With an affordable housing crisis across the U.S., it is increasingly critical for jurisdictions to expand their housing supply to meet community needs. However, local leaders often grapple with the question of who is prioritized in these expansion efforts as they develop their housing strategies.
This is for a number of reasons. For starters, there is a compelling argument to be made for why many different populations need more housing opportunities, making it difficult to prioritize. Even when leaders are clear on who should be prioritized, however, they can face significant local pushback, whether financial or political, when attempting to develop housing options that prioritize groups that involve people with criminal records and/or complex health needs.
To support jurisdictions seeking solutions to these concerns, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), The Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, and the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) hosted a series of virtual Communities of Practice in 2021 and a follow up webinar series in 2022. These virtual sessions brought together teams of state and local leaders from across the justice, housing, behavioral health, and other systems, where they received training and assistance to help them implement community and state-level strategies to increase housing with supportive services.
In the first of a series of web articles lifting up themes from these sessions, here are five questions local leaders often face when wanting to create new, equitable housing opportunities for people with complex health needs who are leaving the criminal justice system:
1. Why is it important for leaders to create new, equitable housing units specifically for this population?
The affordable housing crisis makes one thing clear: there are not enough units available to meet the needs of most communities. This is even before factoring in the stigma and additional barriers that many people with criminal records and behavioral health needs face or the effects of redlining and on-going discrimination in the housing market that have limited the amount of housing available to Black and Hispanic Americans.
However, communities that invest in housing paired with supportive services (such as case management, mental health treatment, and supported employment) tend to see increased community stability, increased engagement with community-based providers, and a reduction in returns to incarceration. Indeed, research shows that housing is essential to reentry and public safety. New housing opportunities often provide vital support and stability for people with complex health needs (i.e., mental health needs, substance use disorders, serious physical health conditions), who tend to have higher rates of homelessness compared to the general population.
2. Are new units the only way to create additional housing opportunities for this population?
No; strategies to increase housing opportunities can also include lowering policy barriers and increasing access to existing public and private housing units. However, without additional units, most communities will face problems meeting their housing demand even if they have implemented other housing strategies. New housing units, supported by (1) rental assistance to keep units affordable and (2) community-based interventions to help people stay in their housing, are the most effective ways to ensure greater access to housing for people who have historically been de-prioritized, and in some cases, regulated, out of housing access.
How can local communities lay the groundwork for new supportive housing?
Jurisdictions can start by securing funding and community support to construct, redevelop, or subsidize new housing. From large multifamily buildings to studio apartments in converted garages, this can look like the following:
Cultivating partnerships across different systems to generate mutual understanding, identify common goals, and align funding. Cross-system partnerships are particularly important for local housing development due to the complex nature of development for even a single building (such as securing multiple funding sources, obtaining community approvals, managing competing expectations, or meeting different supportive service needs). Local development partnerships should reflect the communities where they intend to build housing, ideally including:
Representatives from community-based organizations,
Housing developers,
People who may reside in the new housing or otherwise have lived experience of homelessness or involvement in the justice system,
Potential funders (e.g., banks, hospitals, health plans, faith-based groups),
Organizations with experience in housing finance (such as Community Development Corporations),
Housing or criminal justice agency leadership or staff,
And advocacy organizations.
Conducting readiness assessments to help identify strengths and gaps in a proposed development team and process. Getting housing built and prioritized for people with complex health needs leaving the justice system requires technical knowledge of housing development, identification of rental assistance for operating expenses, and supportive services. Some questions to consider during a readiness assessment include:
What mutual goals exist among partner organizations?
What financial capacity does the developer or housing provider have to create new housing opportunities?
How can the jurisdiction ensure racial equity in decisions concerning where housing gets built and who is eligible and referred to it?
What plans are in place to sustain operating expenses and supportive services?
Gaining buy-in from local community members to ensure maximum community support. Ways to gain buy-in can include:
Hosting open houses,
Communicating the benefits of new housing to potential neighbors and people who will live in them, and
Highlighting how housing affordability is a community-wide problem that needs a community-wide solution.
4. How can states support cross-system approaches to increase the supply of supportive housing?
State policymakers can align their processes, funding, and policies to create dedicated pipelines that support new housing prioritized for this population while also working to advance racial equity and reduce systemic barriers. This can look like the following:
Establishing governance structures to help local leaders set up cross-agency, cross-system collaborative bodies. These structures can be used to set concrete expectations about roles and responsibilities across agencies and systems and to determine who is included, where funding comes from, and how decisions are made.
Dedicating funding to enable a sustained, long-term pipeline for prioritizing new housing for people with complex needs leaving the justice system. State policymakers can critically support these efforts by identifying different funding streams, pooling resources together, or issuing joint funding Requests for Proposals that prioritize groups or developers focused on housing this population.
Reducing access barriers to new and existing housing. This includes:
Revising screening policies to minimize criminal record barriers unrelated to suitability as a tenant;
Using data analysis and the expertise of people with lived experience to evaluate racial equity in assessment processes and the physical location of newly constructed housing;
Reviewing sentencing standards and release conditions for disproportionate impacts; and
Implementing landlord recruitment strategies, such as incentive funds or education campaigns, to increase access to existing units.
5. How can states leverage the American Rescue Plan or other federal funding to create more housing?
States can typically use these funding streams to pilot new programs or new housing development efforts that will need to be fully sustained over time. For example, Colorado (a presenter in the Community of Practice) used BJA Second Chance Act funding to launch a systems-wide approach to support housing development in the state. With the grant, Colorado’s state and local partners began their efforts by creating a small supportive housing program. After proving their model successful over several years, the program sustainably scaled up efforts into multiple, state-wide pipelines of new housing and supportive services.
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For further information, states and local leaders can visit the following resources:
Action Points: Four Steps to Expand Access to Housing for People in the Justice System with Behavioral Health Needs: This brief presents four steps state leaders should take to increase housing opportunities and improve justice and health outcomes for people in the justice system with behavioral health needs.
Thinking Outside the Box Housing Webinar Series: Cross-Sector Strategies to Create Housing Opportunities for People with Behavioral Health Needs Leaving the Justice System
Center for Justice and Mental Health Partnerships: This support center provides free assistance and consultation to improve outcomes for people with mental health conditions and co-occurring substance use disorders in the criminal justice system.
CSH – Dimensions of Quality Supportive Housing: This publication provides strategies to build the capacity of supportive and affordable housing developers and managers to create and operate high-quality, effective, and sustainable units.
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The post Private: Explainer: Creating Housing Opportunities for People with Complex Health Needs Leaving the Justice System appeared first on CSG Justice Center.