Four Steps to Expand Access to Housing for People in the Justice System with Behavioral Health Needs

State and local leaders are beginning to understand that providing affordable, permanent housing is fundamental to reducing justice involvement, particularly for people with behavioral health needs. However, affordable housing is scarce nationwide,¹ and people who have been involved in the justice system face a number of barriers to accessing available housing, including stigma and prohibitions based on criminal records. These challenges disproportionately impact Black and Latinx people, who already face higher rates of incarceration and homelessness than the population as a whole.²

In light of these challenges, this brief presents four steps state leaders should take to increase housing opportunities and improve justice and health outcomes for this population. The first two steps (Collaborate, Assess) provide a foundation to make effective need-based connections to housing and maximize the impact of subsequent investments. The next two steps (Connect, Expand) focus on connecting people with housing that meets their needs and making strategic longer-term investments in housing and services.

Step 1: Collaborate

People with behavioral health needs and people who experience homelessness come into contact with the justice system and other public agencies often. These people may frequently utilize resources, such as emergency housing, medical, and other public systems of care. Structured collaboration between the justice, housing/homeless assistance, and health/behavioral health systems is essential to maximize the limited resources of each, as well as to effectively connect people with housing that appropriately addresses their needs.

Action Steps For State Leaders
Ensure meaningful cross-sector representation in the key planning bodies for each of these systems.

● Establish leadership-level representation in and build working relationships across state-level bodies, such as reentry councils, interagency councils on homelessness, and behavioral health planning councils.

● Set guidelines and/or provide financial or other incentives to establish similar cross-representation in local-level bodies such as criminal justice advisory boards or Stepping Up³ Steering Committees.

● Provide guidelines and/or incentives for participation of people with lived experience in the justice system and people from historically marginalized communities in these state and local bodies to ensure their voices guide critical planning decisions.

Formalize collaboration mechanisms to achieve shared goals.

● Specify roles and responsibilities through statute, memoranda of understanding (MOUs), or other written agreements. These agreements can establish shared public health and safety goals, such as reducing arrests of people experiencing homelessness. They can also build a foundation for prioritizing the target population as future housing resource decisions are made.

● Establish data-sharing agreements that facilitate matching to identify people who are frequent users of multiple public systems of care and target housing services and supports. State leaders can also provide or identify technical assistance resources at the local level to establish these agreements and assist with matching efforts. These agreements should specify which data will be shared, with which people/agencies, and under what circumstances.

● Develop cross-system definitions of racial equity that account for process and outcome measures (such as who is referred to housing vs. who receives housing placements) as well as historical experiences of trauma among the target population. Work toward agreement on how these definitions will be used to inform community partnerships, resource allocation decisions, policy development, data collection and analysis, and other key areas of work.⁴

Facilitate regular cross-system training to equip staff to meet housing and service needs.

● Conduct these trainings at both the state and local levels and include discharge planning and community supervision staff; key housing agencies, such as Continuums of Care (CoCs);⁵ diversion program staff; and health/behavioral health providers.

● Focus training content on building working relationships and establishing contacts across these systems as well as helping staff and leaders understand the available resources and constraints of each.

Step 2: Assess

Early homelessness risk screening allows diversion staff and discharge planners in jails and prisons to focus on people with the highest risk to reduce their chances of exiting the justice system into homelessness. By conducting regular housing needs assessments, staff can connect people with housing that best meets their needs while maximizing limited resources. On a community or state level, these efforts also quantify the scope of housing need.

Action Steps For State Leaders
Design and implement screening and assessment tools.

● Create a brief set of questions to screen for history of homelessness and potential housing instability to assess for homelessness risk at release from prison/jail or exit from diversion programs.

● Expand this pre-discharge assessment to include housing and supportive service needs as resources permit.

● Select and implement an existing, generally accepted tool⁶ and/or draw on existing examples from homeless assistance providers or other jurisdictions.

● Evaluate any tools developed or chosen for any racial and ethnic biases, engaging research partners and community organizations as needed.

Provide resources and expertise to integrate these assessments into existing workflows and scale their use statewide.

● Determine natural points in the state prison discharge planning process and key responsible staff to integrate these assessments. Require their implementation as is feasible.

● Identify local jail leaders who are interested in implementing similar processes (and/or mandate locally if politically feasible) and provide technical assistance as needed.

● Document successes and lessons learned to serve as “proof of concept” for future expansion into additional jails. Disseminate these lessons through state and federal partners, such as sheriffs’ associations and the National Institute of Corrections.

● Identify staffing resources to scale up implementation in additional jails, particularly where there are existing diversion programs, whether through direct funding or in-reach via staffing arrangements with outside social service agencies.

● Conduct regular follow-up assessments, as resources permit, with people released from prison onto parole supervision. Provide probation departments and diversion programs with resources and technical assistance for these assessments, as needed.

Report publicly on homelessness risk and housing needs among the prison and jail populations.

● Develop state-level data collection and reporting infrastructure to support these efforts. Share this infrastructure with local jail leaders as resources and privacy requirements allow, including provision of technical assistance. Provide additional incentives for jail reporting, such as state financial assistance, as feasible.

● Analyze homelessness risk and housing needs data by race and ethnicity to understand facility and community-level disparities in these risks and needs. Use the results to inform discharge planning practices as well as resource advocacy strategies.

Step 3: Connect

Systematic connections between the justice, housing, and behavioral health systems (established in Step 1: Collaborate) help ensure that people do not exit incarceration into homelessness. These connections also ensure access to permanent housing assistance and the supportive services to succeed in that housing. Housing and supportive services can also be effective prevention tools that ensure that people at risk of justice involvement have the supports they need to stay out of the system in the first place. Additionally, they allow for the formation of referral relationships while reducing potential policy barriers between diversion and discharge planning staff and local housing providers.

Action Steps For State Leaders
Facilitate the establishment of outreach efforts.

● Promote outreach efforts among law enforcement, health/behavioral health providers, and community-based outreach staff to proactively respond to homelessness, de-escalate crisis situations or minor crimes that could lead to justice involvement, and directly connect people with shelter, housing, and supportive service resources.

● Provide technical assistance and financial support to local police departments to establish Homeless Outreach Teams (HOTs) that focus on the above activities with an “enforcement last” perspective (potentially using a co-responder model) and/or support to social service agencies to implement non–law-enforcement responses.