Unit Mitigation Peer Specialist

Unit Mitigation Peer Specialist

Recognized nationally as an innovator and leader in developing solutions to homelessness, DESC is a social services organization, supportive housing operator, and licensed behavioral health treatment provider focused on meeting the needs of people experiencing long-term homelessness and living with complex behavioral health and other medical conditions. Approximately 3,000 people are actively receiving services from DESC at any given point in time.

Our vision is a community where all people are shown compassion, treated with dignity, and everyone has a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home.

DESC operates five shelter/emergency housing programs, 19 permanent supportive housing facilities with over 1,750 units, several hundred additional scattered site apartments, and a range of behavioral health services including outpatient mental health and substance use disorder treatment, residential crisis stabilization, street outreach, mobile crisis response, and treatment for opioid use disorder.

The Unit Mitigation Peer Specialist (UMPS) is a part of a multidisciplinary team that works to support tenants with chronic issues and co-occurring disorders, maintaining unit condition standards. The UMPS role focuses on addressing problematic unit conditions as part of the larger Unit Condition Response Team to address acute issues, but also to strategize and implement preventative solutions to avoid future unit condition issues and focus on maintaining and stabilizing tenants in housing.

The Unit Mitigation Peer Specialist provides expertise about the recovery process, advocacy, symptom management, and the perseverance required by tenants to have a satisfying and healthy life. Peer Specialists are well established in their own recovery and provide expertise that professional training cannot replicate. Peer Specialists provide consultation to the team to promote a culture in which each tenants' point of view and preferences are recognized, understood, respected, and integrated into treatment and recovery, with a goal to maintain and stabilize within housing.

A condition of employment for this position is to complete the Washington State Peer Counselor Training and obtain certification within 60 days of employment at DESC.

Major duties and responsibilities include:

• Participate as a member of the multi-disciplinary Unit Conditions team providing on-going services to adults with severe and persistent mental illnesses.
• Provide peer counseling and support, drawing on common experiences as a peer, to validate tenants' experiences and to provide guidance and encouragement for individuals to take responsibility and actively participate in their own recovery.
• Serve as a mentor to tenants to promote hope and empowerment and stability in housing.
• Assist with unit inspection preparation in collaboration with the treatment team and client, including, but not limited to, apartment cleaning, organizing, and basic repairs.
• In conjunction with the care team, will regularly review and modify assigned tenants' Housing Stability Plan to address unit condition issues.
• Advocate for tenants' access to community resources and services, ensuring that tenants' needs are met, and rights maintained; consult and collaborate with providers to ensure continuity of care, facilitate linkages to collaborative resources when appropriate.
• Mitigate in-unit issues including pest infestation, sanitation, and property damage.
• Develop, design, and implement mitigation strategies to limit frequency or severity of unit damage in assigned units, including but limited to installing features designed to limit future damage.
• Is not to work outside of scope or expertise, as determined in conjunction with supervisor…