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Cincinnati Clean Team: The Workforce Development Model

More than 600 miles of streets cleaned. More than 5,000 bags of trash filled. Workers paid $9 an hour in cash who were, until recently, sleeping in shelters. 34 linked with permanent housing. 16 who moved into permanent jobs. And in its early years, a program manager named Jim Cira who drove the Jobs Van through downtown Cincinnati four days a week, picking up panhandlers and offering them a day’s work, a free lunch, and a connection to the services that might change their trajectory. (Cira, who experienced addiction himself before joining the program, was the Jobs Van’s public face through its launch period in 2018–2019. Gerald Cooper of City Gospel Mission now coordinates the program.)

“It Kind of Gave Me a Purpose in Life Again.”

Lori Gilbert had been experiencing homelessness for about a year when she joined Cincinnati’s Clean Team. She described what happened next to WCPO:

It kind of gave me a purpose in life again, and it kind of helped motivate me to get off the streets. It helped me remember that’s what I came from.

Lori Gilbert, Clean Team Worker — WCPO Cincinnati

Gilbert saved her earnings and bought a car. She started looking for a second, part-time job so she could afford car insurance and earn enough to leave the sober house for a place of her own. “I love what I do,” she told the reporter. “I love giving back to the city, and I’m just ready to get my life back on track.”

Gilbert’s trajectory followed a pattern the program was built to produce. In its first year, 34 workers were connected to permanent housing and 16 secured permanent employment.

How Cincinnati Built It

Cincinnati’s Clean Team operates through a partnership between the city and City Gospel Mission, a homeless shelter and social service organization. The partnership structure is the program’s defining feature: the city provides funding and the public safety mandate. City Gospel Mission provides the workforce pipeline, the social service infrastructure, and the daily operational support that makes the workforce development model function.

The program hires residents of homeless shelters and people experiencing homelessness. Workers are paid $9 an hour in cash for daily cleaning shifts. During the program’s launch period, Jim Cira, the Jobs Van program manager from City Gospel Mission, drove through downtown and Over-the-Rhine picking up people holding signs or anyone he knew who was experiencing homelessness. Cira experienced addiction himself before working in the program. “I leave the shelter at 8:30 in the morning. I come in from different directions,” Cira told WCPO in 2019. His own history was a structural feature of the model: when the program manager has lived what the workers are living, the credibility of the program’s promise carries weight on every shift.

Joe Rudemiller, vice president of marketing and communications at the Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), has provided a detailed public accounting of its outputs and outcomes to WCPO.

The Cincinnati model sits within a broader ecosystem of downtown services. The Downtown Cincinnati Improvement District (DCID) operates a separate, larger ambassador program: more than 85 Downtown Ambassadors trained in public safety, cleanliness, and customer service, patrolling seven days a week from 7 AM to 10 PM. The GeneroCity 513 initiative, a partnership between 3CDC/Downtown Cincinnati, the City of Cincinnati, City Gospel Mission, Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services, and Strategies to End Homelessness, integrates cleaning, outreach, and employment functions.

The GeneroCity 513 Jobs Van, managed by City Gospel Mission, operates four days per week, picking up 10 individuals each day and transporting them to a job site. Participants engage in community beautification projects, receive a free lunch, and are paid $9 per hour in cash at the conclusion of their shifts. The program describes itself as offering “a positive alternative to panhandling” while connecting people to shelter, employment, and mental health and substance abuse services.

In 2024 alone, the GeneroCity 513 initiative made over 300 connections to social service agencies, including connecting 120 individuals with permanent housing.

The Numbers

Cleaning output (first year):

More than 600 miles of streets cleaned
More than 5,000 bags of trash filled

Workforce outcomes (first year, per 3CDC):

34 linked with permanent housing
16 secured permanent employment
Nearly 240 individuals rode the Jobs Van
Additional riders connected to social services, shelters, and treatment

Program scale (2024, GeneroCity 513 initiative):

Over 300 social service connections
120 individuals connected with permanent housing
Jobs Van: 10 participants per day, $9/hour in cash

What It Looks Like

Jim Cira’s Route (2018–2019)

Jim Cira managed the Jobs Van for City Gospel Mission during the program’s formative years. He drove through downtown and Over-the-Rhine picking up 10 people a day, taking them to beautification sites, and paying them $9 an hour in cash plus a free lunch. Cira’s own history with addiction gave him credibility with riders that a program manager without that experience could not replicate. “Jim treats everyone like a person, like they have a chance in this world no matter how many times they screw up,” Gilbert said.

