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Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people

By Lucius Couloute   Tweet this
August 2018

It’s hard to imagine building a successful life without a place to call home, but this basic necessity is often out of reach for formerly incarcerated people. Barriers to employment, combined with explicit discrimination, have created a little-discussed housing crisis.

In this report, we provide the first estimate of homelessness among the 5 million formerly incarcerated people living in the United States, finding that formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public. We break down this data by race, gender, age and other demographics; we also show how many formerly incarcerated people are forced to live in places like hotels or motels,⤵ just one step from homelessness itself.

Figure 1. 2% of formerly incarcerated people were homeless in 2008 (the most recent year for which data are available), a rate nearly 10 times higher than among the general public.

Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people

The transition from prison to the community is rife with challenges. But before formerly incarcerated people can address health problems, find stable jobs, or learn new skills, they need a place to live.

This report provides the first national snapshot of homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, using data from a little-known Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Our analysis builds on existing research showing that past incarceration and homelessness are linked. National research suggests that up to 15% of incarcerated people experience homelessness in the year before admission to prison.¹ And city- and state-level studies of homeless shelters find that many formerly incarcerated people rely on shelters, both immediately after their release and over the long term.²

We find that rates of homelessness are especially high among specific demographics:

• People who have been incarcerated more than once⤵
• People recently released from prison⤵
• People of color and women⤵

In the following sections, we take a closer look at these populations. We also break down how many formerly incarcerated people are living in marginal housing⤵ - a step away from homelessness.

The revolving door & homelessness

We find that people experiencing cycles of incarceration and release - otherwise known as the “revolving door” of incarceration - are also more likely to be homeless.³

People who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public. But people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public. In other words, people who have been incarcerated multiple times are twice as likely to be homeless as those who are returning from their first prison term.

Unfortunately, being homeless makes formerly incarcerated people more likely to be arrested and incarcerated again, thanks to policies that criminalize homelessness.⁴ As law enforcement agencies aggressively enforce “offenses” such as sleeping in public spaces, panhandling, and public urination - not to mention other low-level offenses that are more visible when committed in public - formerly incarcerated people are unnecessarily funneled back through the “revolving door.”

Homelessness among recently-released individuals

Previous research has shown that formerly incarcerated people are most likely to be homeless in the period shortly after their release.⁵ Our data supports this research: We find that people who spent two years or less in the community were more than twice as likely to be homeless as those who had been out of prison for four years or longer.

Homelessness among recently released individuals is a fixable problem. States can - and should - develop more efficient interagency systems to help formerly incarcerated people find homes. But longer-term support is also needed: Our analysis found that even people who had spent several years in the community were 4 times more likely to be homeless than the general public.

A closer look: sheltered and unsheltered homelessness by race and gender

Within the broad category of homelessness, there are two distinct populations: people who are sheltered (in a homeless shelter) and those who are unsheltered (without a fixed residence).

We find - in keeping with previous research on homelessness in the general public - that the sheltered and unsheltered formerly incarcerated populations have significant demographic differences.⁶

For example, we find important differences by gender. Overall, formerly incarcerated women are more likely to be homeless than formerly incarcerated men. But among homeless formerly incarcerated people, men are less likely to be sheltered than women, whether for reasons of availability or personal choice.

Table 1. Rates of sheltered and unsheltered homelessness per 10,000 formerly incarcerated people by gender.

	Homeless(Rate per 10,000)	Sheltered(Rate per 10,000)	Unsheltered(Rate per 10,000)
Men	195	90	105
Women	264	156	108
Total	203	98	105

Unsheltered homelessness by race and gender

We find that formerly incarcerated Black men have much higher rates of unsheltered homelessness than white or Hispanic men.

The data also suggests that women of color experience unsheltered homelessness at higher rates than white women. (Though there were too few unsheltered formerly incarcerated Black and Hispanic women in our dataset to analyze,⁷ the rate of unsheltered homelessness among white women was substantially lower than the rate for women generally. Therefore, it is clear that formerly incarcerated Black and/or Hispanic women experience unsheltered homelessness at significantly higher rates than white women.)

