A Fair Chance for Housing, by John Proctor & Marzian Alam
I’ve told and retold Antonio’s and Sonny’s stories as I’ve been their friend and advocate for years now, but I’d like now to briefly recount their stories in context with each other. Hopefully juxtaposing some key parts of their respective journeys with each other will illuminate a larger reality their stories represent and embody.
First, the particulars. Antonio was released around Thanksgiving of 2018, and has not stayed in the same place for more than a month since then. He started at Jamaica Hospital’s psych ward, where he tried to get his diagnoses and medications in order while filing as part of a joint lawsuit against the NYCDOC for the permanent physical damage he sustained after being attacked by a corrections officer at Rikers. He moved to Faith Mission shelter near the hospital at the beginning of the new year, where he met a woman he started a relationship with. They moved together to Beach House family shelter in Far Rockaway in early February, where they stayed while planning a possible life together.
This plan was destroyed when Antonio’s parole officer, after Faith Mission failed to notify him of the change in residence, assumed Antonio was AWOL and issued a technical parole violation. Officers located him at Beach House, arrested him, and took him to the Tombs. He was soon back at Rikers Island, where he waited months until the administrative court saw his case, threw it out, and threw him back out on the street. In the year since then Antonio has moved from shelter to shelter, gotten medication at intervals, attempted public suicide more than once, been picked up for that and thrown in the nearest hospital with a bed, and eventually thrown onto the street again. He creates art as he can, sometimes dictating work to me over the phone. We have been raising money for him by selling t-shirts and coffee mugs with his work, but without any income and with a number of felonies on his permanent record, he has virtually no hope of finding permanent housing, consistent medication, or the most basic peace of mind and habit necessary to fulfill the potential of his still-luminescent mind.
When Sonny started coming to our workshop in early 2019, he’d been recently released from his stay upstate. He has had prostate cancer since I’ve known him. A divorced Marine who served in Beirut during the Reagan years, Sonny is a man shaped by strongly held notions of family and country. When he returned from prison, he moved into the basement of an old high school acquaintance’s home. This old acquaintance was a hoarder and a heroin addict whose son was also a heroin addict, and they had a gaggle of wild cats that ran into and out of the house. Sonny befriended one of these cats, a pregnant female with a bent tail whom he dubbed Bentley. As he worked his way back into the world, he helped Bentley nurse the two kittens to whom she soon gave birth.
From the start of his reentry, Sonny had a contentious relationship with his parole officer. He believes it is because his former parole officer put a negative report in his folder, but whatever the reason his current officer seemed determined to make him spend the duration of his remaining parole institutionalized, using his own addiction against him (he’s 25+ years in recovery) to try to put him in an in-patient addiction recovery center. When that didn’t work, she simply issued a technical violation, claiming without evidence that his urine was dirty. He was abruptly pulled from his home and placed at Nassau County Jail, leaving his cat to be re-assimilated into ferality if our group hadn’t found her a temporary home.
Three months later, after spending part of his remaining parole upstate and then at Queensboro Correctional Facility, Sonny was released shortly after Thanksgiving of 2019. Most of his possessions had been stolen out of his former residence, so he moved into the extra bedroom at his niece’s apartment. Bentley came to live with him again, and for a few months, including the onset of the pandemic, Sonny was safe and settled. Then his niece decided to leave the state and give up her apartment, and by May Sonny had no choice but to give Bentley back over to another temporary home, and he began staying in friends’ garages and vehicles at night. At this time, we began a full-on campaign to find Sonny a real bed. After a month of searching, we got the temporary reentry facility run by Exodus Transitional Community at an empty Wyndham hotel in Queens to take him in. He now has a room with a bed, meals provided, and just as importantly a community of supportive social workers helping him plan consciously for his next living situation.
As I think on my two friends, I want to recount some things their stories have taught me.
Most importantly, housing is absolutely, without a doubt, the most overwhelming determinant of whether someone will successfully reenter from incarceration. Like, if “What is the primary determinant of successful reentry from incarceration?” were a question on Family Feud, surveys would say 90, maybe 95.
