Housing Navigation and Case Management Specialist-Bilingual English and Spanish
About us
Project Vida Inc. is a community based, non profit organization located on Chicago's southwest side in the Little Village community. Our mission is to improve quality of life and reduce health disparities in underserved communities by promoting self-empowerment and providing holistic health education and direct services. Project VIDA was founded in 1992 to address the urgent needs of racial and ethnic minorities. Initially, the organization provided HIV education through street outreach services to area youth. Today, we have expanded our community scope by initiating a variety of programs: direct services including behavioral health, case management, housing navigation, food pantry, as week as massage and acupuncture therapy.
The primary responsibility of the Housing Navigation and Case Management specialist is to provide multi-disciplinary non-medical case management and housing navigation services to agency clientele. The HNCM specialist will assist clients in getting connected with community, private and government resources to address their economic, medical, and housing needs. The HNCM specialist will conduct client needs assessments, create individualized care plans, maintain progress logs, facilitate needed client referrals, and conduct comprehensive discharge planning. The HNCM specialist will also focus on providing crisis prevention and intervention services to unstably housed and homeless clients and families. This role will work to from strong relationships with community landlords and other community organizations to increase the number of resources available to assist low-income individuals and families. This role will also conduct educational groups on various topics including, but no limited to budgeting, financial counseling, and credit management.
Job Duties:
- Conduct comprehensive intake and needs assessments
- Create individualized care plans to address the client’s identified needs.
- Provide appropriate referrals/ linkages to necessary resources identified through assessments.
- Monitor individualized care plan progress.
- Provide crisis prevention and intervention services to unstably housed and homeless community clients and families.
- Add clients to private, foundational, city, county, and state housing subsidy waitlists for permanent housing placement.
- Meet with all client walk‐ins needing immediate housing services.
- Advocate for clients with landlords and providers as needed.
- Develop strong relationships with private, for profit, and not‐for‐profit landlords in order to facilitate client placement.
- Document all client and client‐related services in client level databases.
- Facilitate educational/training groups focused on financial literacy, budgeting, credit management and other relevant topics.
- Conduct field visits to meet with clients, landlords and various community agency staff.
- Participation in occasional outreach activities and major organization events.
- Other duties as assigned by reporting manager or Executive Director.
The schedule would be alternating Monday -Friday from 9am to 6pm one week and the next week Tuesday- Friday 11am to 8pm and Saturday 9am to 6pm
Requirements:
- Associates degree in Social Services or related field and 2 or more years of Human Services experience. Bachelor’s (preferred).
- Previous Case Management experience strongly preferred.
- Knowledge of HIV care and supportive services strongly preferred
- Language: Bilingual English/Spanish required
- Cultural/lifestyle sensitivity to African American, Latino, and LGBT populations required
- Word processing/computer skills a must
- Organizational and time management skills.
- Presentation skills/group facilitation skills.
- Reliable transportation and a valid driver’s license.
Job Type: Full-time
Pay: $40,000.00 - $50,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Schedule:
- Day shift
- Monday to Friday
- Night shift
- Weekends as needed
Education:
Experience:
- Microsoft Office: 3 years (Required)
- Section 8: 3 years (Preferred)
- LIHTC: 3 years (Preferred)
- Case Management: 3 years (Required)
Language:
- Bilingual Spanish and English (Required)
License/Certification:
- Driver's License (Preferred)
Work Location: Multiple locations