Canton renovator hires homeless
Akron Beacon Journal
CANTON
Venie Bennett had to take a job sorting trash.
Kevin Radsick remembers being so hungry, he went into a restaurant’s trash bin looking for food.
Thomas Carver once spent a whole November night in a trash bin and considered himself lucky to have leaves to use as a cover in the cold.
They all work for Ken Ippolito, an apartment- building renovator who finds hiring formerly homeless men and women profitable and inspiring.
Ippolito’s RLI Enterprises is completing its 30th apartment building renovation, the 48-unit BelKEN Village complex in Canton.
So far, he’s hired seven men and two women out of homeless situations and put them into full-time jobs working for $7 to $9 an hour. Many are living in apartments they helped fix up.
Carver has no problem with the low wages.
“It’s more than I was making before,” he said.
Carver became homeless about 10 years ago, when he lost his job and his marriage broke up. He lost contact with his four children and lived in various shelters in the New Philadelphia area. He later moved back to his hometown, Canton.
“That first night I came back to Canton, I’ll never forget it, I spent the night in a hydraulic dumper next to the Canton Civic Center,” he said. He spent time in shelters and relied on the kindness of friends allowing him to stay in their homes.
He was living in a shelter in 2004 when he heard RLI Enterprises was hiring.
“It’s just awesome,” he said. “I’m eternally grateful to Mr. Ippolito.”
Radsick supervises workers at the renovation projects, but he has his own story of homelessness.
He said he was banished by his parents because of drugs, alcohol and violence. His low point came when he was living in a pickup truck.
“I lived there with my Doberman pinscher ’cause it was the only friend I had,” he said. “Mom and Dad tough-loved me. I wore the same clothes for weeks at a time.”
A woman who was giving him food and other help introduced him to her boyfriend, Ippolito.
“Ever since then, me and him just clicked,” Radsick said. “We are the same people. We care — we are not happy until everyone around us is happy.”
He retold his story because of his gratitude to Ippolito.
“I don’t really want to talk about my homeless time because it was terrible,” Radsick said. “Getting in Dumpsters at Bob Evans and getting food all over my face, and this man right here has given me a new life. It’s heart-wrenching, but this man right here not only is putting money into the city, he is saving lives. Totally saving lives. Where would Venie or me be without him? Probably doing drugs or killing people or robbing, whatever, but he has turned it around.”
A failed marriage was part of Bennett’s downfall.
“If you don’t have a job, you don’t have any money to pay child support,” he said.
And because he didn’t have money for child support, his driver’s license was taken, away and finding a job was even harder.
“I went out and worked at temporary services, where they put you in a factory or in a garbage dump,” he said. “You sort trash. Nobody wants to sort trash. They paid minimum wage also. I love my job because I work inside 99 percent of the time. I love it.”
Now he has an apartment at an RLI facility and can invite his 9-year-old son, Austin, for overnight stays, a milestone for both of them.
Ippolito praised Bennett as a worker.
“I’m so proud of Venie,” he said. “I love him. I’m proud of him. Venie, he can do anything.”