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DuBois-Walton pitches idea to her board Tuesday.
The Housing Authority of New Haven is betting that if you provide a former inmate with housing, tuition to finish a degree started in prison, a cost-of-living stipend and additional support services, you can reduce that person’s risk of returning to prison.
That is the pitch the HANH and the city are making to the Connecticut General Assembly with proposed bill No. 173.
The proposal: Create a pilot program in New Haven called Connecticut Fresh Start — an extension of the housing authority’s Community Re-entry Program and the city’s Project Fresh Start.
Choose a small cohort of people — just four families with at least one formerly incarcerated member — to test the hypothesis. The formerly incarcerated family member must already have demonstrated a commitment to finishing a degree by having taken courses while in prison.
Provide this person and his family housing. Cover that person’s tuition at an approved Connecticut college or university, provide the family a $20,000 to $30,000 stipend, depending on the family size, so the person can focus on their studies. Give them access to the wrap-around services that every housing authority resident has access to, including academic help for any children in the family and other support services. Then give the formerly incarcerated person, who has to stay trouble free and maintain a 3.0 GPA, three years to complete a four-year degree.
The desired outcome: a good paying job and self-sufficiency for the whole family.
Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton pitched that idea at Tuesday’s monthly housing authority board meeting. She said that she and her staff, along with other city officials, have been in talks for months about how to break down silos and develop a strategy for re-entry that “looks at needs holistically.”
New Haven’s housing authority is already designated as a “Moving to Work” demonstration project by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; it currently provides assistance to formerly incarcerated people who return to the city through its Community Re-entry Program. Through this program the authority has dedicated about 12 of its units specifically for people re-entering the city from prison, who are receiving other support services and job skills training.
DuBois-Walton said the proposed pilot program dovetails with Gov. Dannel Malloy’s recent call at Yale University for creating a “Second Chance Society,” and his commitment to continuing the past four years’ declines in violent crime and the prison population. She said if the pilot is successful, “it could open doors that have previously been closed.”
I have mixed feelings. I get the altruistic side of this proposal. But, and this is a very big but......We have already financed their stay in prison. How much more should we be financing them?
What about those who aren't felons? The divorced mother who can't seem to catch her breath, get back in school and make a better life for herself and her children? Or the twenty something who can't afford to finish his/her degree? Which forces them into menial jobs, just to make ends meet.
Where is the fairness in this new idea? So we reward those who have snubbed their noses at the law? Giving them lots of cool freebies so they don't re-offend? Maybe I should go out and become a menace to society so I can finish college.