Table 2. Rates of unsheltered homelessness per 10,000 formerly incarcerated people by race and gender. To compare rates of homelessness (sheltered, unsheltered, and all homelessness) and housing insecurity for all groups in our dataset, see Appendix Table 2.

	Black(Rate per 10,000)	Hispanic(Rate per 10,000)	White(Rate per 10,000)	Total(Rate per 10,000)
Men	124	82	81	105
Women	n/a	n/a	87	108
All	123	90	82	105

Sheltered homelessness by race and gender

Black women experienced the highest rate of sheltered homelessness - nearly four times the rate of white men, and twice as high as the rate of Black men. Combined with our breakdowns of race and gender separately (see Figure 1), this analysis shows that Black women face severe barriers to housing after release.

Figure 2. Rates of sheltered homelessness among formerly incarcerated people differ widely by race and gender, with Black women nearly four times more likely than white men to be living in a homeless shelter.

The high rates of homelessness among Black women are especially striking in light of our similar finding, last month, that unemployment rates among formerly incarcerated Black women were higher than any other demographic group.⁸ Our findings illustrate that Black women, in particular, have been excluded from the social resources necessary to succeed after incarceration.

Almost homeless: Housing insecurity among formerly incarcerated people

Measuring homelessness among formerly incarcerated people is a critical step forward, but it doesn’t fully capture the exclusion of formerly incarcerated people from stable housing - the kind of housing most people need to thrive and contribute to their communities.

To better measure the scope of the problem, we created a second metric - housing insecurity - that includes formerly incarcerated people who are homeless (both sheltered and unsheltered) as well as those living in marginal housing like rooming houses, hotels, or motels.⁹

Figure 3. Housing insecurity includes people who are homeless as well as those living in marginal housing. 570 out of every 10,000 formerly incarcerated people fall into one of these categories, making housing insecurity nearly three times more common than homelessness alone.

Housing insecurity provides a more realistic measurement of the number of formerly incarcerated people denied access to permanent housing. While we found that 203 out of every 10,000 formerly incarcerated people were homeless, nearly three times as many - 570 out of every 10,000 - were housing insecure.

We also uncovered notable demographic differences by expanding our view to the housing insecure population: Hispanics, for example, were more likely than people of any other race to live in marginal housing. Men had much higher rates of marginal housing than women, resulting in high rates of housing insecurity. And older formerly incarcerated people experienced the highest rates of housing insecurity.

Ideally, this report would directly compare the prevalence of housing insecurity among formerly incarcerated people to that of the general public. Unfortunately, the equivalent national statistics on housing insecurity do not yet exist. Even without that comparison, however, it’s clear that having been to prison is a major risk factor for housing insecurity.

Causes and consequences of housing insecurity after release

Stable housing is the foundation of successful reentry from prison. Unfortunately, as our data show, many formerly incarcerated people struggle to find stable places to live. Discrimination by public housing authorities and private property owners,¹⁰ combined with affordable housing shortages,¹¹ continues to drive the exclusion of formerly incarcerated people from the housing market.

Part of the problem is that property owners and public housing authorities have the ability to implement their own screening criteria to determine if an applicant merits housing¹² - a process that often relies upon criminal record checks as the primary source of information. In practice, this means local authorities and landlords have wide discretion to punish people with criminal records even after their sentences are over.

The use of credit checks, exorbitant security deposits, and other housing application requirements - such as professional references - can also act as systemic barriers for people who have spent extended periods of time away from the community and out of the labor market.¹³

Excluding formerly incarcerated people from safe and stable housing has devastating side effects: It can reduce access to healthcare services (including addiction and mental health treatment),¹⁴ make it harder to secure a job,¹⁵ and prevent formerly incarcerated people from accessing educational programs.¹⁶ Severe homelessness and housing insecurity destabilizes the entire reentry process.

Fortunately, on-the-ground advocates across the country have made important progress in reducing overall homelessness.¹⁷ But an estimated 550,000 people are still homeless on any given night in the United States,¹⁸ many of them individuals with a history of criminal justice system contact. It’s critical that policymakers develop comprehensive responses to this problem, rather than continuing to punish those without homes.

