Opportunity Knocks
In his travels through D.C.’s poorest housing complexes, Darryl Kornegay has heard every excuse for avoiding welfare-to-work programs. So don’t even bother.
Cover Story
On a gloomy day in April, Darryl Kornegay pulls up to the Carrollsburg Dwellings on L Street SE. A stone’s throw from fashionable parts of Capitol Hill, the squat buildings constitute an entire block of public housing slated to be demolished. Kornegay locates the apartment he’s looking for and bangs on the door. It’s frigid outside, and the door opens with a gust of warm air, revealing a woman wearing a head scarf, men’s boxers, and a Tweety Bird tank top with a plunging neckline. Her breasts are practically spilling out.
Visibly abashed in the face of so much flesh, Kornegay introduces himself and asks the woman, 31-year-old India McShay, to come to the Pilgrim AME Church, a tiny black church in the Rosedale neighborhood off Benning Road NE.
Kornegay is not a proselytizer, though. His purpose in this case is a secular one: McShay must make an appearance at Pilgrim’s Job Connection, a provider of welfare-to-work training that contracts with the D.C. government, which isn’t going to wait until the afterlife to pass judgment on her. If she doesn’t drop by, the city will drop her from its welfare rolls.
“I’ve been there before, but I don’t like that dressing up and stuff,” McShay retorts after hearing Kornegay’s spiel. “I like to be as comfortable as I can. I’m not for all that dressing up.”
Pilgrim makes all the participants dress respectably for the work program. Job opportunities sometimes arise at a moment’s notice, and Program Director Chester Ray will pull people right out of a workshop to send them to an interview. ... Continued 
Issue of Mar. 19 - 25, 2004
News and Features
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