CORPORATION FOR SUPPORTIVE HOUSING
RECEIVES $6 MILLION ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION GRANT
Returning Home initiative focuses on supportive housing for people leaving the criminal justice system

OAKLAND, CA, March 14, 2006—The Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), a national nonprofit that helps communities create supportive housing—permanent, affordable housing with services to prevent and end homelessness—has received a $6 million, three-year grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The grant will fund the Returning Home initiative, which focuses on systems with the greatest impact on people leaving or at risk of returning to prison and jail, and whose complex health conditions such as mental illness, HIV/AIDS, and substance-use histories make them more likely to experience recurring health crises and a cycle of inappropriate and costly incarceration and homelessness.

Every year in America, 650,000 people are released from prisons and over 7 million individuals are released from jail. Three out of four have a substance-abuse problem, and more often than not, they are returning to already impoverished communities. By providing housing and services that are often difficult to access upon release, supportive housing can stabilize a population whose untreated chronic health, mental health, and substance-use issues would otherwise frequently lead to homelessness, relapse, and recidivism.

Expected outcomes of Returning Home include: evidence that supportive housing reduces recidivism; examples of reinvestment of criminal justice system resources in supportive housing; development of more supportive housing champions within the criminal justice system; and creation of more supportive housing for people exiting prisons and jails. CSH will focus on Returning Home activities in New York, California, and Illinois—three of the largest criminal justice systems in the country—and undertake some targeted work in Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Iowa, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. A significant portion of the funding will be regranted to nonprofit organizations to help stimulate the creation of supportive housing for the target population.

Study after study has proven that supportive housing is a cost-effective approach to keeping people housed, off the streets, and out of shelters. Research on public expenditures in New York City found that each unit of supportive housing saved over $16,000 in emergency, public health, and shelter resources per year, almost entirely offsetting the cost of the supportive housing itself. Similar results have been discovered in cities around the country.

“We are grateful to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for making this major commitment to the addressing the critical need for housing and support services among people exiting jail and prison, including the more than 1 in 10 who are homeless in the months before and after their incarceration,” said Carla Javits, President and CEO of CSH. “Returning Home provides a groundbreaking opportunity to reduce recidivism and the high costs associated with it, and make our communities safer and healthier places.”