Criminal justice reform was a cornerstone of the Obama presidency. His first Attorney General, Eric Holder, created the Federal Interagency Reentry council, which turned assistance for prisoners reentering society into a top priority. And at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Secretaries Shaun Donovan and Julian Castro played a critical role in giving former prisoners a second chance to put down roots and start over.
Now, their work — and the future of hundreds of thousands of ex-offenders in need of housing — is in jeopardy.
Ben Carson, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for HUD Secretary, probably won’t do the same. Carson offered few criminal justice policies during his failed presidential run, and Trump promises to be a “tough on crime” leader.
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), approximately 650,000 prisoners are released from federal and state facilities annually. Nevertheless, “approximately two-thirds will likely be rearrested within three years of release,” and housing insecurity is one of the reasons that people wind up back in the system.
While the body of research linking stable housing to successful reentry is limited, available studies indicate that housing can lead to successful family reunification, employment, and improved health — variables that reduce the likelihood of recidivism. But there are a number of financial and logistical hurdles that make it extremely difficult to find housing.
Roughly 60 percent of ex-offenders remain unemployed for an entire year after they’re released, so buying or renting a property of their own is nearly impossible. For many people returning to the general population, the only option is to secure public housing or Section 8 vouchers that enable them to live in private, subsidized properties. During the housing application process for both types of housing, however, people have to disclose their criminal records. And until last year, public housing authorities (PHA) practically had free rein to deny housing or evict people for arrests and convictions.
Over the past few years, HUD has worked diligently to help former prisoners in a tough position. In 2015, the department released historic legal guidance informing “PHAs and owners of other federally-assisted housing that arrest records may not be the basis for denying admission, terminating assistance or evicting tenants” and reiterating that HUD doesn’t have a “one strike” policy, whereby housing authorities must ban people with a criminal record. HUD also partnered with the DOJ to seal and expunge juvenile records for people up to 24 years old.
HUD oversees the 3,200 housing authorities around the country — many of which do have special reentry programs. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which manages the largest public housing market in the country, developed a banner model that specifically provides housing to ex-offenders and their family members, thereby establishing a stable support system that reduces the rate of recidivism. In recent years, housing officials in Los Angeles and Chicago followed suit.
It is far too early to tell if Carson’s HUD will champion fair housing for former prisoners, but the incoming secretary’s near silence on prisoners and criminal justice in general doesn’t bode well for ongoing federal reform. Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), is also a staunch proponent of the War on Drugs and the tough on crime policies that fueled mass incarceration in the first place, which means he is unlikely to support social services for ex-offenders.
According to Senior Fellow Susan Popkin of the Urban Institute, housing authorities like NYCHA and local officials will likely have to take the lead on reentry work. But there is already concern that it will be challenging to do so. If localities want to start or expand their own reentry housing programs, they would need to find the money — and funding for housing authorities is dwindling.
“It’s certainly not the disaster public housing was in a lot of cities — in places like Chicago, D.C., and New Orleans — in the late 80s and early 90s,” Popkin said, but “[Carson is] inheriting a situation where public housing has had less funding than [it] needs for management and maintenance, because of Congressional cuts and Sequestration.”
Landlords and property managers are not typically in a position to offer their own money to assist people who shuffle through their doors, so they turn to outside parties, including HUD, for funding. Yet the stigma attached to affordable housing and the lack of incentives to offer potential funders makes fundraising hard, said Popkin.
Without Congressional aid, housing authorities aren’t currently in a financial position to create or expand inclusive models for ex-offenders. And recent history suggests that a Republican-dominated Congress will squeeze social service funding that could improve the reentry process.
“My guess overall is that Congress could potentially cut funding for housing programs, and that’ll squeeze HUD’s ability to fund anything that isn’t vouchers and actual housing,” Popkin said, adding it’s still up in the air. Top conservatives advocated housing support in the past, including President George W. Bush, who prioritized ending homelessness, she said.
Nevertheless, Popkin pointed to signs of hope for ex-prisoners looking for housing.
Funding for individuals released from prison may be hard to sell, but family reunification could appeal to conservatives, she said. HUD recently expanded its Moving to Work program, which gives specific housing authorities more flexibility to shift funds around and experiment with their programming. HUD also has the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), a “cost-neutral” program that “simply shifts units from the Public Housing program to the Section 8 program so that providers may leverage the private capital markets to make capital improvements,” according to the department’s website.
Housing authorities could also concentrate on partnerships with social service agencies that provide other forms of reentry support, Popkin said. Altogether, there is reason to believe that prisoner reentry work will chug on.
“This is a multi-sector problem,” Popkin said. “These folks are coming out of prisons or jail, and the human service agencies and behavioral help people all have a vested interest in having them be stable.”