Cira’s trajectory from addiction to program manager mirrored the pathway the program is designed to create.

Lori Gilbert’s Progression

Gilbert’s progression from homeless to employed to car owner to seeking permanent housing followed the pathway the program is designed to create. The sequence is intentional: paid work provides immediate income and structure, social service connections provide the pathway to stability, and savings from steady work unlock the next step — in Gilbert’s case, a car that opened access to employment paying enough for independent housing. Without the job, there is no income; without income, no savings; without savings, no car; without a car, limited access to the employment that pays enough for housing. The Clean Team was the first rung.

The Design

Workforce Model

Cincinnati’s staffing model is explicitly designed around people experiencing homelessness. The dual mission is the core design decision: clean streets and create employment pathways for people who face barriers to traditional employment (no address, no identification documents, no recent work history, often active substance use disorders or recovery).

The implications of this design choice:

Higher turnover than a professional model. Workers cycle through the program. Some move to permanent employment (16 documented in the first year). Some return to instability. The program treats turnover as a feature: each worker who cycles through receives paid work, social service connections, and a bridge to stability, regardless of whether they complete the full pathway to permanent employment.

Lower training overhead than a professional biohazard model. Cincinnati’s cleaning scope is broad (streets, trash, general litter) rather than specialized (biohazard needles, graffiti removal). Workers do not require biohazard certification. This keeps the barrier to entry low, which is essential for a population that may not be able to complete multi-day training programs.

Social service integration is not optional. The City Gospel Mission partnership provides the wrap-around services (food, shelter access, case management, employment counseling) that make the workforce model viable. Without it, the program would be a temporary jobs program with no pathway to stability.

Organizational Home

The program operates through a city-nonprofit partnership. The city provides funding through its general fund. City Gospel Mission provides the workforce development infrastructure. The GeneroCity 513 framework adds additional partners: the Downtown Cincinnati Improvement District (DCID), Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services (GCBHS), and Strategies to End Homelessness (STEH).

This multi-partner structure distributes both funding and operational risk. It also distributes accountability: no single organization owns the program completely. The partnership model allows the program to access funding streams that no single partner could access alone: workforce development grants, community development block grants, philanthropic funding, social service contracts, and Business Improvement District (BID) assessment fees all flow through different partners.

What the Program Does Not Do

Cincinnati’s Clean Team does not handle biohazard-level needle collection with specialized equipment (that requires different training and equipment than general street cleaning). It does not remove graffiti (a different skill set and equipment base). It does not provide escort services or wayfinding. It does not coordinate with mobile crisis teams.

The program’s scope is cleaning and workforce development. That focus keeps the mission clear and the operations manageable. It is also a limitation: a city that needs biohazard needle collection, graffiti abatement, and workforce development would need multiple programs or a broader scope than Cincinnati’s model provides.

Funding

Cincinnati’s Clean Team is funded through the city’s general fund, supplemented by the multi-partner GeneroCity 513 framework. The DCID provides assessment fees that fund the broader ambassador program (85+ ambassadors, 7 days a week, 7 AM to 10 PM). The Clean Team’s workforce development functions draw on City Gospel Mission’s existing social service infrastructure.

What the funding covers: Worker wages ($9/hour cash), basic cleaning equipment and supplies, supervision costs, Jobs Van operation.

What the funding does not cover: The true total program cost (including City Gospel Mission’s social service provision, the Jobs Van operation, administrative overhead, and partner coordination costs) has not been published. The full cost of producing more than 600 miles of cleaned streets, 34 first-year housing placements, and 16 permanent jobs is unknown. The $300,000 annual GeneroCity 513 budget reported by Rudemiller in 2019 is the only published figure, and it covers the broader initiative, not just the Clean Team component.

