More than one in four people leaving North Carolina prisons in 2024 were released to homelessness, according to a reentry housing assessment presented at the July meeting of the Joint Reentry Council.
The assessment identified someone as homeless if they had no verified home plan, self-reported as homeless, provided an intersection address or went to a shelter or temporary housing placement. Of the nearly 20,000 people who exited one of the state’s prisons last year, 5,610 people — or 28 percent — were identified as homeless.
It’s a number that state leaders aim to reduce by 10 percent every year as part of North Carolina’s Reentry 2030 goals. Since January 2024, state leaders have been taking action to lessen obstacles that could derail successful transition into the community for the 95 percent of incarcerated people in North Carolina who will be released after they serve their sentences.
Expanding housing opportunities for this population is one of the four overarching goals outlined in North Carolina’s strategic plan to boost support for people leaving prison over the coming years. Unstable housing increases the risk of recidivism, which can be costly to the legal system, the carceral system and to taxpayers. Lack of housing can also impair engagement with supervision, treatment and employment, making it difficult for people to reestablish a life in the community.
The N.C. Department of Adult Correction collaborated with The Council of State Governments Justice Center, a nonpartisan organization spearheading the national Reentry 2030 campaign, to assess the scope of homelessness and housing resources in North Carolina. The center’s staff presented findings — based on interviews and listening sessions with hundreds of people, including state agency heads, housing providers, community supervision officers, public housing authorities and people with lived experience in North Carolina — to the Joint Reentry Council on July 24.
Of the people identified as homeless after leaving prison, 83 percent — or 4,647 people — were released on community supervision, which requires regular check-ins with probation/parole officers. Ninety-five percent of these individuals — 4,424 people — were released to the street, not to a shelter, temporary housing or a treatment program.
Some demographics experienced particularly high rates of homelessness after being released from prison in 2024, according to the report:
- Nearly one in four releases identified as homeless — 23 percent — were age 55 or older, even though only 10 percent of people exiting prison in 2024 were in that age group.
- More than one in five releases identified as homeless had a current or previous sex offense. People with sex crimes face additional barriers finding housing because they cannot live within 1,000 feet of any school or child care center. In addition, many housing options do not accept residents with these types of offenses.
- Most releases to homelessness were to metropolitan areas across the state. The top five counties were Wake (523 people), Guilford (275 people), Buncombe (223 people), Mecklenburg (217 people) and New Hanover (206 people).
- Hispanic people released from prison were 22 percent more likely to be identified as homeless than those who were white. Black people were slightly less likely than white people to be released to homelessness.
“Now that this data is in the universe, it is telling us what we have to do, and so we have got to take this as a personal charge for this council and this state to move this forward,” Department of Adult Correction Secretary Leslie Cooley Dismukes said. “We have to increase our transitional housing. We have to increase our permanent affordable housing.”
‘Number one challenge’
Kristen Powers, executive director of Benevolence Farm — a reentry housing program in Alamance County that supports women leaving prison — said she’s not surprised by the high number of people leaving prison with no place to go. In her work, she frequently encounters people who are desperate for a stable place to land after their release.
Benevolence Farm can house nine people at a time, but Powers said it often has a wait list of more than 30 people. Demand for housing significantly outpaces available resources across the state, she said, leaving her scrounging for “Hail Mary” housing solutions when space isn’t available at the farm.
Powers said she will call other reentry housing partners to check if they have space, but they often struggle with the same capacity issues. She will also turn to other service providers, community organizations and church partners to see what resources they can offer, such as rental assistance or funds for a hotel room.
“It's a lot of just Band-Aid solutions,” Powers said, noting that even with their best efforts, they don’t always find a housing arrangement.
Anita Lynch, coordinator of the NEW Reentry Council serving Nash, Edgecombe and Wilson counties, also fields numerous requests for housing support, calling it the “number one challenge” faced by people reentering society after incarceration.
