How Colorado is Creating Housing Pathways After Prison

Formerly incarcerated Coloradans face substantial barriers to securing safe and stable housing, leaving many without a place to live upon release.¹ And when formerly incarcerated people experience homelessness, they are more likely to be arrested and incarcerated again.² In 2023, the Harvard Kennedy School’s Government Performance Lab (GPL) began working with the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) to identify people in their system most at risk of being released without a stable place to live and to target housing resources to prevent them from exiting into homelessness. Through this work, the GPL and CDOC sought to answer the following core questions:

1. Is the Department of Corrections able to effectively identify people who are incarcerated and at high risk of experiencing homelessness upon release? What tools are used to identify high-risk clients, and how is this data tracked?

2. What housing resources are currently available to people exiting the state’s prison system? Are those with the greatest needs being effectively prioritized and connected to these resources?

3. What new or reallocated housing resources could be leveraged to better address unmet housing and service needs among reentry clients with the greatest needs?

By the end of a 12-month implementation period, 16 CDOC facilities had adopted a new Housing Stability Assessment developed with the GPL. During this period, staff assessed 635 people exiting prison, 182 of whom were determined to be at high risk of exiting into homelessness.

The GPL also worked with CDOC to develop a new referral pathway that connects people with a high risk of experiencing homelessness to the state’s limited supportive housing units. Through the initial pilot, 33 people have been placed in supportive housing. CDOC plans to place people in additional units as they become available. This publication outlines Colorado’s three-step approach to supporting people exiting prison at risk of homelessness, offering a model that other jurisdictions can adapt to their systems.

Notes

¹Caterina Gouvis Roman and Jeremy Travis, “Where Will I Sleep Tomorrow? Housing, Homelessness, and the Returning Prisoner,” Housing Policy Debate 17, no. 2 (2006): 389–418, https://doi.org/10.1080/10511482.2006.9521574.

²Lucius Couloute, “Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among Formerly Incarcerated People.” Prison Policy Initiative, August 2018, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/housing.html; Sarah Gillespie and Samantha Batko, “Five Charts That Explain the Homelessness-Jail Cycle—And How to Break It,” Urban Institute, September 16, 2020, https://www.urban.org/features/five-charts-explain-homelessness-jail-cycle-and-how-break-it.