By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Oct 24 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Spare rooms are no longer just for guests and Airbnb.
The lucrative room-letting business has inspired a new way of housing ex-inmates as the United States tests a raft of innovations to ease prisoner release, when a place to call home is a top priority yet often the hardest thing to find.
Ex-prisoners say the freedom and security they get from a room of their own is a huge turnaround after a decade-plus of bunking up in crowded jails, and an opportunity to start afresh.
“I had my own room, for the first time in over 10 years,” said KC Matthews, among the first to benefit from the Airbnb-style, post-prison programme.
“It provided me a safe space, my own space, and provided me stability … to do the other things I needed to do,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
Since August 2018, the Homecoming Project has been matching people due to leave prison with local hosts with spare space in Alameda County, outside San Francisco.
Researchers, advocates and policymakers increasingly say that safe and stable housing is critical to helping prisoners adapt to life in the outside world — and to staying there.
Traditionally, prisoners fended for themselves on release — a challenge that pushes many back into jail — or enrolled in transitional housing programmes with heavy restrictions.
Now different cities are trying new ways to help inmates slot back into life, and housing is one of their key tools.
HOME SWEET HOME
For Matthews, a transgender man who had lived on the streets and in foster care for much of his life, his anxiety grew ever more acute as his release date neared.
“Is there a place that will accept me and where I will be comfortable?” said Matthews, 31. “This was weighing me down at a time I should have been happy — I was getting out of prison!”
Which is where Homecoming came in.
It paired Matthews with a potential host, then gave them opportunities to talk by phone before his release.
It worked.
When he got out, Matthews said he was able to apply immediately for a driving licence, social security card and other necessities: critical errands that he said would have taken him a month under traditional transitional housing rules.
He was also able to ease back into the rhythms of life out of prison — re-learning how to shop for food and more — while his temporary home offered a safe haven as he adjusted.
“That was one less thing on my plate — housing and safety,” he said.
