EP 6: The Problem with Punishment and Housing
Shelter is one of our most basic needs - and an international human right. Yet millions of Americans are denied their right to housing. This includes tens of thousands of New Yorkers who have been incarcerated. This makes it even more difficult for them to start anew upon release.
In this episode, we speak with Ashanti, a young woman who had a hard time finding housing after a brief time in prison. Reverend Dr. Sharon White-Harrigan shares her story of looking for housing. Zoni Rockoff, an attorney at Neighborhood Defenders Service, shares the barriers faced by clients she works with.
And we love to talk about what works better! So we speak with Angela Scott-Sheppard. She's the Associate Vice President of Congregate Housing at Fortune Society. Fortune Society runs one of the largest re-entry housing programs in NYC. They show us there's a better way - and it’s not perpetual punishment.
Useful Links
Learn more about our guests at the Fortune Society and their re-entry programs.
Our guest Ashanti mentioned getting re-entry support from Exodus. She discusses the education she received while at Bedford Hills through the Marymount College Program, which was terminated soon after.
Zoni Rockoff works at Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem.
This Prison Policy Initiative 2018 report and this Vera Institute report show the magnitude of the housing crisis amongst formerly incarcerated people.
What more can be done? The Brennan Center has been working on a re-entry bill that would help over 180,000 people statewide.This 2022 Op-Ed makes the case for supportive housing as a way to disrupt the prison-homelessness pipeline. This 2020 Urban Institute report details the cycle and suggests ways to break it.
Learn more about your rights or responsibilities as a tenant/landlord under the Fair Chance for Housing Act.
Transcript:
Kathleen P (Host): This is the Problem with Punishment podcast. Spoiler alert: the problem with punishment is that it doesn't work. But the bigger problem is that we turn to punishment in every aspect of our lives, from our families to our neighborhoods, our boroughs, our city. We keep expecting punishment to make things better, when for the most part, it makes whatever problem we're addressing worse. Every time punishment fails, it hurts. Some people have taken the pain of that failure and turned it into purpose. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño, and I'll be talking with a range of New Yorkers who have experienced firsthand the failure of punishment and who found or created something better to do instead. From gun violence to child abuse to drug addiction, New York can lead the way in actually solving some of our most pressing problems. But first, we have to talk about the problem with punishment.
Welcome to our episode, The Problem with Punishment and Housing. There were a lot of ways this episode could go. It's one of the topics where we discussed, like, wow, we could do a whole season on the ways in which people are punished through their housing or because of their housing. And that included evictions as a form of punishment. New York State is working on a number of changes to the law that would make evictions a little more rational and a little more fair. The treatment of NYCHA tenants, which is often in some stage of punishment, either through screening or loss of housing or the inability to have certain family members live with you.
There are lots of ways in which people get punished through their housing, and there's a form of punishment and housing that's really common, which is punishing people forever for their previous felony convictions, by denying them housing, by making it difficult for them to stay in housing, for making it difficult for them to join family members who might already live somewhere. So in this episode, that's what we decided to focus on. And we're going to open with a story from one of the members of the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative. One of the members of the podcast team, Reverend Doctor Sharon White-Harrigan, who's going to talk about her experience when she was looking for housing after her release from incarceration. We had this conversation at the Castle, which is the flagship housing project of the Fortune Society, and the Fortune Society is supporting many of the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who come back to New York City every year after leaving prison or jail, and who needs support with housing. So most of the conversations in this episode are from our visit to the Castle, and we also take you on a little tiny tour. But first, let's start off by listening to Sharon share her story of what it was like to try and find housing after her release from prison.
Rev. Dr. Sharon White-Harrigan: My husband and I both were formerly incarcerated, and when we were looking for an apartment, we had the credit, we had the income, we had the security deposit, we had everything. And then it was looking great. You know, here's this wonderful, dynamic, lovely couple who happens to be faith leaders. And then I got a phone call where the broker asked for my husband's birthday. And then the next phone call was, "Sorry, I can't work with you anymore. And the apartment is already taken." Just like that, after we paid $100 each for the applicant. I mean, we were there. We. There was no reason to deny us. None. None. We checked off all the boxes. And so that began a series of denials because of the criminal. And they know one. After about 4 or 5 denials, no one gave us a legitimate answer as to why is that elephant in the room?
