Podcast: How the Housing Crisis Impacts People With Criminal Records

A podcast episode from Next City explains how changes in local laws could help prevent people with criminal convictions from becoming homeless.

For a long time, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has contributed to the problem by giving each local public housing authority (PHA) room to discriminate against people with convictions. In 2016, the agency published a memo clarifying that PHAs couldn’t have blanket prohibitions on all criminal offenses and providing screening criteria.

However, discrimination at public housing authorities still occurs, prompting HUD to issue a proposal this year that would bar PHAs from “categorically denying apartments because of criminal convictions.”

The episode goes into detail about how the housing crisis particularly affects people with convictions, who are almost 10 times as likely to experience homelessness than the general public. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, “Local PHAs can — and do — exercise a great deal of discretion when crafting and implementing their policies that determine who is and isn’t eligible for low-income public housing. While HUD provides guidelines on criteria for access and denial (24 CFR §982.553), individual PHAs often make their policies even more restrictive than the HUD recommendations.”