Bill would allow incarceration to count toward supportive housing eligibility

The City Council passed Int. 1100 to count time spent in prison, jail, or court-mandated medical detention toward the chronic-homelessness threshold for city-funded supportive housing when individuals were homeless before custody and would remain homeless after release. If signed, people incarcerated 12 or more consecutive months could qualify for supportive housing upon release. The bill responds to evidence that many eligible people are excluded by current definitions and that incarceration correlates with housing instability, high public costs, and unmet mental health needs. Supportive housing provides apartments and linked social services. Criminalizing homelessness produces repeated arrests and perpetuates a jail-to-street cycle.

Jail is not a home, but incarceration prevents people from qualifying for city-funded supportive housing, which requires a recent track record of homelessness. For this reason, the City Council passed a bill on August 14 considering time spent in prison, jail, or court-mandated medical detention to count toward time unhoused when meeting the qualifying threshold if the individual was homeless before entering custody and would remain homeless after release.

"Nearly 70% of people on Rikers [Island] who could benefit from supportive housing are shut out because of the chronic homelessness definition," said Rivera. "It costs over $500,000 a year to incarcerate them, but supportive housing saves public dollars and it changes lives. We have a responsibility to recognize incarceration as a form of housing instability [and] remove systemic barriers that keep people trapped in the vicious cycle of jail and homelessness and back again."

The city's supportive housing model offers people experiencing homelessness low-cost apartments, tied in with social services like mental healthcare and addiction treatment. Formerly incarcerated individuals are nearly 10 times more likely to be unhoused, with women and people of color facing even higher rates, according to a 2018 Prison Policy Initiative report. More than half the population on Rikers Island receives some form of mental health treatment.

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