Kathleen P (Host): The elephant in the room that Sharon is talking about is a background check, a background check that reveals any sort of previous contact with the criminal legal system. Now we have to remember these databases are not infallible, and they're also only one piece of information that a landlord could be considering when they're trying to figure out if a prospective tenant would make a good tenant or neighbor. Now, part of the problem with these background checks is they, in effect, wind up having the ability to erase any other information that is part of this process as people are making these judgment calls. When we're going to pause the story there, we're going to come back to Sharon's story in a little bit.
Sharon's experience looking for housing was years after her release. She had been living in supportive housing. But how does someone wind up in supportive housing? The problems with locating housing with a previous felony conviction start immediately upon your release. As we were talking to different folks who have experience with the system, we asked if we could talk to someone to get more of a sense of what this experience is like. And that's how I got to meet Ashanti, who agreed to talk with me for the podcast about what her experience was after her release for serving time for a single felony conviction.
Ashanti: Upon my departure from from prison, you know, you don't have your own place to live, so you're probably going to go, you know, stay with some relative and you have to, you know, think about abiding by their rules, whatever they may They said, you know, you have to get along with this person and you have to be okay with whether you have a parole officer probation. For me personally, some things that I kind of encounter, some challenges were just living with my sister and just not being around for a very long time. Kind of grow from people and you don't know them that well. You kind of don't know them as you as you did because so many, so much things happened in between that time period of when you were gone. So was that. And it was just not getting along with her. So I just wasn't able to live there. So then it at that point is like, where am I going to go? I just came home from prison a month ago. I don't have too many resources. What do I do?
Kathleen P (Host): People's choices in this situation are so limited because she doesn't necessarily have a job yet. She doesn't have a recent employment history. So, luckily, she had someone in the system who was willing to be supportive, and they connected her with one of the other organizations supporting the thousands of New Yorkers who find themselves in the situation each year.
Ashanti: I called my parole officer, and she told me about Exodus. And Exodus was a transitional community helps people. And it helped, like, keep recidivism low and they help people upon their, like, release from incarceration, whether that be with housing them, you know, helping them with jobs, you know, helping them with people, skills, resumes like anything, just to further the growth of the people who have been recently released from incarceration. So I got with them and they put me on their hotels. And I was with them for about, I want to say, about a year and a half. And through them, I obtained the Section Eight housing voucher. So they definitely helped me do that. Definitely thank them for that, because without them, like, you know, again, I would have had nowhere to stay. You know, and it was because I was in the prison system that I was able to I was in a hotel essentially, like, you know, I had my own room, own bathroom. So it wasn't like a totally uncomfortable experience. And I can't say that most people have experienced something, you know, where they can, you know, have some peace of mind while going through something like that. Like, while having, being unhoused, you know? So it's always that, like, you know, you come home from prison and you don't really have your own thing, you know, initially. And, you know, you may deal with that period of being unhoused and like, what do I do? So that's kind of scary.
Kathleen P (Host): It's hard enough finding housing in New York without all of the additional burdens that come with having a previous felony conviction. We're talking about tens of thousands of people re-entering New York City from prison every year, and tens of thousands of additional folks who have any sort of previous contact with the criminal legal system. So, you know, what are we looking at? And for that, we turn to the Neighborhood Defender Service. And Zoni Rockoff, who is one of the attorneys there.
Zoni Rockoff, NDS: So what we're seeing sort of in our practice, when folks, you know, come into the office or are referred to us for help obtaining housing or because they've lost housing, is that it's very difficult to maintain housing if you have criminal legal system contact. And in New York City, we already have, you know, sort of a lack of affordable housing. But the barriers are even higher if, you know, a private landlord can run a background check before offering you an apartment and see, oh, you know, you have an open case or a conviction.
