What a time for Human Rights Watch to release a report about the housing crisis facing ex-convicts. After all, the national mood is hardly sympathetic toward those who didn’t “play by the rules."
These are the you-made-your-bed-now-sleep-in-it days; an age of codified intolerance. Not just a conservative era, but an anti-liberal one. When it comes to the American Dream, you’d better nail it the first time.
Which might explain why Human Rights Watch titled its new report “No Second Chance.” It notes that 600,000 inmates will be paroled this year and, in many if not most cases, society is not done yet punishing them.
As we were reminded of just recently, millions are denied the most fundamental exercise of citizenship – the right to vote.
Jobs, scarce enough already, will be hard to come by for men and women who, historically, don’t have much of an academic or occupational record but do have a criminal one.
But their first challenge is even more basic. Unlike Martha Stewart, most parolees will not have a Turkey Hill estate in the pastoral Connecticut countryside to return to when they get out. Many of their homes have other names: Hollingsworth Courts, Bed-Sty, Cherry Hill, Martin Luther King Plaza – public housing projects where their new beginning begins.
However, millions can’t go home again, not even to the crowded, Spartan and often neglected confines of public housing. The nation’s public housing authorities may – and do – deny residency to ex-felons. So what if they’ve got families awaiting their return? Wives and children who need them for the sake of hope and security and support. Innocents who paid a dear price too while their husband or father or wife or mother did time.
It used to be that, under an Interstate Compact Agreement that binds all 50 states, a parolee released from State X could move to State Y if he had family, housing or work there. The law changed in August so that now, State Y has to approve the move and then only after an investigation that could take more than six months. Of course, if State Y disapproves, the parolee can’t move.
The newspaper in Bend, Ore. last week told the story of a man who was denied a move to Hawaii, where his wife lives, and “is living in the transitional housing center in Bend while he waits for the county to appeal Hawaii’s decision.”
Bush pleasantly surprised social justice advocates in his 2004 State of the Union address which included these lines: “This year, some 600,000 inmates will be released from prison back into society. We know from long experience that if they can’t find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely to commit crime and return to prison.” He drew applause by proposing a $300 million prisoner re-entry initiative with job training and placement, transitional housing and mentoring services.
Problem is, much of the plan is left on paper collecting dust, particularly the housing component. Transitional housing is certainly better than the sleeping on a park bench or a sidewalk grate, but even it is hard to find. The Bush administration has handed out only $15 million in its “Going Home Initiative,” and that money goes to states, which must partner with faith-based organizations to establish temporary housing for ex-cons.
Frequently, those organizations are thwarted by the social phenomenon known as NIMBY – Not in My Backyard. No one wants a house full of ex-cons in the neighborhood. Even when the transitional housing stays open, its tenants are often beset by harassment and discrimination, not to mention to separation from their families.
Still, Americans are stuck on the “personal responsibility” mantra, with unyielding demands for people to manage and support their lives independently, to abide by the increasing number of societal rules and laws, to conform to majority ideals, and to be contributors to not recipients of the public good.
Ex-felons have earned a chance to at least attempt compliance. Yet, we – the great religious nation so proud of faiths that require forgiveness and charity – won’t even assure them a place to lay their heads.
