THE HOUSE THAT DISCRIMINATION BUILT
Nearly 80 percent of formerly incarcerated women are unable to afford housing after release.
Most public housing authorities automatically deny eligibility to anyone with a criminal record. No other country deprives people of the right to housing because of their criminal histories.
When Los Angeles’s Department of Housing organized a working group to look at the significant barriers to public housing, I was invited along with housing providers and other nonprofit leaders from groups for the homeless, the mentally ill, and the HIV community. But when I looked around the room and saw I was the sole representative from the formerly incarcerated community, this seemed ridiculous—those with a criminal record were the only demographic banned from public housing.
Once again, I was the thorn in the conversation, pointing out what everyone was happy to skirt around: that the Department of Housing excluded people with criminal records because it was easier to disqualify than it was to do the work of meeting with people and coming to a conclusion based on an individual in the here and now, not on something that happened a long time ago.
“Housing policies continue to punish people who’ve paid their debt to society,” I began, of course, having jumped to my feet. “But it goes beyond that. If a mother and children are living in subsidized housing, and it’s the father who has the criminal record, he isn’t allowed to live with his family. It’s heartbreaking when people getting out of prison can’t be reunited with their spouse and kids. These policies tear families apart.”
When I was done, everyone looked at me like I had egg on my face. Only Peter Lynn, the housing authority’s director of Section 8, perked up. He got it, and from that day forward, he would be my ally. This was in 2011, and for two years, our working group met. Finally, we nailed down a proposal, the Re-entry Family Reunification Pilot Program, under which formerly incarcerated people would be, for the first time, allowed to move in with their families who lived in Section 8 housing. Support services would be provided, and the University of Southern California would follow families to track mental and physical health, education, and income. If these indicators improved, as we suspected they would, we could make a solid argument to change the policy that banned people with records from residing with their families in subsidized housing.
But the pilot was the opposite of smooth sailing: the housing authority wanted to roll out the program under law enforcement, rather than through a community-based group, and they brought in the sheriff’s department, the corrections department, and the probation and parole departments. It seemed impractical to me, and apparently to law enforcement, too, because before long, they stopped showing up to meetings. Disturbingly, their absence didn’t seem to matter to the housing authority, which continued on with its original plan.
I took the program proposal to County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, and he committed funding. We were set to go—except, we went nowhere. Even though it wouldn’t be costing the housing authority a dime, there were delays and resistance. Their administrative culture had been the same for a long, long time, and here we were, trying to change things. Bureaucracy, I had learned, was allergic to change.
Finally, we were granted the go-ahead and my job was to find twenty-five qualified people about to be released to reunite with their families in Section 8 housing. I applied for clearance to enter the jails to conduct my interviews. At this point, it was ridiculous that I even had to apply, especially since the program was under the umbrella of the sheriff’s department, but I jumped through the paperwork hoops, again. And then, yet again, when, absurdly, my clearance came back denied.
Once my clearance was finally sorted out, I began interviewing prospective inmates. But there were so many stipulations in the program guidelines, I was having trouble finding candidates. The person with the criminal record had to have a family who was already living in Section 8 housing in the city of Los Angeles. If the family was in a housing project, they didn’t qualify. If the family didn’t live in L.A. proper but in a neighboring city in L.A. County, such as Compton or Inglewood, they didn’t qualify. If there was any record of domestic abuse, they didn’t qualify.
After screening hundreds, we finally were able to sign up a handful of families. We hired a therapist to work with the families, we purchased new stoves and refrigerators for the Section 8 homes that needed them, we even bought Christmas gifts for the children. And then, we found ourselves shocked: families were backing out.
I ran around asking the families what was going on. An all-too-familiar picture began to form: they were scared. This was their home on the line, and when they’d signed their lease, they were told they’d be evicted if anyone with a criminal record was living there.
“I guarantee you will not lose your housing,” I said. “Even in the worst-case scenario of their spouse reoffending.”
“It just sounds too good to be true,” one woman told me. Others echoed the same sentiment, thinking it must be some sort of government trick, that there had to be a catch. How could I blame them for thinking this way? Historically, housing policies always discriminated. Their reactions were rooted in a dark history of housing covenants, redlining, and all the other hush-hush ways that black people were kept out. Banks continued their secret discriminatory practices all the way up until 1975, when the unlikely pair of a black Methodist minister/community organizer joined with a white housewife/mother of six in Chicago to expose what was going on and demand passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, making it illegal for banks to discriminate. This was recent memory for many of us. Sadly, the thinking around housing that had become ingrained in the black community was: No way could someone be looking out for our best interests. That was how beaten down people had become. Even in the face of us trying to make historic change.
A couple more years passed, and we only had fifteen families enrolled in the pilot program. The level of patience and tenacity just to take these incremental steps was exhausting. But there I was, trying to make progress, all the while knowing that working within the confines of government administration meant real change wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
I funneled my frustration back into building a movement. Real progress was only going to happen outside of government. The problem was not going to become the solution.