CRESTVIEW — A Northwest Florida company wants to provide jobs for adult addicts, homeless people and former prisoners.
Otero-Cates LLC's four-month-old second chance program provides jobs such as landscaping, construction and housecleaning to program participants. The goal is to help applicants — anyone except for murderers, child molesters or abusers of the elderly — turn their lives around.
The organization has 12 people on its demolition crew, but it needs more.
"We do drywall, we clean houses. It's a little bit of everything. And if one (job) doesn't fit (an applicant), we try another fit," Rosemary Despain, of Otero, said. "We just don't have enough people, and if more people knew about us, more people would come and use us for work”
So, what are examples of the organization’s recent work?
"Whatever we can find, we do it. We have another bid that's here in Crestview and hopefully we'll get that job too," Despain said. That bid was accepted and the Otero crew helped a firm demolish a Main Street building the week of Sept. 8.
The company works with participants and their families to provide housing, transportation and other necessities to complete each job. For the Main Street job, some program members lacked proper work boots or tools for a construction site, so Otero provided those.
A few other Crestview jobs are in the works, but Otero also seeks skilled workers for help assisting flood survivors in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
"We just got hired by two major corporations for FEMA in Baton Rouge," Despain said. "We need more people and we'll do the transportation for the jobs.” The work includes gutting houses and installing Sheetrock.
Despain said all it takes for people in the second chance program to succeed is to do their best.
"We do whatever we can to help them, but they have to try themselves,” she said. “They have to show me that they're trying to change.
"The people we've hired, there's been some change for them."
—
Editor's Note: A previous version of this article referred to the group as Otero Construction LLC.
Also, we added the contact information.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Residents get 'second chance' for employment