Kathleen P (Host): The language that we use to talk about these issues is so important. Zoni does talk about the criminal legal system, which I tend to use instead of the criminal justice system. Lots of our guests and the people who've had direct contact with these systems also call it that, because it's important at times that we distinguish between when we're just talking about the law and we're talking about justice. And when we're talking about housing issues, you know, I have noticed for many years people making a distinction between talking about people being homeless or people being unhoused. And that came up in my conversation with Zoni. I asked her about her choice of words to use that, and this is what she said.
Zoni: I think the distinction between homeless and unhoused, you know, places the emphasis on like, that's your character. If you are referring to someone as homeless, as opposed to these are the circumstances that might have led to you losing housing, and then, you know, being reliant on other forms of housing.
Kathleen P (Host): So, yeah, some people find themselves unhoused. New York housing is tough, very tough. And then for some people, it's even harder. So when someone finds themselves at the Neighborhood Defenders Practice, I asked Zoni what sort of things they were seeing people facing.
Zoni: The difficulties that folks face when they're trying to find housing with either a felony conviction, a misdemeanor conviction, or even just an open criminal matter. It's sort of insurmountable because regardless of what form of housing you're applying to, whether that's, you know, a private apartment, whether you're trying to get public housing, all of those are at some point probably performing a criminal background check. So for public housing, they have their rules on eligibility and certain, you know, offenses or just statutorily ineligible for public housing, not to mention the fact that, you know, if you're applying for public housing, you're probably on a wait list for, you know, many, many years before a unit becomes available. A private landlord can run a background check before offering you an apartment and see, oh, you know, you have an open case or a conviction. Similarly, if you're applying to public housing, you know, they're also running a background check, and they do things a little less discretionarily. You know, they sort of have their own standards of, okay, this is an automatic bar to public housing. And again, public housing has the same barriers to everyone, which is that there are enough units and you're on a waitlist for many, many years. So there's sort of the the general housing shortage, but then there's added barriers on top of that.
Kathleen P (Host): Maybe if we do a season two of this podcast, we'll do a separate episode about public housing. For this episode, we are largely focused on private housing. And when Zoni mentioned you could have problems with your housing from an open criminal matter, I asked her to explain more about what she meant by that, because even having an arrest, which remember the point of the criminal legal system, is that you were innocent until proven guilty. Having an arrest is not any sort of proof that you have actually done something wrong, but even having an arrest could lead to issues with a person's housing.
Zoni: Something like an open case should not impact your eligibility for housing because that's, you know, not a conviction yet. I think the places where we see open cases affect people's eligibility for housing are if you're already living in housing and you're arrested and somehow a landlord finds out about it, because there are laws that allow landlords to commence eviction cases for breaching your lease, which, you know, certain arrests are considered to breach your lease if they occur in housing or being a nuisance is another one. So, you know, if you had a dispute with another tenant in your building, a landlord can bring an eviction case over that.
Kathleen P (Host): Then Zoni brought up something that she said is an archaic law. And I'm just going to say right now, anytime someone says that, it's not going to be good. And it's going to involve some word that no one knows how to spell anymore. In this case, this is bawdy house B A W D Y, and I will let Zoni explain to you this law that is still on the books.
Zoni: There's also this very sort of archaic set of laws called the Bawdy House laws, which used to be, you know, if you were using your apartment for prostitution or whatever. Now those laws are still on the books and are used for, you know, if someone has a drug bust in their apartment. There might be a dismissal in the criminal case; that case might go away. Great. But a landlord can still use the underlying facts to then commence an eviction case and basically say, you know, you're a problem tenant and we don't want you in our building. There's no beyond a reasonable doubt in a housing proceeding, there's, you know, "Do we think this happened, and how bad is it? And does it pose a risk to the health and safety of other tenants or staff?" There's certainly a difference in who we see these laws being enforced against. You know, if you're throwing a big party as opposed to, you know, you're living in lower-income housing and communities of color. I think landlords tend to call the cops a little bit more.
Kathleen P (Host): Wow. Okay. So Zoni knows a lot about the different barriers that people face to finding and keeping housing with a previous felony conviction in New York City. She has kind of a downer role in this episode, but she did it well. She's fighting the good fight. I'm going to bring her back later in the episode with some good news about something that's actually getting a little bit better. We're still in Harlem, let's go back to the Fortune Society and the Castle. And the other person who was sitting with me when I was talking with Sharon that day. This is Angela Scott. And let's let her introduce herself.
