It's Thanksgiving week and hopefully that means you'll be spending lots of time with family and loved ones in the days ahead.

Of course, this week is also the “unofficial” start of the holiday season. During this time, when the weather turns cold and people focus on helping those less fortunate, the plight of the nation's homeless is perhaps more prominent than it is during the rest of the year.

I hope that we in the multifamily industry are doing everything we can to extend a helping hand to those experiencing homelessness during these next six weeks. Volunteer at or donate needed supplies to local homeless shelters. Spend a day working at a nearby soup kitchen. Make a financial contribution to the countless organizations that are working every day to provide housing and job training.

But when the holidays are over, I urge you to please not forget about the many individuals and families in our country experiencing homelessness. They're still there, and they're still suffering. All those activities suggested above, please find a way to do those throughout the year as well.

Just a few of the many homeless-focused organizations deserving of your time and support include the National Coalition for the Homeless, the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity and Homes for Our Troops. It won't take much research to find a suitable organization in your community.

Better yet: make a commitment to hiring individuals experiencing homelessness and even providing them with an apartment home. I know: your reaction to that suggestion might be something along the lines of, "You want me to hire a homeless person? Really?"

Well, more than 20 apartment management companies – including such major industry players as AvalonBay Communities, Equity Residential and Waterton – are working with Shelters to Shutters (S2S) to place people experiencing homelessness in onsite, entry-level jobs and provide them with housing at the same communities at which they work. S2S works with a number of homeless-focused non-profits to identify suitable job applicants.

S2S focuses on the sizable chunk of the homeless population that is situationally homeless. These are people who became homeless due to a life-altering event such as the sudden loss of a job, a medical or health emergency, a divorce, domestic abuse or the loss of a primary income earner.

These are people who want to work and return to a life of self-sufficiency but may not receive the governmental support services needed. They have proven to be a pipeline of high-quality, motivated employees for the apartment industry: the job retention rate for S2S participants is 92 percent while the average industry retention rate, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council, is 69 percent.

And the benefits don't end there. Consider: every individual transitioned out of homelessness saves the local community an average of nearly $58,000, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Family Options Study.

Of course, multifamily companies who hire and house the homeless are doing so much more than building a great workforce and helping local governments save money. They're changing lives, giving hope and restoring self-sufficiency to those who so desperately want to return to the working world and only need a hand up to do so.

Even if it's not through S2S, I strongly urge apartment management companies across the country to find ways to support those experiencing homelessness.

We may think of the homeless more during the holidays. But they deserve our attention and help 365 days a year.