“A lot of individuals, when they are returning back to the community, they have nowhere to go,” Lynch said. “With family members, they’ve either already burned their bridges, or maybe it could be their family members are elderly, or they live in a certain housing population where they can’t house felons.”
Benjamin Gear, coordinator of the Orange County Local Reentry Council, estimated that, at best, about 20 percent of the formerly incarcerated people the council serves have housing arrangements. That leaves 80 percent unhoused.
When people recently released from prison come to his reentry council, Gear said he offers them a welcome home bag that includes items like a phone and toiletries. But one of the first questions he often hears is: “Where am I gonna use these toiletries?”
It’s not an easy question to answer. Gear said housing options in Orange County are particularly limited. He said the county has one transitional house with five beds and one bridge housing option — both short-term housing solutions designed to give people some time and space to secure a long-term housing arrangement. While substance use recovery housing like Oxford House is more widely available throughout the county, Gear said it doesn’t meet the needs of everyone.
In 2024, 43 percent of people who exited prison and returned to Orange County were released into homelessness — the fourth highest rate in the state behind Dare, Pasquotank and Cabarrus counties.
Without a housing option, Gear said some people will get a tent and set up in an encampment.
Housing affects reentry success
Megan Pfeiffer, Reentry 2030 project manager at the Council of State Governments Justice Center, said housing is a basic need that affects health outcomes and reentry success.
“We know that people experiencing homelessness are at an increased risk of reincarceration due to more frequent interactions with law enforcement, violations of supervision and rearrest for low level offenses that are often related to their experiences of homelessness,” Pfeiffer said.
A 2023 report on removing housing barriers for formerly incarcerated people published by the Wilson Center for Science and Justice at Duke Law states that there is a “cyclical relationship between housing instability and the criminal legal system.”
Powers said formerly incarcerated people need a place to live before they can focus on other tasks, such as addressing health problems, finding work and family reunification.
“[Housing] is the literal and metaphorical foundation to achieving one’s goals,” Powers said. “If you know where you’re sleeping at night, you know you’re safe. You know you can lock your door. You can keep your food there. You can keep your belongings there. That peace of mind is important.”
Having an address is also a key detail needed to complete other tasks, such as applying for jobs and health benefits, receiving one’s state identification in the mail and coordinating transportation to appointments.
The stakes of not having a stable place to land after prison is especially high for people with a sex offense, who are required to register their address on the sex offender registry as a condition of their release. Failure to do so can result in getting sent back to prison.
“We’ve had some people go back [to prison] because we just couldn’t figure it out,” Powers said.
When this happens, it’s an expensive problem. Housing one person in a North Carolina prison costs more than $54,000 per year.
“It really didn’t have anything to do with public safety in that moment, it was that they didn’t have an address,” Powers said. “They know the consequences of not having housing, and sometimes it’s just beyond their ability to find an option in the time that’s set for them.”
Statewide housing crisis
The high number of people found to be released from prison into homelessness comes amid a statewide rise in homelessness. In 2024, 11,626 North Carolinians experienced homelessness on a single night in January, according to the annual point-in-time count — up by 19.2 percent from 2023. Of these individuals, 4,523 people experienced unsheltered homelessness, meaning they weren’t couch surfing or doubling up with friends, but they were living on the street or in a tent.
Those unsheltered people made up 39 percent of the population experiencing homelessness.
The national and statewide housing crisis is fueled by rising costs that are pushing housing out of reach for people across a wide range of income levels, along with a growing gap between the demand for housing and the available supply.
A report from the UNC Chapel Hill School of Government found that more than a quarter of households spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on housing. Among low-income households, nearly three-quarters spend more than half their monthly income to keep a roof over their heads.
People with a criminal background often face more barriers to finding a place to live than do other community members. Challenges include landlords unwilling to rent to someone with a criminal record, financial instability due to years of not earning wages, or jobs that do not pay enough to afford available housing units. That’s not to mention knowledge gaps in how to navigate renting or homeownership after years of incarceration.