All people - and particularly those carrying the stigma of criminalization - need these solutions. In such a wealthy country, it’s time we eliminate homelessness for good.

Conclusion

This report provides the first national estimates of homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, but these estimates likely understate the problem. Because the effects of intermittent homelessness last longer than your last night on the street, the best measures of homeless include those who have experienced homelessness in the last year. However, there is not yet a way to calculate this fuller picture of homelessness among formerly incarcerated people.¹⁹

Nevertheless, our findings make it clear that the 600,000 people released from prisons each year face a housing crisis in urgent need of solutions. State and local reentry organizations must make housing a priority, and provide additional services thereafter - a strategy known as “Housing First.”²⁰ If formerly incarcerated people are legally and financially excluded from safe, stable, and affordable housing, they cannot be expected to successfully reintegrate into their communities.

Recommendations

Excluding formerly incarcerated people from stable housing harms not only individuals, but public safety and the economy at large. State- and city-level policymakers have the power to solve this housing crisis:

1. States should create clear-cut systems to help recently-released individuals find homes. Even in states like New York, there is often “no central, coordinating force” set up to ensure that people leaving prison will land somewhere other than a shelter. Improved systems should help incarcerated people understand their housing options before release; find pathways to both short-term and permanent housing; and receive financial supports, such as housing vouchers, from the state.
2. Ban the box on housing applications. Cities and states should ensure that public housing authorities and landlords evaluate housing applicants as individuals, rather than explicitly excluding people with criminal records in housing advertisements or applications. A criminal record is not a good proxy for one’s suitability as a tenant.
3. End the criminalization of homelessness. Cities should end the aggressive enforcement of quality-of-life ordinances. Arresting, fining, and jailing homeless people for acts related to their survival is not only cruel; it also funnels formerly incarcerated people back through the “revolving door” of homelessness and punishment, which reduces their chances of successful reentry at great cost to public safety.
4. Expand social services for the homeless, focusing on “Housing First.” States like Utah have made permanent housing for the chronically homeless a budget priority. This successful approach acknowledges that stable homes are often necessary before people can address unemployment, illness, substance use disorder, and other problems. “Housing First” reforms, along with expanded social services, would help to disrupt the revolving door of release and reincarceration.

About the Prison Policy Initiative

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative was founded in 2001 to expose the broader harm of mass criminalization and spark advocacy campaigns to create a more just society. The organization is known for its visual breakdown of mass incarceration in the U.S., as well as its data-rich analyses of how states vary in their use of punishment. The Prison Policy Initiative’s research is designed to reshape debates around mass incarceration by offering the “big picture” view of critical policy issues, such as probation and parole, women’s incarceration, and youth confinement.

The Prison Policy Initiative also works to shed light on the economic hardships faced by justice-involved people and their families, often exacerbated by correctional policies and practice. Past reports have shown that people in prison and people held pretrial in jail start out with lower incomes even before arrest, earn very low wages working in prison, and face unparalleled obstacles to finding work after they get out.

About the author

Lucius Couloute is a Policy Analyst with the Prison Policy Initiative and a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, his dissertation examines both the structural and cultural dynamics of reentry systems. Most recently he co-authored Out of Prison & Out of Work, which provided the first-ever unemployment rate among formerly incarcerated people.

Acknowledgements

This report benefitted from the expertise and input of many individuals. The author is particularly indebted to Dan Kopf for retrieving this data from the ICPSR Physical Enclave, Amy Sawyer for her valuable insight into the state of homelessness today, Alma Castro for IRB assistance, Allen Beck for his insight into the NFPS, the ICPSR staff for their data retrieval support, Elydah Joyce for the illustrations, Maddy Troilo for background research, my Prison Policy Initiative colleagues, and the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness for their helpful guidance on “Housing First” strategies.

This report was supported by a generous grant from the Public Welfare Foundation and by our individual donors, who give us the resources and the flexibility to quickly turn our insights into new movement resources.

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