Sustainability profile: Moderate. The multi-partner structure provides some resilience; if one funding stream contracts, others may continue. But the core program depends on annual general fund allocations from the city, which compete with every other city priority. The GeneroCity 513 framework provides institutional depth that a standalone Clean Team lacks, but no component of the funding is legally mandated or structurally permanent.

What Is Missing

No independent evaluation. Cincinnati’s outcomes (more than 600 miles cleaned, 34 housing placements, 16 permanent jobs in the first year) are reported by program administrators. No external researcher has verified these numbers. No controlled study has attempted to measure whether the program produces outcomes above what existing homeless services would have produced without the Clean Team component.

No total program cost. The full cost of the program, including the City Gospel Mission partnership, the Jobs Van, administrative overhead, equipment, and supervision, has not been published. Without a total cost, no cost-effectiveness calculation is possible.

No longitudinal outcomes. The 18 permanent employment placements and 34 housing connections are point-in-time figures. Whether those individuals maintained employment and housing over 6 months, 12 months, or longer has not been reported.

No comparison to alternatives. Whether the workforce development model produces better employment and housing outcomes than alternative approaches (direct employment programs, Housing First with employment support, traditional workforce development without the cleaning component) is unknown.

The data gap is the biggest risk to the model’s expansion. Cincinnati’s Clean Team is the most-cited example of the workforce development model nationally. Other cities point to Cincinnati’s numbers when proposing similar programs. But those numbers have not been independently verified. A city that launches a Clean Team based on Cincinnati’s reported outcomes and then fails to replicate them has no research base to explain why. There is no research base.

Bottom Line: Cincinnati’s GeneroCity 513 operates through a partnership between 3CDC, City Gospel Mission, the Downtown Cincinnati Improvement District, Greater Cincinnati Behavioral Health Services, and Strategies to End Homelessness. Through September 2025: 2,648 encounters, 376 intakes, 542 referrals, 300-plus social service connections, and more than 120 individuals linked to housing in 2024. The Jobs Van pays $9 per hour, four days per week (WCPO; 3CDC program data). Gerald Cooper, who coordinates the program and was once homeless himself, takes workers to City Gospel Mission at the end of each cleaning day for food and services (Spectrum News 1, via Clean Teams Newsletter). Lori Gilbert, who joined the program after a year of homelessness, told WCPO: “It kind of gave me a purpose in life again” (WCPO, via Clean Teams Newsletter). No independent evaluation of the program’s impact on participant outcomes, neighborhood conditions, or cost-effectiveness has been published. The MDRC trial (2012) found 22 percent recidivism reductions for recently released participants in a similar transitional maintenance employment model (MDRC, 2012).

Safer Cities Policy Intelligence

Sources

**Program design, first-year outcomes, and Lori Gilbert story:**

In its first year Jobs Van connects hundreds of panhandlers with daily work, longer-term help, WCPO Cincinnati (September 17, 2019): [wcpo.com](https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/in-its-first-year-jobs-van-connects-hundreds-of-panhandlers-with-daily-work-longer-term-help) — Jobs Van operated 160 days July 2018–August 2019; nearly 240 individuals; Gilbert quotes (“It kind of gave me a purpose in life again”); Jim Cira as program manager; $9/hour, five hours; cash payment rationale; $300,000 annual budget (Rudemiller); Gilbert car purchase and job search; 10 success stories.

GeneroCity 513 aids woman in recovery from addiction, homelessness, 3CDC press release (June 25, 2019): [3cdc.org](https://www.3cdc.org/generocity-513-aids-woman-in-recovery-from-addiction-homelessness/) — Gilbert biographical details; met Cira June 2018; Jobs Van operated 120+ days; 1,174 riders; 15 permanent employment, 88 social services; Gilbert six months sober by April 2019; Talbert House assessment.

