Second Chance partnered with Blueline Development, a Montana-based developer with decades of experience in affordable housing, to find the capital for the $13 million project. Sara Fleming PATH sits on a plot of land behind Elevation Christian Church, which sold the land to Second Chance Center and has supported the project. Already, the project has drawn passionate community support, though not without controversy. He hopes its impact will extend beyond the families that live there, and show others in the community what the “housing first” model makes possible for those experiencing homelessness. “Every time I talk to someone who’s moving in and they start telling me how many years they’ve been out there, it just really emphasizes for me how important this is for people’s lives,” Latif says.
In Colorado, hundreds of former prisoners parole without housing every month. Nationally, formerly incarcerated people are ten times more likely to become homeless than the general population, and people experiencing homelessness are eleven times more likely to face incarceration than the general population. Many get out of prison only to find themselves living on the streets.
And certain felonies can also disqualify them from public housing.ĭenver’s affordable-housing crunch has only worsened the problem. It has always been difficult for people with felonies on their records to find a landlord who will take them, never mind the challenge of cobbling together financial resources to pay rent immediately after leaving prison. Second Chance Center has long identified housing as one of the most challenging barriers that formerly incarcerated people face in reintegrating to society and moving on to stable, crime-free lives. Many also have behavioral health disorders, physical disabilities or substance-abuse disorders, which have made it all the more difficult for them to find stable housing.įor Hassan Latif, Second Chance founder and executive director, PATH is the realization of a dream, backed by years of hard work and uphill battles. They've been involved with the justice system. That group included 49 adults and 13 children, who moved from no home at all to brand-new apartments on Alameda Parkway in Aurora.Īll of the permanent supportive housing complex's adult residents have been chronically homeless (those who have been homeless for over one year, or who have had at least four bouts of homelessness in the past three years) and earn under 30 percent of the local area median income. On February 24, Providence at the Heights, or PATH, welcomed Hampton among its first residents. Often, landlords would tell him that his felony barred him from even being considered.īut things have finally turned around for Hampton, thanks to Second Chance Center, a nationally recognized Aurora prison re-entry nonprofit that Westword profiled in December. The reason for many of those rejections, Hampton explains, was his criminal record, which has followed him to every city and state in which he’s tried to settle. In the meantime, Hampton remained homeless, staying in shelters, crashing on friends’ couches, going in and out of jail. Private landlords, the Section 8 voucher program, subsidized affordable housing.they all resulted in one rejection letter after another. “You name it, I had put in for it,” he says. Christopher Hampton estimates that in the four and a half years since he moved to Denver from Arizona, he’s filled out over 300 housing applications.
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