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Posted 08.10.05 Lots of Privacy - and No Bars (Newsday 6/20/05) Eight ex-convict mothers get a fresh start in a subsidized apartment complex especially for them By Janelle Nanos Unlike most people moving into a new home, Debra Dicente isn't fussing over the details of her decor. Shrugging at suggestions for the curtains, rug or couch, she is content to stretch out on the living room floor of her new two-bedroom apartment while her 6-month-old son, Ruben, wriggles in her lap. Dicente spent two years at the Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, N.Y., then moved to a temporary one-room shelter in Queens. "For so long, I sat in my single room and thought that all I was missing was a toilet," she said, explaining that the room felt much like her jail cell. "I've been ready for this," she said about her new digs. "I just want my privacy back." This month, Dicente will have more than privacy. She'll have a lease of her own. She is one of eight women selected to live in the Hour Children apartment building in Long Island City, the city's first subsidized housing development designed exclusively for formerly incarcerated mothers and their families. The new building, which will house eight one- and two-bedroom apartments, was refurbished in May through the efforts of Hour Children, a nonprofit organization in Long Island City that lends support and shelter to female ex-prisoners and their children. The women started moving into the development this month. A $1.4-million contribution from the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development helped Hour Children to secure the building as its own. "The Hour Children apartments are providing women and their children with the housing, job training and other social services that they need," said housing department spokeswoman Carol Abrams. "The city has led the nation in supportive housing development. Providing housing for formerly incarcerated mothers and their children is a model program and it's one that we continue to believe in." The Correctional Association's Women in Prison Project reports that as many as 2,800 women are incarcerated in New York State, leaving more than 12,000 children beyond their reach. Yet when they leave prison, mothers face a gantlet of obstacles. Many are released into the shelter system, and the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit organization, has found that those living in transitional housing have a more difficult time finding work and resisting drugs, leaving them susceptible to re-arrest. Reuniting with children in foster care is contingent upon the mothers finding work and a stable home, yet city housing regulations deny ex-offenders from living in public housing. "People with criminal histories are often not able to access the city's housing resources because of their broad discretionary policies," said Richard Cho, a program officer with the nonprofit Corporation for Supportive Housing, which collaborated with Hour Children on the project. "So you're basically releasing people and setting them up to fail." For more than 10 years, Hour Children has provided temporary shelter, along with social workers, job counseling and child care to their clients, all nonviolent drug offenders. It is one of the few such agencies in the city to do so exclusively for former female inmates, and thanks to their work, nine out of 10 women who enter their program successfully transition back into civic life. It's a striking comparison to statewide recidivism rates, which hold that one-third of New York's prisoners are re-incarcerated. "Facilities like Hour Children are critical in allowing families to maintain a bond during incarceration and later release," said Tamar Kraft-Stolar, director of the Women in Prison Project. "Recidivism rates drop drastically when women are set up with services. They need to be replicated, and the city and state need to make it a priority." But for now, Hour Children's staff is focused on making a home. Sister Teresa "Tesa" Fitzgerald, Hour Children's executive director, sees the prospect of a permanent place for her clients as a testament to their determination to start anew. "I hate the term 'transitional housing,'" she said. "We're all in transition in life. Some of us have some real rough edges to work off, but that's the reason why our housing works. We know our people and they've learned to work with us, from paying bills to keeping clean. They have the conviction and they want to do this right." Dicente agrees: "It will be a change in my life - for good." |
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