One Strike to Second Chances: Using Criminal Backgrounds in Admission Decisions for Assisted Housing

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has changed its position toward housing individuals with criminal records from strict one-strike policies in the 1980s to providing second chances to returning citizens. Many public housing authorities have not updated their admission policies for using criminal backgrounds and still adhere to the one-strike philosophy. In response to new guidance from HUD, housing agencies are trying to find a balance between screening practices to identify demonstrable risk but avoid discrimination and violation of the Fair Housing Act. This research examines several questions critical to assisting housing providers to address the new guidance from HUD. Findings provide direction for housing providers on understanding recidivism risk rates, using useful lookback periods, considering risk and harm across crime types, and verifying rehabilitation and other evidence to design informed policies and procedures for using criminal records in admission decisions for assisted housing.

Keywords:

• HUD
• public housing authorities
• reentry
• criminal records
• admission policies

Notes

1. Although criminologists have used this term in many ways, desistance in this article refers to “the process by which individuals stop offending” (Bushway & Paternoster, 2013, p. 213).

2. For the sake of example, imagine that 1,000 individuals receive a 6-month sentence one or more times each during a 10-year study period. Whereas 900 of those individuals are incarcerated a single time, 100 of those individuals are reincarcerated every year for 10 years (that is, they serve 10 sentences each). In any given prisoner-release cohort, therefore, we would expect to have approximately 90 low-risk offenders and 100 high-risk offenders. In other words, even though the high-risk offenders are only 10% of the overall offender sample, they make up 52.6% (100 of 190 prisoners) of a release cohort in any given year and have a disproportionate impact on recidivism rates.