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Alabama Justice Ministries Network receives a well-deserved affirmation in National Reentry Resource Newsletter
April 5, 2012
In Letter to Property Owners, HUD Secretary Clarifies Agency's Position on Renting HUD-Subsidized Properties to People with Criminal Records
Earlier this month, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan sent a letter clarifying HUD’s position on whether ex-offenders can live in HUD-subsidized properties. The letter, which was co-signed by HUD’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner Carol Galante, was sent to private rental property owners of HUD-assisted properties. Donovan and Galante called on owners “to seek a balance between allowing ex-offenders to reunite with families that live in HUD subsidized housing, and ensuring the safety of all residents.”
To view this letter, which also enumerates the specific cases when property owners do not have discretion regarding to whom they can rent, click here.
This letter was sent to a vast number of property owners representing a broad segment of the rental housing market; nationwide, there are over a million units of HUD-assisted housing. It expands on a similar letter sent by the secretary last June to executive directors of public housing authorities (PHAs), in which the secretary clarified his agency’s position regarding people with criminal record’s eligibility for public housing.
While the impact of the secretary’s letters to PHA directors and landlords is hard to gauge, the National Reentry Resource Center did learn of a situation in which the earlier letter influenced local policy. A public housing resident in Birmingham, AL—who is also a participant in a reentry program run by the Alabama Justice Ministries Network (AJMN), a Second Chance Act (SCA) grantee—received a notice of eviction stating that his public housing building had a “no felon, no exception” policy. The resident alerted his AJMN program coordinator of his expulsion; the coordinator then shared the secretary’s letter with the local PHA director. The PHA director, indicating that this was his first time seeing the letter, said that he was not only willing to reconsider the resident’s circumstances, but also initiated a process to formulate a new policy for the area. Within a month, HUD coordinated a seminar of over 140 PHA directors to explain the secretary’s position that flexibility is expected regarding access to public housing for people with felony records.
To continue reading this feature:
http://www.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org/announcements/in-letter-to-property-owners-hud-secretary-clarifies-agencys-position-on-renting-hud-subsidized-properties-to-people-with-criminal-records |
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Help Protect Funding for the Second Chance Act
March 9, 2012
This week Congressman Howard Coble (R-NC-6), Danny Davis (D-IL-7) and Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) are circulating letters in support of funding for Second Chance programs. It is crucial that their letters reflect widespread national support for Second Chance. Please contact your Congressional delegation to urge that they sign onto the Davis-Coble letter in the House and the Leahy letter in the Senate in support of funding for the Second Chance Act in FY13.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
1. Contact your Congressional Delegation TODAY to ask them to sign on to the Davis-Coble and Leahy letters in support of FY13 funding for Second Chance.
2. Share this information with others in your state and community and enlist them to do the same.
TIMING
Congress is in the process of submitting their appropriations priorities for FY 2013. Please contact your members of Congress IMMEDIATELY and send a letter of support by visiting http://www.capwiz.com/csgjusticectr/home/ to ask them to make funding the Second Chance Act one of their top FY 2013 appropriations priorities and to sign on to the “Dear Colleague” letters.
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Reentry "MythBusters"
July 15, 2011
The Reentry Council has also released a set of “Reentry MythBusters,” one pagers designed to clarify existing federal policies that affect formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. The MythBusters cover topics critical to reentry, such as public housing, access to federal benefits, parental rights, employer incentives, and more. As the MythBusters show, some federal laws and policies are narrower than is commonly perceived, as is the case with public housing and food assistance benefits. States and localities often have broad discretion in determining how policies are applied and/or have various opt-out provisions for states (TANF and child support are examples). In some cases, statutory barriers do not exist at all or are very limited, as is the case with federal hiring. In fact, some federal policies, such as federal bonding, contain incentives for assisting the formerly convicted population. ****To download a pdf of "MythBusters" follow this link or copy and paste to your browser:
http://www.nationalreentryresourcecenter.org/documents/0000/1090/REENTRY_MYTHBUSTERS.pdf |
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