It’s no secret that homelessness and incarceration are often intertwined. In California alone, the Western Center on Law & Poverty reports that 70% of people experiencing homelessness have a history of incarceration.
Further compounding the issue is that people who have been incarcerated more than once are not only twice as likely to be homeless than those returning from their first prison term, but also experience homelessness at rates 13 times higher than the general public, according to a report from the Prison Policy Initiative.
“Stable housing is the foundation of successful reentry from prison,” the report states. “Unfortunately, as our data show, many formerly incarcerated people struggle to find stable places to live.”
Reasons for difficulty in finding stable housing include discrimination from both public and private property owners, a general lack of affordable housing stock, and background and credit checks that typically disqualify formerly incarcerated individuals from qualifying for homes they can afford. And the impacts of inadequate housing go much deeper than the possibility of reincarceration.
“It can reduce access to healthcare services (including addiction and mental health treatment), make it harder to secure a job, and prevent formerly incarcerated people from accessing educational programs,” the report says. “Severe homelessness and housing insecurity destabilizes the entire reentry process.”
This week, URL Media partners Epicenter-NYC and Scalawag highlighted folks working to solve the problem.
For Scalawag, Khawla Nakua writes about Baquee Sabur and Joseph Clark’s mission to provide transitional housing for Muslim men in Texas.
Sabur said he was called to this work after he spent a night under an overpass in Houston in the early ‘90s. At the time, Sabur had been released from prison in 1991 and secured steady work in construction. But when a work-related injury left him unable to do his job, he became homeless.
Sabur, who converted to Islam in prison, sought shelter at Star of Hope Homeless mission, but realized the Christian values of the organization were not in alignment with his new faith.
After a second stint in prison in the early 2000s, Sabur worked to get his life back on the right path and eventually launched Huma-Faith, a Muslim transitional house, in 2012. The housing project now has three houses that provide services for formerly incarcerated individuals. In 2019, Clark launched Halal House.
These transitional homes create a safe space for Muslims to reintegrate back into their communities while being able to freely practice their faith.
But the bigger issue remains that places like Huma-Faith and Halal House aren’t available to serve the approximately 600,000 people released from prison each year, which is where groups like New York’s Fair Chance for Housing come in.
“Currently, New York City law states that housing providers can’t discriminate against creed, race, national origin, gender, age, color, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, partnership status, dependents, alienage or citizenship status — but none prevent discrimination for those with an arrest or conviction record,” Andrea Pineda-Salgado writes for Epicenter-NYC.
The Fair Chance Act seeks to make background checks, inquiries about conviction records or housing denial because of a conviction record unlawful. The act would also prohibit housing providers from advertising that they do not accept applications from people with conviction histories, and would also require them to publish minimum rental requirements, tell applicants why they did not get a unit, and provide each applicant a notice of their rights.
If passed, the act would impact countless formerly incarcerated people like 67-year-old Hilton Webb who was released from prison in 2017 after serving more than 27 years of his sentence.
“It’s been 30 plus years [since my arrest]. Does that mean I can’t be housed? I have a job making five figures, I am a social worker. The New York Department of Education gave me my diploma after making me wait six months after I passed the test. The Department of Correction gave me a certificate of relief from disabilities. The Office of Professional Conduct did a thorough investigation of my sentencing minutes and they’ve determined I am of good enough character to be a licensed master of social work. All of that attests to my good character,” Webb told Epicenter-NYC. “I’ve done everything I was required to do to be a good citizen and yet a background check is going to prevent me from getting an apartment.”
At the end of the report, The Prison Policy Institute laid out four recommendations that states should take to better serve formerly incarcerated individuals: put systems in place that make it easier for formerly incarcerated individuals to find housing, prohibit property owners from asking about a person’s criminal record, end the criminalization of homelessness, and expand social services for unhoused people.