“If someone can get over the criminal history barrier, we’re seeing these other added layers,” Powers said.
Powers shared the story of one formerly incarcerated woman who recently moved into an apartment of her own — a milestone that came after numerous rejections. After finding an apartment within her budget with a landlord willing to accept her criminal record, Powers said the woman was required to pay $3,000 up front to move into the $1,100-a-month apartment when the property owner charged her double the security deposit, citing the risk of renting to someone with a criminal history.
Some housing assistance programs also expressly exclude people with certain criminal records. For example, the Section 8 housing choice voucher program — a federal program run by the Department of Housing and Urban Development providing rental assistance to low-income families, the elderly and people with disabilities — cannot serve people with some types of criminal activity or alcohol abuse.
Expanding housing options
To reduce the rate of homelessness among formerly incarcerated people, North Carolina has outlined two dozen strategies in its Reentry 2030 strategic plan focused on removing obstacles and expanding the housing options available to justice-involved populations.
Among them, the Department of Adult Correction says it will encourage the use of — and train staff in — the “Housing First” model, an approach to homelessness guided by the belief that people need basic necessities like a place to live before attending to other things, such as employment or substance use treatment. The Department of Adult Correction also plans to hire five housing specialists by 2030 who will assist every person before their release in finding safe and stable housing in the community.
In the years ahead, North Carolina seeks to increase transitional and permanent housing to help close the gap between demand for a place to stay and available beds. The state’s goal is to increase the number of available units for people exiting prison without a housing plan by 1,800 units each year by 2030.
The Department of Adult Correction currently contracts with nine vendors providing 216 transitional housing beds across the state. These beds are available to people leaving prison who are under probation, parole or post-release supervision and do not have home plans. A person generally stays for 90 days, up to a maximum of 120 days. The department spent $4.6 million on transitional housing in fiscal year 2022-23 — and is eyeing expansion.
By 2030, the department plans to support 10 new transitional housing programs. State leaders will also work to forge partnerships with public housing authorities, private landlords and foundations to expand housing opportunities.
Making the ‘business case’
Expanding housing options for this population won’t be cheap, said Thomas Coyne, housing project manager at the Council of State Governments Justice Center. But he said North Carolina needs to make the “business case” for creating more reentry housing by showing how the investment can help decrease recidivism and provide other benefits, such as reducing emergency room visits.
The average cost to incarcerate one person in a North Carolina prison is already steep at $148.67 per day. In comparison, providing transitional housing to one person costs the state $89.86 per day.
Having more beds for people to land in the community after prison could help contribute to people being more successful at reestablishing their lives — rather than returning to prison — leading to cost savings, Coyne said.
An April 2024 report released by the North Carolina Sentencing and Policy Advisory Commission found that from a sample of nearly 13,000 people released from North Carolina state prisons in fiscal year 2021, 44 percent were re-arrested within two years of their release, and 33 percent were sent back to prison — at a high cost to taxpayers.
Coyne outlined some of the ways the state could consider expanding housing options for this population.
With $8 million — $8,000 per person over 90 days — Coyne said 1,000 more people leaving prison could receive transitional housing, including employment services, housing navigation and group-based interventions.
And $4 million could be used to pilot permanent supportive housing for 201 formerly incarcerated veterans, he said. For about $20,000 per person, veterans could receive rental assistance for a year and wraparound supportive services, including housing navigation, mental health support and substance use treatment.
If work undertaken in the years ahead can decrease homelessness, those working with people leaving incarceration say there will be positive ripple effects in the community.
“When we keep these individuals housed, we’re also keeping the community safe,” Lynch said. “If we can kind of change the way people within the community think when it comes to individuals that are returning home from incarceration, I think we can really make a big impact.”
This article first appeared on North Carolina Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.