Angela Scott, Fortune Society: My name is Angela Scott. I am the associate vice president for Congregate Housing. I have been with Fortune since 2012, and my portfolio includes our Emergency Transitional Residence Support Academy, our permanent supportive building, Castle Gardens, as well as our food and nutrition program.
Kathleen P (Host): And while we were there, I asked Angela if I could walk around, recording a little bit of a mini tour for our listeners, so here you go.
Angela: So we're entering Fortune Academy, also known as the Capitol. And we have a total of nine beds for emergency and transitional housing, justice and active persons, 35 beds for emergency housing, and 55 beds a transitional. Each side has a front desk kind of situation. Right, right. So when residents come in, they sign in. (to others) Hey, how are you? Same to see you. Good to see you too. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, good morning. Alrighty. Our resident sign in. Right? Right. So, like, we don't have folks at home, but it was a phone. We make you use it. You don't have to phone it if they need to take photos, so it's free of charge. This is the dining room space. So residents are able to cook meals. We provide three meals a day, Monday through Friday.
Kathleen P (Host): And this is for people in emergency situations?
Angela: Yes, in emergency situations. So these are by case managers who work with our tenants, who actually live in our permanent supportive house of gardens. So when I say “participants” versus “tenants,” these are the individuals who have active leases, who are living in their own apartment and our office mixed-use supportive building, Castle Gardens. Yeah. So this case so everyone was assigned a case manager pretty much.
Kathleen P (Host): Wow.
Angela: And to help maintain their housing and, you know, life so that they can stay house. This is also another communal space for the residents to hang out. Right. And, you know, create community, have some sense of community. Yes, absolutely. They have a good one. I'll see you later. Good luck on your test. Thank you. I'm predicting it. A plus! All right. So we have some sort of downstairs. So we have basement level first, second, third and fourth floors. Elevator. We have two dorms that are on this floor here, and then the rest are rooms. And it could be anywhere from two individuals to maybe four individuals to a room.
Kathleen P (Host): Whenever you're talking about how we're going to get better at reentry services in New York City, how we're going to get better at housing people with previous felony convictions or any sort of criminal legal system contact Fortune Society is going to come up. They are really a bedrock community resource in this work. They have really shown that change is possible for individuals, for neighborhoods, for systems. And I think it all comes back to their tagline, which is "Building people, not prisons."
Angela: We're not judging anyone who comes to our doors, right? Regardless of whatever their past circumstances may have been. We're not judging anyone. We are meeting that person. We are welcoming them, welcoming them home. We are embracing them and bringing them into our community. We ensure that they are connected to necessary services, either within Fortune. We have our main office in Long Island City. We have a benefit access program. We have employment and education services. We have outpatient mental health and substance use treatment services to treat any behavioral health addiction needs. We have our alternative incarceration program. You know, we have our policy centers. You know, we're doing a day-to-day direct service work. And then we're also doing work on the policy end. First off, the cost of rent. Not many of our folks who are returning to the community have the income to be able to afford the rent. Currently in New York City. Then there are folks who, because of their parole conditions, they can't go outside the borough. Right?
Angela: You have to stay within whatever the county in which you were committed and crime committed. So you can't go out of your borough. You have to get approval to do that. Where most outside of New York City's, the rents are cheaper, like even if you go upstate like Kingston or Middletown. So rents, you could probably buy a home for the amount you're going to pay for rent. Right. You're not able to go outside of your borough, and you can't afford the cost of rent. It's horrendous how much a studio apartment is going for. And a lot of our folks have, you know, some of them have not had any employment history for a significant amount of time. You have to have the income. You have to have money. And, you know, unfortunately, some of our folks were underemployed prior to incarceration, right? So now imagine post incarceration and coming and trying to find someplace to stay. It's difficult. Very difficult. Sometimes I can't really describe the secret sauce that is Fortune. I think it's it's a number of things. But I think what's important is that, you know, anyone who comes through our doors we treat them with respect and we treat them with dignity, and we, you know, do everything within our power to ensure that they're connected to services and also receive the supports.
