Foster talks jobs, economy while visiting Aurora's Hesed House

As Congressman Bill Foster read "A Fly Went By" to a room full of homeless children, a line of area residents waited in line outside Aurora's Hesed House to receive boxes of food. The homeless shelter sees, on average, about 16 new homeless people each week. And all of the people it helps are looking for the same solution that will end their dependence on the shelter - jobs.

"There's pretty much no way out without a job," Hesed House Executive Director Ryan J. Dowd said. "That's the biggest problem right now. Unemployment is just killing us."

Foster listened to that message while visiting the shelter Monday. Hesed House is in the process of converting an old rubber manufacturing plant across the street from its current location into a center where its residents can receive job training, mental health counseling and parenting lessons. Dowd said even in a tough economy, the shelter is finding success placing its residents in the retail, food service and health care industries with as little as six months of job training. In fact, the shelter is successfully sending about the same number of people out of the shelter - and back on their feet - as come in each week.

Foster met with Dowd, shelter staff and some residents for about 90 minutes to get a feel for people on the receiving end of a bad economy. He left with a sense that the 14th District is on the right track.

"It's taking them longer, but they are able to find jobs," Foster said. "I was very worried that they had a pipeline that was just people falling out the other end. With a reasonable job training program, it's still possible to get something."

Parts of the 14th District have seen some of the highest unemployment numbers in the state. Foster said the numbers he's seen show unemployment in the district rose more rapidly than much of the country, but hit bottom at midsummer. Foster said the numbers have started to improve since then with DeKalb, DuPage, Kane and Kendall counties seeing a modest drop in unemployment.

"That's the most important thing for our country to deal with right now," Foster said. "The short-term emergency is to get more people back to work. In the 14th District, we seem to be leading the rest of the country out. It spiked early, and it's coming out early."

Foster said there's still a lot of work to do in Congress, but the federal stimulus plan was designed for the economy to rebound over two years.

"It was designed to plug the hole in unemployment," Foster said. "We realized that probably the right thing to do wasn't to hand everyone a one-time check. We'll see how it works."