If you look at it who's being “employed” by Eva's Phoenix, they are marginalized homeless youth. We either keep them in a shelter system and they go on to prisons, go on to be a drain on the system, or we give them real skills.
The print shop down the street is not going to hire them; they're not set up to hire them. They don't have social workers or other kinds of folks on staff. The cost of running a business like Eva's print shop is way more than running a traditional business because they have this double or triple bottom line that's embedded into what they do. If we're committed to giving these kids employment opportunities and moving them off the system, then we have to look at it in that way.