{"id":7829,"date":"2018-08-14T09:04:28","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T13:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=7829"},"modified":"2020-05-22T16:09:48","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T20:09:48","slug":"housing-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2018\/08\/14\/housing-report\/","title":{"rendered":"New report, <i>Nowhere to Go<\/i>, breaks down the housing crisis among formerly incarcerated people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b><i>Easthampton, Mass.<\/i> &#8211;<\/b> People who have been to prison are 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public, according to a new report. In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/reports\/housing.html\"><i>Nowhere to Go<\/i><\/a>, the Prison Policy Initiative provides the first national snapshot of homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, which it calls a &#8220;little-discussed housing and public safety crisis.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The report explains how people returning from prison &#8211; who need stable homes to overcome the difficulties of reentry &#8211; are nevertheless excluded from housing:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"list\">\n<li><b>Over 2% of formerly incarcerated people are homeless<\/b>, and nearly twice as many are living in precarious housing situations <i>close<\/i> to homelessness;<\/li>\n<li><b>The risk of homelessness increases the more times one has been to prison<\/b> &#8211; an irony considering that police departments regularly arrest and jail the homeless;<\/li>\n<li><b>People recently released from prison<\/b> are most at risk of being homeless, with rates nearly 12 times higher than the general public;<\/li>\n<li><b>Women &#8211; and Black women in particular<\/b> &#8211; are especially at risk.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"featureimage\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/reports\/housing.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/formerly_incarcerated_housing.png\" alt=\"Graph of homelessness rates for both formerly incarcerated people and the general U.S. population.\" width=\"\" height=\"\" class=\"\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Report author Lucius Couloute explains that landlords and public housing authorities &#8220;have wide discretion to punish people with criminal records long after their sentences are over.&#8221; Couloute <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/reports\/housing.html#recommendations\">lays out policy solutions<\/a> to what he calls a &#8220;fixable&#8221; problem, including:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"list\">\n<li>Regulating competitive housing markets to prevent <b>blanket discrimination<\/b>;<\/li>\n<li><b>Creating statewide reentry systems<\/b> to help recently-released Americans find homes;<\/li>\n<li>Ending the <b>criminalization of homelessness<\/b> in U.S. cities;<\/li>\n<li>Expanding social services for <i>all<\/i> homeless people, with <b>a &#8220;Housing First&#8221; approach<\/b>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Today&#8217;s report is the second of three to be released by the Prison Policy Initiative this summer, focusing on the struggles of formerly incarcerated people to access <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/reports\/outofwork.html\">employment<\/a>, housing, and education. Utilizing data from a little-known and little-used government survey, Couloute and other analysts can describe these problems with unprecedented clarity. In these reports, the Prison Policy Initiative recommends reforms to ensure that formerly incarcerated people &#8211; already punished by a harsh justice system &#8211; are no longer punished for life by an unforgiving economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A stable home is all but required for successful reentry. How many formerly incarcerated people are locked out of housing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"coauthors":[46],"class_list":["post-7829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7829"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10002,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7829\/revisions\/10002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7829"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}