Expanding Permanent Supportive Housing to the Hardest to Serve

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) is requesting $1,100,000 in BJA “Second Chance Act Pay for Success Initiative” funding for Permanent Supportive Housing.  Funding will be used for the PADOC’s “Expanding Permanent Supportive Housing to the Hardest to Serve” project.

Through this grant opportunity, PADOC will expand eligibility of its current Housing Assistance Program to refer 250 hard to serve reentrants without current income to the program, including reentrants still residing in a state prison due to lack of a home plan.  Hard to serve individuals may include:

Individuals with a medical or mental disability that is keeping them from meaningful work but is not severe enough to warrant nursing home or psychiatric placement;
Elderly inmates who may have been incarcerated for several decades and may be without employment because of lack of work history, also resulting in very little social security income; and
Individuals who are difficult to place in housing because of the nature of their offense, such as arson or sex offenses.

Using grant funds, PADOC will incentivize housing providers to place hard to serve individuals by providing outcome payments for targeted measures being achieved, including whether or not an individual recidivates.  There is a clear financial advantage to PADOC when reentrants obtain housing as quickly as possible after becoming paroled; there is also a potential larger cost savings to be gained by reducing recidivism.  The overall recidivism rate for reentrants from a state prison is 64.7%.  However, individuals who are released to a community corrections facility rather than a home plan have an 11.9% higher recidivism rate than those released to a home plan: 69.8% of individuals released to a BCC facility recidivate, as opposed to 57.9% of individuals released with a home plan.

PADOC will partner with Third Sector Capital Partners to convene a stakeholder group to gather feedback and to define outcomes and associated payments.  Potential outcome measures include: smaller “milestone” payments for initial referral, initial placement into house, completion of a case management plan, and sustaining housing placement; a larger outcome payment for identification of a permanent housing solution; and a recidivism payment based on whether or not the individual served recidivated.  Finally, PADOC staff will receive training and technical assistance on the outcomes-based contracting process to expand the model to other PADOC contracts.