Housing is a transitional service that is an important component for long-term reduction in recidivism. Nationwide, state agencies and secular and faith-based organizations are taking different approaches to the housing challenges facing returning offenders. Here are a few examples.
Houston, Texas
State Departments of Corrections operate halfway houses; however, need exceeds capacity. For example, the nation’s second largest correctional system, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, operates seven halfway houses in the state. Only one is located in Harris County, to which one-fourth of Texas offenders are released. A similar situation exists in New York State, where more than 15 percent of offenders are released to shelters. The situation is bleak in the Denver metro area where a 2007 Piton Foundation study found that one-fourth of parolees resided in homeless shelters or other temporary housing.
Most of the released offenders are returning to areas with high offender-to-citizen ratios. In Houston, the largest city in both Harris County and Texas at large, returnees tend to congregate in five ZIP codes. Fertile Ground, a transitional home with which Prison Fellowship has been affiliated for six years, is located in an area that receives 7.4 offenders per 1,000 city residents, compared to 4.1 offenders per 1,000 residents for other areas. The neighborhood has one of the highest rates of violent, property, and drug-related crimes in Houston. Nevertheless, the comprehensive aftercare program and positive influence of Fertile Ground have improved rather than imperiled public safety in the neighborhood. Elderly neighbors now feel safe to walk the streets.
Contact: Executive Director Gary Lane, Fertile Ground Transformational Center, P.O. Box 11764, Spring, TX 77391; Tel: (281) 630-0512; Email: glane@fertilegroundctc.org;
Website: www.fertilegroundctc.org
New York, New York
Intense community involvement has turned neighborhood opponents into staunch advocates of The Fortune Society’s residential centers in West Harlem, NY. In 2002, when the society opened its Fortune Academy (“The Castle”), the staff—comprised of primarily ex-prisoners—began to attend community meetings, instituted an open door policy, and held neighborhood outreach activities (backyard barbecues, a Haunted House at Halloween, etc). In January, neighbors welcomed the opening of the society’s Castle Gardens, a 141-unit building adjacent to their existing 59-bed facility.
Contact: Executive Director JoAnne Page, Fortune Society, 29-76 Northern Blvd., Long Island City, NY 11101; Tel. (212) 691-7554; Email: info@fortunesociety.org;
Website: www.fortunesociety.org
Rockville, Maryland
Released offenders often return to areas of high employment with few skills that enable them to compete in the job market or afford stable housing. Montgomery County’s Pre-Release and Reentry Services Division takes a “sink-or-swim approach” with the residents of its non-traditional halfway house, a work release center located in a high employment area of Rockville, Maryland. Residents must find jobs themselves rather than relying on job-training, education, or psychological counseling. The offenders use the house‘s computers and telephones in their search and have access to GED classes and 12-step addiction programs. Within three weeks of enrollment, nearly 90 percent of them have a job, and about 54 percent stay with the same employer.
Contact: Deputy Chief Pat Braun, The Montgomery County Pre-Release Center, 11651 Nebel St., Rockville, MD 20852; Tel: (240) 773-4200
San Francisco, California
In the last 40 years, the Delancey Street Foundation, a residential self-help organization, has increased the marketability of over 18,000 of its residents, who stay for an average of four years and help run the program. In the Delancey Street model, ex-prisoners, substance abusers, and the homeless live and work in a 400,000-square-foot San Francisco complex that houses 500. The residents work in the foundation’s restaurants, moving companies, furniture factories, bookstores, print shops, landscaping business, and specialty advertising sales division. The foundation also prepares functionally illiterate residents for GED passage and partners with colleges for those wanting to earn college degrees. Its efforts have been extended to smaller homes in Los Angeles, New Mexico, North Carolina, New York, and Massachusetts.
Contact: Dr. Mimi Silbert, CEO, Delancey Street Foundation, 600 Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA 94107; Tel: (415) 512-5104;
Website: www.delanceystreetfoundation.org
Denver, Colorado
In 2009, as a result of the Piton study, the Colorado Criminal Justice Coalition (CCJC) surveyed Denver’s shelters. CCJC’s Reentry Coordinator Carol Peeples then developed 11 cost-neutral strategies for changing existing policies on homeless ex-prisoners. One of the strategies was for county jails to explore an alternative step-down transitional program for homeless parolees (e.g., the Denver Homeless Transition Program, a collaborative pilot program between the Denver County Jail, the Colorado Department of Corrections, and the Division of Criminal Justice.)
Contact: Carol Peeples, Reentry Coordinator, Colorado Criminal Justice Coalition, 1212 Mariposa St., #6, Denver, CO 80204; Tel: (303) 825-0122;
Website: www.ccjrc.org