County Would Build Criminal Justice Reentry Housing

Milwaukee County will likely develop new housing for people re-entering society after incarceration.

The county is a participant in the MacArthur Foundation’s long-running Safety and Justice Initiative, which provides funding for new approaches to criminal justice to reduce jail populations across the U.S. The county’s courts and human services system have received millions from the foundation. Some of the programs developed include expanded mental health responses in the criminal justice system and efforts to keep low-level offenders out of the Milwaukee County Jail.

The foundation is now tackling housing as an issue linked to criminal justice outcomes. The county’s Housing Division was awarded a $375,000 grant to begin planning new reentry housing. Once finished, the county will be eligible for up to a $5 million loan from the foundation to build the new housing. The county is one of only a handful of communities around the country that were selected for the reentry housing initiative, as James Mathy, county Housing Division Administrator, told the county board’s Committee on Judiciary, Law Enforcement and General Services.

The foundation is repurposing a strategy that has been successful in addressing homelessness: housing first. The county’s housing division has built its homelessness response around a housing first strategy, that attempts to use stable housing as a foundation to address the root causes of homelessness.

“It’s something we talked to the county board about a lot that you know, without the foundation of stable housing, a lot of other things in individuals lives are not going to work out, similar to what we do with our housing first initiative for homelessness,” Mathy said.

It will take roughly nine months to work through the planning process, Mathy said. A committee will be created, with input from institutional partners working in the criminal justice system and people that have been in and out of the system.

“We’ll be working with a lot of justice-involved individuals and really looking for their voice to determine best practice models and what they would like to see in housing programs,” Mathy said.

Once the planning is finished, if the county decides to move forward, the foundation will make up to $5 million available for the project in the form of a 10-year loan at 1% interest, Mathy said. The county will need to find a private developer or a nonprofit agency to take on the loan and develop the project for the county.

An early idea for the program, Mathy said, is to create emergency housing for individuals that keeps them out of jail. “If they were arrested and part of their issue was housing insecurity or mental health, we would be able to do emergency placements very quickly for those individuals,” he said. Another idea is new construction of affordable housing that has units set aside for people reentering the community after incarceration.

“So we’re very excited about this work,” Mathy said, “and also really excited to engage individuals who are justice involved, with lived experience to formulate our plan.”