Few rentals for freed felons

Four years ago, Ranika Smith drove her boyfriend to a shopping center in Everett, not knowing, she said, that he planned to rob a bank.

Even after he got back into the car, she said, he didn't tell her what he'd done, leaving her to slowly figure it out in the hours that followed. Smith never called police, and in the end she served six months in Snohomish County Jail for second-degree robbery.

In the years since, the 25-year-old Seattle woman has drifted in and out of homelessness as landlords, one after another, have refused to rent to her because of her criminal history.

Social-justice groups and advocates for the homeless say such broad, automatic denial of housing to ex-offenders contributes to homelessness and often leads to recidivism. So does denying them jobs.

They want the city of Seattle to add people convicted of nonviolent and nonsexual crimes to a list of protected classes — making it illegal for landlords and employers to discriminate against them because of their criminal records.

The Seattle Human Rights Commission is hosting a public forum on the proposal at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Garfield Community Center, 2323 E. Cherry St. The city's Office of Civil Rights will consider that public feedback in drafting a measure that could be presented to the City Council as early as next year.

Julie Nelson, director of the civil-rights office, said judging from the questions her agency receives, discrimination in housing and employment for ex-offenders is a huge problem, one that advocates say impacts people of color at a higher rate.

In the end, Nelson said, any new policy is unlikely to ban such discrimination outright, but rather would grant employers and landlords some discretion in whom they rent to and hire, based on a person's criminal past.

"Fundamentally, it comes down to being a public-safety issue," Nelson said. "We don't want a system that sets people up for recidivism. It's a relatively minor thing we are asking landlords to do."

But officials with the Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound say the implications for property owners could be significant, taking away their control over who they rent to.

"It's one thing to grant protected-class status based on something that is beyond a person's control, such as race, sex, age," said Julie Johnson, president of the association. "It's quite another to grant it because of choices a person has made."

Home means stability

Backers of the proposal say a home provides the most basic form of stability for people.

When emerging from jail or prison, they say, it's the place from which a person begins looking for employment, reports to treatment programs or probation officers, and begins rebuilding relationships with friends and family — often including his or her own children.

The Center for Housing Policy, a national research group, found that two-thirds of ex-offenders who lacked appropriate housing after release committed crimes within the first 12 months of going free, while one-fourth of those with housing re-offended in the same time frame.

Laws banning discrimination against ex-offenders currently exist in some fashion in New York, Kansas, Hawaii, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Washington prohibits public employers from denying employment to ex-offenders, but those claiming discrimination must take their claims to court.

Mike Sanford, an assistant Seattle police chief, said 98 percent of people who go to prison return to society, and the two most important elements in getting them successfully settled are housing and sobriety, with employment a close third.

"If redintegration back into society doesn't go smoothly, we have a tough road trying to change their cycle," he said.

Sanford said the department is constantly looking at new ways to address the city's crime problems, including getting ex-offenders on a straight path.

"We can never arrest our way out of the problem," he said. "We want to get to people before they get to the bottom of their cycle."

Some trying to help

Across the region, there are a handful of programs designed to make it easier for those being released from jail and prison to get housing.

One, the Landlord Liaison Program, run by the YWCA, takes on some of the risk for property damage and unpaid rent when the 103 participating landlords rent to people with criminal records or bad credit.

Nelson, of the civil-rights office, said while special programs like that are useful in addressing the problem on a smaller scale, policy changes are necessary to address the issue more broadly.

KC Young, director of the Sojourner Place Transitional Housing, where Smith eventually found a place to live after being released from jail, agrees. One-third of those coming through her doors have felony records.

"They simply cannot find housing," Young said. "These are women who want to make a change in their lives."

Smith is currently in the homeless system, living with her 5-month-old son in a transitional housing unit in Sand Point that she obtained through the homeless-services provider Solid Ground.

She's enrolled in an accounting program at Highline Community College and works as a janitor.

But she knows that her lengthy record of drug offenses, trafficking in stolen property and driving with a suspended license will follow her for years to come. Her two older sons were taken from her when she went to jail in 2006.

She can remain in her current transitional unit for only two years.

Then, when she must find a permanent place to live, she expects her frustrating exchanges with landlords "will begin all over again."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com