Issue Statement and Context
Many of our residents returning home to Miami-Dade from jail or prison have difficulties finding a safe stable place to live, especially the kind of supportive housing that can make it easy to access services for mental health or substance use disorders. Instead, they are ending up in our shelters, streets, and substandard housing.
The County has made significant progress in its efforts to break that cycle through numerous diversion programs and training for our first responders and is already achieving transformative reductions in our jail population. The lesson we are learning is that to continue to pursue this transformation, it is essential to ensure that quality supportive housing is accessible to our returning citizens.
Detailed Action Summary
Provide long-term supportive housing for people returning from the criminal justice system so that they can reintegrate seamlessly back into the community.
- Incentivize development of new housing that caters to the specific needs of returning citizens, integrated into broader housing developments. Consider using County-owned land to achieve this.
- Partner with community-based organizations that can scale up their existing supportive housing models by helping them acquire properties to amplify their social service offerings for justice-involved residents.
- Expand the role of community partners that can help returning residents navigate housing assistance, including helping people apply for rental assistance and search for housing.
- Create incentives for landlords to accept and house justice-involved tenants and help to mitigate concerns from landlords that tenants may fail to pay rent.