Between Hell’s Kitchen and God’s Bathroom Floor: Lack of housing for ex-offenders is set-up for failure
Today, Robert Jackson has dreams as vibrant as his personality. And he’s making them happen. He’s been clean and sober since Oct. 15, 2014. With the help of RS EDEN’s rehabilitation program, Alliance Housing, and his recovery community, he’s got an unmistakable brightness in his eyes.
But he hasn’t always been so optimistic about his life journey. The jovial 51-year-old St. Paul native had an arguably normal childhood, attended both Augsburg College and the University of Minnesota, and by all accounts, was forging a path towards a successful life.
But life threw him a couple curve balls.
“I acquired a drug habit in 1988, which unfortunately sent me to prison,” Jackson said.
After a couple stints in prison, the Department of Corrections released him into the world with few resources.
“They paroled me to the Salvation Army because I had no address. No housing, no nothing.” He shrugs. “Basically, I was on my own. No help.”
“I couldn’t land a job because I had a criminal record. Then I couldn’t find housing because I had no money for deposits and I had a felony,” Jackson explained. “So I’ve been living with people, girlfriends and drug addicts, for the past 20 years, basically.”
Jackson’s experience epitomizes the predicament that ex-offenders face.
On Jan. 1, 2014, the ‘Ban the Box’ law went into effect in Minnesota, restricting employers from asking about criminal histories in initial phases of an application process. The law is aimed at giving ex-offenders a fair shake at employment.
Currently, ‘Ban the Box’ isn’t the only nationwide initiative attempting to level the playing field for ex-offenders. On April 4, 2016, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released a federal guideline, warning landlords that umbrella policies aimed at denying housing to ex-offenders may be discrimination.
It cites that the disproportionate rates of arrest and incarceration leave minority candidates more likely to be denied on applications. And because of most rental screening policies, they don’t even have a chance to plead their case.
“People are their own best advocate,” said Christopher Lowe, Veterans’ Justice Advocate at Amicus, a nonprofit organization aimed at helping inmates and ex-offenders successfully reintegrate.
“It gives [people] a chance to sell themselves,” Lowe said.
But all the frothy declarations of discrimination and legal half-measures don’t translate to a new abundance of felon-friendly housing and decent job opportunities. And having both housing and a job is more than a necessity; the absence of one or the other can spell danger for many.
Back to the block
Faced with little options, some ex-offenders resort to living in illegitimate or sketchy housing situations. Going back to “old familiar,” as Jackson puts it, can come with consequences that lead them on a fast track back to prison. Old habits can die hard, especially when it comes to illegal activities and criminal lifestyles that once grew out of necessity or with its own advantages.
Lauri Woodard, a volunteer for Justice 4 All at TakeAction Minnesota, elaborates.
“If they can’t provide a legitimate address or change addresses without notice, they can get violated,” she said. Then it’s off the block and back into the slammer.
Justin Terrell, Program Manager for Justice 4 All at TakeAction Minnesota, is one of the change makers building a multiracial movement to address racial, gender, economic and social equity in Minnesota. Together with his colleagues and volunteers like Woodard, they are involved in everything from restoring voting rights to preventing the opening of a private prison in Appleton. Next year, they hope to help ban private prisons throughout the state. They are no strangers to the issues of housing problems.
“I get phone calls pretty much everyday from people facing barriers to housing and wondering why ‘Ban the Box’ doesn’t apply to landlords,” Terrell said.
Contrary to popular perception, prison populations aren’t dominated by sex offenders and murderers, but with folks serving time for lesser crimes. But the stigma of felony convictions and incarceration follow every ex-offender around, no matter the severity of the crime or time elapsed since the offense.
For the majority of ex-felons facing reentry, if given the support and opportunities to do better, they will do better. This is not consistently the case now. CBS News and the StarTribune report around 40 percent of inmates on supervised release in Minnesota are re-incarcerated within three years. The violations that send them back include anything from dirty urine analysis tests to new criminal charges to simple technicalities, such as failure to find employment or housing.
So it’s no wonder that after prison time or completing a treatment program, the struggle to find housing sends many folks right back down the rabbit hole. Minnesota is plagued with housing inequity. The state sorely lacks enough transitional housing, and those that do exist struggle with interminable bottlenecks and waiting lists. The funding simply isn’t there to meet the demand. For Jackson, it took almost two years on a waiting list to get into Alliance Apartments, where he now lives. Even shelters have lotteries, leaving many to compete for overnight beds. Other options, such as halfway houses and sober living environments, are great options but have shared sleeping quarters and are meant to be more short term—a year or less.
The vast majority of landlords who dominate the rental market in the Twin Cities, such as KRC Apartments and Mint Properties, still won’t even consider renting to people with felony records. At all. To date, the discrimination guideline put forth by HUD seems to have little effect on housing application denials. Landlords just find more creative ways to deny potential renters. Discrimination is hard to prove, and accessible legal resources don’t really exist.
Landlords do have some legitimate concerns. People with criminal histories, as Woodard puts it, “have a history of making bad decisions.”
Landlords fear that if that person goes back to making their old bad decisions, they will endanger the safety and security of their other tenants, Woodard said. And the process of evicting someone is expensive and time-consuming. So they’d just rather not take the chance.
