They pair former inmates with homeowners, with unusual success. And they’re expanding to Long Beach

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A lot can change in 16 years. Cannabis became legal in California. Cars began driving themselves. And smartphones made the slow march into adulthood, changing how we pay bills, apply for a job, arrange a ride or doctor visit.

Daaron Hammond, unfortunately, wasn’t around for the transition. Since 2008, the 32-year-old had been in prison.

Arrested at 16 years old and sentenced to 38 years over two attempted murders and seven counts of robbery, Hammond entered the prison system with an eighth-grade education amid Barack Obama’s first term and a global recession.

When he got out less than a year ago, he moved into a crummy one-bedroom apartment in South Los Angeles, near the USC campus.

“Half of my life was in there and half of my life was on the streets,” Hammond said.

But a lot can also change in six months. For Hammond, everything did: He became certified as a legal assistant through Coastline College. His parole ended. He moved in with his aunt and uncle.

“I would’ve fallen back in,” Hammond said. “That was always my fallback, that if things don’t go my way I know how to get what I want.”

The latter transition was possible through the Homecoming Project, which pairs the formerly incarcerated in need of housing with residents for a six-month stay. In exchange, the nonprofit pays the host a monthly stipend of $1,400 and offers skills training and case management through a “navigator” assigned to the former inmate.

It’s a simple, but complicated, grant-funded exchange that has been in operation since 2018, where it began in Oakland before expanding to Contra Costa County. Hammond is one of the first set to finish their program in Los Angeles County, where the nonprofit is looking to replicate its operation.

Hammond and his family attended the group’s first public forum in Long Beach Thursday night at Page Against the Machine, a local bookstore in the Bluff Heights neighborhood.

“We’re just happy to be in a place to help him,” said Clanny Green, Hammond’s uncle. “It’s certainly a tough transition.”

The process is simple, at least in theory. Would-be tenants are taken through an extensive screening and matching process, asked about everything from bedtimes to pet peeves, cooking preferences and drug habits. Once a pair is matched, they meet. If that goes well, the housemates sign a six-month agreement.

The funding comes from a mix of private donations and state grants, said project director Bernadette Butler.

Six years into the program, more than 130 former inmates have finished and found permanent housing. According to the Homecoming Project website, about 95% graduate from the program with a job or enrolled in school or workforce training. None have returned to prison.

Several participants have continued to live with their hosts under a separate lease agreement. “I’ve yet to meet a host that has said, ‘Oh, I’m never doing this again,’” Butler said.

At first, the biggest complaint was that participants didn’t recycle, Butler joked. The chief complaint now?

“The participants are so quiet,” Butler said. “And the reason why they’re so quiet is because they are traumatized.”

The program is specifically for the formerly incarcerated who served more than 10 years in a state prison and who had been freed less than one year ago.

Without a credit history, rental history, credit cards or cash, it’s incredibly difficult to readjust, especially for those who have finished longer sentences.

Navigators work with former inmates on how to secure a driver’s license and a job, paying bills and other adult skills needed to traverse today’s social strata.

This comes as California’s prison population is in continual decline. Now at about 95,000, it is expected to drop by 2,000 or so inmates by the end of the summer. Each week, people are released into Los Angeles County, most with $200 in gate money, no nearby relatives and little prospect.

Part of that, Butler said, is why there is a distinct pipeline in California, one that runs people from poverty to prison to homelessness.

According to a February release by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 66% of inmates released from the state’s prisons will re-offend within four years. About 60% of formerly incarcerated are unemployed.

Meanwhile, the University of San Francisco found in a 2023 analysis on local point-in-time homelessness surveys that one in five people entered homelessness directly after serving time in prison.

“Many of them went in when they were 17, 18, 19,” Butler said. “There’s a lot that you need to learn and there’s a lot of barriers you’re going to face when you come out. … They’re like tourists here in a world they do not know, in a decade that they do not know.”

The goal is to have at least 30 participants in the Los Angeles area by the end of the year, Butler said. With grant money in hand and a waiting list of participants, they need hosts.

In the coming weeks, they plan to make a presence known to Long Beach: church visits, community meetings, farmers markets. Ashley McKay, a program associate with Impact Justice, said she spent the day going door to door, stuffing fliers into mailboxes. “I was the mailman for four days,” she joked, adding she recently found that Long Beach had 115 neighborhood associations.

For more information, or if you would like to sign up, visit the Homecoming Project website.