, but we'll hire anybody."

In order to be legally employed at a business, a potential employee must fill out a form I-9 to verify that the person is eligible to work in the United States. In order to complete the form, a home address must be provided. Sometimes a home address is hard for homeless people to acquire.

"We forge that part," said Marcos.

A social security number is also required to complete the form I-9. It is reasonable to assume that many homeless people wouldn't know their social security number.

"We forge that part," said Marcos.

Lastly, a person needs to present to an employer with a non-expired form of identification and a form that verifies worker eligibility. A U.S. passport is accepted as establishing both identification and eligibility. A driver's license may be presented, but must be accompanied with a social security card or a birth certificate. A recent report showed that a shocking number of homeless people don't own cars and thus, have no driver's license. They also sparingly travel abroad, so they usually don't have passports either.

"We forge that part," said Marcos.

Job-Mart has a wide variety of jobs available for potential employees. Seen left is Warwood resident Enver Hoxha, whose job is to hammer nails into a wall for eight hours a day. One local resident described how Job-Mart is turning his life around.

"I used to be homeless," said Wheeling man Francois Duvalier. "Until one day a polite gentleman yelled at me to get a job. That thought had never occurred to me before. So I strolled right on into Job-Mart and they just up and handed me a job!"

Duvalier's job at Job-Mart is to play in a pool of paint, as well as dumping glue on kittens.

"We don't really have any revenue," said manager Stephen Harper. "We aren't a business and we don't sell anything, we just hand out jobs for people to do."