Without secure housing after release from incarceration, countless people like Antonio have entered into a cycle of homelessness and detention. Instead of identifying people in need, the carceral system sends people out into unforgiving NYC streets, where it is nearly impossible to prioritize health when people are fighting to survive. After multiple suicide attempts that landed him in psychiatric detention, Antonio was released back out on the street.
The carceral system doesn’t see people like Antonio and Sonny as real people, who deserve dignity, health, and freedom of choice. The legal system has absolved itself of responsibility for Antonio. After the violence of incarceration and displacement there is no system set up to support people like Antonio who have been so carelessly disregarded and forgotten. What kind of society are we, if we don’t work to make amends for the harm our systems have caused? Who is responsible for the displacement and instability Antonio is facing?
Homeless shelters are not homes.
Housing and health are always intertwined.
Technical parole violations destroy the possibility of stable housing and successful reentry. Antonio’s quality of life has been on a steady decline since his dismissed parole violation that kept him behind bars for months. A seemingly neutral choice made by an employee of the parole board threw his whole life into chaos.
Consistent and proper medical care is inherently tied to a stable residence.
As important as housing is, it’s not the only thing. Especially in reentry, every person needs a community that has their back.
In order to change the social conditions that shape the thousands of New Yorkers returning from incarceration every month of every year, the community has to be bigger than just people who are directly involved in their lives. That’s one reason why we’ve decided, as an organization, to publicly align ourselves with and actively promote campaigns and movements that can have the power and the motivation to move policy-makers into action.
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The rest here is from my co-facilitator and organizer Marzian, who has put together some of the strands into a beginning action step we’d like to share.
Hi everyone, I’m Marzian Alam. I’ve been working with John to amplify the voices of people we work with. Political and legislative advocacy has naturally become part of our work at Re/Creation because these voices are actively ignored by those in power.
At Re/Creation, we support activists, organizers, and advocates in the field who are fighting for a New York Homes Guarantee: the idea that every New Yorker has the right to a safe, stable, and affordable place to live (1). Legislators in NYS and across the country are ignoring the housing crisis that has steadily increased the disparity between the have's and the have-not's. The current pandemic has made it even more urgent to find an equitable solution to the housing crisis, as shelter-in-place orders and social distancing measures are put in place to restrict the spread of COVID-19. Low wage workers have been devastated by the impact of job losses, childcare, and medical expenses while landlords continue to collect rent. The tireless efforts of tenant unions and organizers forced NYS to extend the moratorium on evictions until October 1st, but low income families are left at the mercy of these policies.
The prospects are even more dire for people returning to their communities after being released from prison. Many people don’t qualify for housing because of their previous conviction history, and those who do are rejected on the basis of discriminatory preferences of the landlord or management company (2). There are currently no laws in place to protect people with convictions from discrimination at the hands of housing providers.
A coalition of New Yorkers are advocating for the Fair Chance for Housing Act to end the discrimination against people with criminal records. Housing is directly linked to healthcare and access to other services that are critical for a successful re-entry. Restricting vulnerable people from accessing this critical element of successful re-entry has devastating impacts during regular times. During the pandemic, safe and stable housing can mean the difference between life and death.
Everyone deserves the dignity of a safe place to rest. For Sonny and Antonio, housing means rest– a brief respite from the chaos of lives branded by criminal convictions. They have both carried their convictions with them into every step of their lives, unable to live a normal life in their communities. The rug of stability is ripped out from underneath them each time they lose access to a space of their own. We have begun to recognize the arbitrary punitiveness of the carceral system that disproportionately convicts black and brown men, particularly those who suffer from addiction, trauma, or emotional distress. We are slowly expanding our sympathy to include incarcerated people but do not carry that logic through to when those same men and women are re-entering our communities.
The Fair Chance for Housing coalition will be holding a rally at Bellevue Men’s Shelter on Wednesday, August 26 at 1pm - if you’re interested in attending please let us know, and also take a look at their platform. We’ll continue with updates on the platform and bill’s progress in the weeks ahead.
And as always, we welcome your donations as you continue to grow!
Re/Creation is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Re/Creation must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.