Kathleen P (Host): And key to how they've been able to do all this work is the fact that they center their leadership and create space for people who have been directly affected by this issue, people like Angela.
Angela: I found my way to this work because of my own experience. I am justice as impacted myself. When I was quite young, I was in a relationship with an abusive partner, and it ultimately culminated into one of us getting hurt and I unfortunately had to do time. So prior to me actually doing time, I got connected pretty early with reentry services. I started with an organization, and then now since they're no longer in operation, but it's called Justice Works Community. And they were providing services to justice-impacted women. And it started with learning how to use Microsoft Word.
Kathleen P (Host): Wow. That was not product placement. I will let Angela tell more of her transformation.
Angela: I actually gained employment with them and they had a campaign called Mothers in Prison, Children in Crisis. So I was a production on the production assistant, and I would help with getting the you know, media, the information out to the different facilities, many of the nights folding leaflets and newsletters to the women in Bedford and Taconic, and Albion. And actually, they did a few rallies, a few actions down by the New York Supreme Court. We actually had Ozzie Davis, many rest in peace, participate. So that's how I got into the work through my own experience. And ultimately, I was recruited to come here with Fortune by my friend who worked here at the time, who was in HR, and she was also justice as impacted. And she said, you know, there's an opportunity, I know you can do this. You have, you know, skill set. You have your MSW, you can. You've worked with the homeless population, and now it's just really focusing on people who are just as impacted. And I actually interviewed in this very room for the position, and here I am now doing a podcast with you guys. So.
Kathleen P (Host): That's awesome. Like, what was the timeline on this between you wrapping up your time inside?
Angela: Yeah. So my case was a little interesting. And it was interesting because at the time of my case, there was a similar case in Bronx County. So this all happened back in 1992. Okay. And the case that was happening at the same time as mine. It was an older white woman who shot her husband in the back. She got probation. I got one and a 3 to 3. And so the case, I was arrested in 92. I went to trial. My case was I was found guilty in 95. There was an appeal process. I lost the appeal. And ultimately, I was committed to Bedford Hills in 97, 1997. My case was a little different. At the time of my arrest. I was in college, I was working. So I had college credits already. And just by happenstance by me being in Bedford, that's when they restarted the college program. And I was able to take some courses while I was at Bedford. And once I was released, I was able to enroll at Marymount Manhattan College, who was a part of the college consortium at that time providing the classes to Bedford. So I was able to come home, enrolling at Marymount. Finished my bachelor's and ultimately applied to graduate school and graduate from Hunter School of Social Work.
Kathleen P (Host): Angela's journey is amazing, and one of the steps in that journey was access to education. I really, in season one of this podcast, wanted to do an episode of all the stupid problems we create, since we've limited access to college and educational programs for people while they're incarcerated. We didn't have room for that episode in season one. Plus, I'm not sure I could fit all that on the title card, but it comes back to there are resources that really specifically change the trajectory of people's lives, and one of them is access to education. One of them is support system, community, and connection. So often, wherever we go and talk to people who are solving tough problems, part of the solution is support networks, strong support networks for individuals. None of us become what we are on our own. And let's listen to Angela talk more about this and then see how support networks are a key part of the story of finding housing for all of the people we're talking to today.
Angela: I'm so grateful for, you know, the support of my family and the people who I connected with prior to and while I was incarcerated to help me with my reentry process. Had I not had that support, I don't know where I might have been. But thankfully, you know, I had the support of my family, where my daughter didn't have to go into child welfare. Literally, I got up that morning, took her to school, told her, "I will see you when I get back." And I went to court and I got committed, but thankfully when I was released, I came right back to where I where I left right? And that's just for me, thankfully. Right. But there's so many, many, many others who do not have that same level of support.
Kathleen P (Host): And you may be wondering from earlier in the episode, Soad how did Sharon find housing? And the answer is a support network.
Rev. Dr. Sharon White-Harrigan: Thankfully, it took someone, one of our mentors who happened to have been a professor in Bedford Hills Correctional. And she was, she's retired now, but a real estate mogul and wind up getting an apartment in her building. For some of us that were coming out of incarceration, and if it wasn't for her, we would have been another one of the statistics. We would have been in the shelter system.
