Everyone deserves a safe, stable place to live.
Women come to Hour Children having no other place to go, and determined to change the course of their lives. Hour Children’s residences provide a safe, affordable place for formerly incarcerated mothers and their children to live, along with the comprehensive support needed for lasting change.
Finding affordable housing is a major obstacle that formerly incarcerated people face. Private and public housing discrimination creates systemic barriers that perpetuate the prison-to-shelter pipeline. The Prison Policy Initiative noted that formerly incarcerated people are 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public and 15% of incarcerated people experience homelessness in the year leading up to their incarceration. In New York City, 52 percent of formerly incarcerated people are released to a shelter and there are 1,600 people on parole in shelters at any given time. A majority of these formerly incarcerated homeless people are Black or Latinx women.
Lacking a suitable place to call home, people have nowhere to store fresh food, nowhere to hang their clothes in preparation for a job interview, no secure place to keep valuables, and no permanent address for school or job applications. These conditions can lead to a cycle of homelessness and repeated incarceration.
Women report that Hour Children’s nurturing community has become the family they never had – supporting them as well as challenging them – and that these connections have enabled them to change those behaviors that can often lead to re-arrest, contributing to a cycle of incarceration, homelessness, and poverty.
Hour Children’s six communal residences, located in the Queens neighborhoods of Long Island City, Astoria, Richmond Hill, Corona, and Flushing, provide a safe and supportive environment for women starting the reentry process and reuniting with their children. Permanent supportive housing options help families as they become independent, recognizing that everyone could use assistance with the challenges of balancing working with raising a family, and navigating the pressures of New York City’s high cost of living.
Our Mental Health Services team is available to support all of our residents. Licensed social workers, including a Child and Adolescent Therapist, meet regularly with women and children to provide group and individual therapy and case management services, paying special attention to the complex issues related to reentry and family reunification.
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