Coming Home

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When [an incarcerated person] is released from a New York State correctional facility, they’re sent out the door with a change of clothes, a bus ticket, and 40 dollars in their pocket. Seeking a home in New York City after years in a cell, these returning residents face a grim landscape. The city’s affordable housing crisis especially affects formerly incarcerated people, who often lack the capital (employment, savings, credit, references) necessary to secure housing under the best of circumstances, and frequently face discrimination besides. Family members who live in public housing risk eviction by letting a recently released relative stay; NYCHA’s “permanent exclusion” policy, though inconsistently enforced and sometimes temporarily appealable, remains on the books. Unable to find affordable housing, formerly incarcerated people in urban areas frequently become homeless, which in New York can mean falling prey to drugs and violence in city shelters, privately run three-quarter houses, or the streets. But, if they’re very lucky, they could make a home on West 140th Street, in housing run by The Fortune Society.