Kathleen P (Host): And the importance of having other people on your side came up in my conversation with Ashanti and her housing journey as well.
Ashanti: There are so many ups and downs, so many times, that I want to give up, so many times that I just didn't think things were going to work out. But again, I got around some really good people that, you know, seeing, you know, how bad I really, you know, wanted housing, and they were willing to, you know, help me to get to the place that I needed to be because I couldn't have done it by myself.
Kathleen P (Host): When we talk about support systems, a strong support system is good for any individual and can make difference for individuals. But support systems also can look at changing the circumstances in which we all operate. Right? It is important to provide individual assistance to people and help people on their journeys, and also to look at systems changes that can reduce the barriers along the way. For lots of people, including people you never met. So for that, I'm going to turn back to Zoni Rakoff from Neighborhood Defenders to talk about the Fair Chance Act, which, by the way, Fortune Society was instrumental in helping to pass.
Zoni Rockoff, NDS: Now in New York City, there was recently a law passed called the Fair Chance Act for housing, which is very similar to legislation that already exists for employment discrimination, which basically says that if a private landlord is running a background check, the things that they consider are convictions for felonies within the past five years and convictions for misdemeanors within the past three years. And of course, in all this legislation, there's always a pass-through for sex offence convictions because, you know, it's very hard to get a legislature to not overlook those. So something like an open case should not impact your eligibility for housing because that's, you know, not a conviction yet.
Kathleen P (Host): You know, this is where I'm going to talk to landlords, listening to this podcast and say, I am also a landlord. I am not a New York City landlord. I can appreciate that that might be a whole different ball of wax, but I am a landlord and have been for many years, and I think it comes back to at times, not letting prejudgment cloud our judgment about who's going to be a good tenant, who's going to make a good tenant and a good neighbor in our housing. You know, landlords need tenants as much as tenants need landlords. So how do we build the sorts of relationships that let everyone benefit, where people get to have the peaceful enjoyment of their housing and landlords get to have the peaceful enjoyment of their retirement? And it's strange because this unfolds on the individual level, but it unfolded on the kind of organizational and institutional level. When Fortune Society first wanted to transform a building and become a landlord themselves in Harlem. And Angela shared a little bit about that story as well. This story about what happens when people just assume that formerly incarcerated people will make bad neighbors or tenants.
Angela Scott, Fortune Society: It is the stereotype that, oh, they're going to bring more crime to my block. They're going to harm my family. They're going to kick my dog. Like, you know, those crazy thoughts. So just a little background. Initially, when Fortune opened the Fortune Academy in 2002, there was huge opposition because opposition was one of the buildings that is on this block. And they are you going to bring murderers and rapists and, you know, child molesters. These are the people. This is the safest block here. Literally, we have periodic community meetings for our tenants. And last year we had a meeting with the community affairs from the local precinct showed up to the meeting to meet with the tenants and everything, and to just update them around their work, you know, improving community relations and safety in the neighborhood. And the captain who attended the meeting said, "You know, you guys are living on one of the safest blocks here in our district." And I have people with felony convictions who are residing in our building.
Kathleen P (Host): And you got like nothing but people with felony convictions.
Angela: And nothing but all 100, all of my tenants right up. And he said, "You guys are living in one of the safest blocks in our district." And from we don't want you here, don't come here. You're going to bring all these problems. They now use our space for community board meetings. We're a polling location.
Kathleen P (Host): Oh?
Angela: Yeah. We will be. As a matter of fact, I got to get ready for the primaries that are coming up in June. We're a polling location. We do a weekly produce distribution. It was a lot of work to show this community that we're good neighbors. We're part of this community. We're here to support and enrich, and enhance the community. And we're not here to harm it or detract from it. Right. And it was a lot of work that went into, you know, gaining the community's trust. And we had to show that the stereotypes of, you know, murderers and rapists and all this. No, no , these and listen - some of them, some of. Some of our participants. And yeah, we have a gentleman who came home after serving 40-something years. And I trust him with my life. You know he is one of the most humblest, kindest gentleman I've ever encountered. And whatever happened 40-plus years ago when he was an adolescent. I think people get caught up in what happened in the past and are not able to really move forward and see the individual who is in front of them and all the work that they have done. Because I mean, honestly, as a formally justice-impacted person, I had to do a lot of reconciliation with myself for my crime and what happened. Right. Because I had to be able to function for my family, for my daughter, and also ultimately have a productive life. So I had to do my own kind of reconciliation and work.
