On any given day in Baltimore, 4,000 people are jailed. A shocking two thirds of those behind bars are locked up for nonviolent, even petty crimes, like trespassing or minor probation violations. Poor people and racial minorities are most likely to be arrested for these crimes and are overrepresented in the prison system.
Because they will have difficulty finding jobs and steady incomes to afford renting a home, many of these individuals will qualify for public housing upon their release. Private landlords will likely discriminate against them due to their criminal record. Adding insult to injury will be the discrimination they have come to expect from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City — a government agency tasked with providing public housing assistance to those who need it the most.
The Housing Authority currently excludes all individuals with a misdemeanor or felony conviction for a period of 18 months (for misdemeanor charges) or three years (for felony charges), regardless of the specifics of the crime. This means that those convicted of possessing a fake credit card, or attending a dog fight, or even being loud at night, can be denied affordable housing for years. Parents incarcerated for minor offenses are forbidden to rejoin their families living in city-run housing, leaving countless children without a mother or father at home.
As a family doctor who has spent the past four years working with homeless communities, I have seen what this really means for a person. I have watched a man slip into a diabetic coma because he had no home in which to store his insulin and witnessed a mother suffer from intractable depression as a result of being forcibly separated from her child. This has left me wondering: Exactly how does denying nonviolent ex-offenders a stable place to live make public housing developments safer?
Baltimore's incarceration rate is three times the national average. The Housing Authority of Baltimore City should follow Seattle's lead in limiting exclusion of ex-offenders to those who have committed felony level, violent offenses. Keeping nonviolent, already disenfranchised ex-offenders from securing affordable housing in the name of safety worsens the health of our city. More and more studies are beginning to show how poor access to housing not only worsens health but also increases criminal recidivism. Ironically, the very policies the Housing Authority claims will improve safety may actually be making this city a more dangerous place in which to live.
Fareen Karachiwalla is a family physicianand a recent graduate of the Masterof Public Health Program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; her email isfkarach1@jhu.edu.