GeneroCity 513 Offers ‘A Positive Alternative to Panhandling,’ Cincinnati Magazine (December 16, 2019): [cincinnatimagazine.com](https://www.cincinnatimagazine.com/article/generocity-513-offers-a-positive-alternative-to-panhandling-by-helping-cincinnatis-homeless-population/) — First year: 34 permanent housing, 16 full-time jobs; three outreach workers; Donation Stations at five locations.

**Jim Cira biographical details and Jobs Van operations:**

GeneroCity 513: Program helps people experiencing homelessness find work, build camaraderie, WCPO (June 24, 2019): [wcpo.com](https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/generocity-513-program-helps-people-experiencing-homelessness-find-work-build-camaraderie) — Cira’s personal history with addiction; “I leave the shelter at 8:30 in the morning” quote; $45/day; Jobs Van as community builder.

Jobs Van picks up panhandlers and drives them towards a brighter future, Soapbox (October 2025 reprint): [soapboxmedia.com](https://soapboxmedia.com/jobs-van-helps-homeless/) — Cira operations, 10 riders per day, beautification projects, Gilbert “Jim treats everyone like a person” quote; 15 graduated to permanent employment, 88 connected to social services.

**Cleaning volume data:**

Jobs Van Helps Break the Cycle of Poverty, Cincinnati Experience (October 17, 2024): [cincinnatiexperience.com](https://www.cincinnatiexperience.com/blog/the-jobs-van-helps-break-the-cycle-of-poverty/) — “More than 5,000 bags of trash that first year, across more than 600 miles of city roads”; 34 permanent housing, 16 full-time employment; Gilbert story.

**2024 outcomes and current operations:**

Clean & Safe, Downtown Cincinnati: [downtowncincinnati.com](https://downtowncincinnati.com/about/clean-safe/) — 85+ Downtown Ambassadors; GeneroCity 513 Jobs Van and Outreach Workers; $9/hour, four days/week; 2024: 300+ social service connections, 120 permanent housing; four full-time outreach workers plus one seasonal.

Downtown Data Dashboard, Downtown Cincinnati: [downtowncincinnati.com](https://downtowncincinnati.com/about/downtown-data-dashboard/) — Current ambassador count (40+ in DCID; separate OTR South SID); Jobs Van three days/week (updated from four); outreach worker staffing.

**Housing expansion and pandemic response:**

GeneroCity 513 is helping more people trade homelessness for housing with added staff on the street, WCPO (August 12, 2021): [wcpo.com](https://www.wcpo.com/news/our-community/generocity-513-is-helping-more-people-trade-homelessness-for-housing-with-added-staff-on-the-street) — 25 housed in 2019, 87 in 2020, 98 through July 2021; staff expanded from 3 to 4 full-time plus seasonal; Mary Caldwell story; 3CDC funds via DCID assessments.

**GeneroCity 513 program description:**

GeneroCity 513: [generocity513.org](https://www.generocity513.org) — Partnership structure (3CDC, Downtown Cincinnati, City of Cincinnati, City Gospel Mission, GCBHS, Strategies to End Homelessness); four full-time outreach workers; seven-day-a-week coverage.

Social Services Outreach, 3CDC: [3cdc.org](https://www.3cdc.org/community-impact/social-services-outreach/) — Five outreach workers; Jobs Van operations; initiative design.

**Early program data:**

Pilot Program To Reduce Aggressive Panhandling In Cincinnati Will Continue, WVXU (April 15, 2019): [wvxu.org](https://www.wvxu.org/local-news/2019-04-15/pilot-program-to-reduce-aggressive-panhandling-in-cincinnati-will-continue) — Riders connected to services: 93 (permanent employment: 13; permanent housing: 30; rehab: 11; shelter: 36); task force background; panhandler survey plans.

**Current outreach coverage (2024–2025):**

Initiative works directly with those experiencing homelessness in Cincinnati, WCPO (October 23, 2024): [wcpo.com](https://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/finding-solutions/people-dont-choose-to-live-like-this-cincy-initiative-works-directly-with-those-experiencing-homelessness) — Laura Allen outreach worker; purple jacket as calling card; current street-level operations.