Kathleen P (Host): And while we were on site at Fortune, we did have a shout-out to David Rothenberg, their founder.
Angela: Our founder, David Rothenberg. God bless him, he's 90 plus. If I give his age, he'll probably he'll say no at six months to it. He still serves in a volunteer capacity. He comes every Thursday. We have a community meeting that we hold every Thursday at 6 p.m. here. And to it's a forum for current and past participants or any community members that can come in and share their reentry experiences, their process. There are folks who you know, who've been home for 30 years and they still have to go through the reentry, like, they're still they're still on the transition. You know, they're still transitioning. So the fact that the founder of this organization who started this space over 50 years ago still is here in a volunteer capacity. He comes here as well as our Long Island City location as and our other locations that we have. We have two locations in the Bronx. He still is involved and he knows participants' names. So I think it starts from that level and it trickles all the way down. Down to porters. You know, I think knowing that someone is there to listen and understand. But they are experiencing because a lot of times folks go and receive services from different service providers, and you're talking to someone who has no lived experience, sometimes, most times, and I think that having individuals with the lived experience is helpful is very helpful.
Kathleen P (Host): Maybe you were out and about while you listen to this episode. Maybe you were at home. But if you're a housed person listening to this, I do you remind you that being housed or unhoused is just a state of being, it's temporary, but we do better when we all have access to safe, cared-for housing. The phrase housing is a human right came up in the conversations I had for this episode with people, because I think the more you've had contact or work with people who have not, at the end of the day, had a secure place to be. The more you really see that we cannot live our lives as human beings without access to housing. The phrase housing is a human right sounds like a wonky thing, but it's really about imagine what your life would be like if at the end of the day, there was nowhere to rest, there was nowhere to lay down. There was nowhere to relax and be safe in that moment. Access to housing makes a difference for individuals, for families, for communities. And we have to continue fighting for the changes that make it available to everyone, and make sure that housing doesn't become just another way to punish people. For the ultimate last word in this episode, though, I'm going to go back to Angela Scott at Fortune.
Angela: Everyone should have a place to call home, even if it's a ten-by-ten box with a kitchen, a little kitchenette area, some place for me to bathe that's still home. That can be my home. That's my space. That's the space for me.
Kathleen P (Host): This podcast was produced in Brooklyn, New York. The unceded ancestral lands of the Lenape and Canarsie people. We thank all the ancestors for caring for this land over the generations, and we're committed to the work of creating a shared future that includes the native communities that are still here, and all the people who call this land home. I want to thank Angela Scott of the Fortune Society for welcoming us to the castle on a busy day, and for sharing so much about the programs at Fortune, and also her own personal journey. You can learn more about the work of Fortune Society at FortuneSociety.org. Thanks also to Ashanti for sharing her story with us, and to Zoni Rockoff at Neighborhood Defender Service Housing Defense Team for explaining what they do to help people get housed and stay housed. And I want to extend a personal thanks to Paul Solomon and the folks at Sponsors, Inc. in Eugene, Oregon. Many years ago, they reset my understanding of what is possible when it comes to building supportive housing for people after incarceration.
Our podcast team for this episode was Doctor Candace King, Reverend Doctor Sharon White-Harrigan, and Tess Weiner. Sharon White-Harrigan made so many of the connections for this episode, but also shared her own story. And so I want to extend a special thank you for that.
Thanks to our production partner, JuleCave Studios, and our ever-so-patient creative partner, Julius Shepard-Morgan. I'm your host, Kathleen Pequeño. This podcast is a project of the Justice Beyond Punishment Collaborative at the Center for Justice at Columbia University, with support from Trinity Wall Street. You can learn more about the collaborative and our other creative projects at BeyondPunishment.org. Thanks so much for listening.
