Marc Rowley and Hector Gonzalez walked through the door of Hudson Link’s office in downtown Ossining empty-handed. The two men — both formerly incarcerated graduates of the organization’s prison education program — had just returned from the DMV, where Gonzalez had tried to get a driver’s license. It was the first official ID he’d ever had. But they’d hit a snag: he needed proof of address.
The two men met years earlier at the nearby Sing Sing Correctional Facility, New York’s oldest prison. Rowley was now 18 months into his own release and living in housing Hudson Link operates for formerly incarcerated alumni. When Gonzalez asked for help navigating the DMV — just three weeks after his release from serving more than 28 years in prison — Rowley’s response was immediate: “I’ll take you myself.”
In the office where returning alumni regularly drop in for support, a Hudson Link staff member overheard their conversation. They pulled out a blank envelope, wrote down Gonzalez’s address — one of Hudson Link’s houses in Ossining — and dropped it in the mail. Gonzalez could return to the DMV the following week with proof of address in hand.
For formerly incarcerated people like Gonzalez, earning a degree behind bars is only the first step toward rebuilding their lives. But without stable housing, the rest becomes nearly impossible. For Gonzalez, Hudson Link’s housing allowed him to get an ID, find employment, and build a foundation — tasks that would have been extremely difficult without a permanent address.
And the need for such support is growing. With the return of Pell Grants for incarcerated students in 2023, the number of people coming home with college degrees is expected to increase, according to Ruth Delaney, director of Vera Institute’s Unlocking Potential initiative. Recognizing that housing underpins successful reentry, some prison education programs are expanding to provide their alumni with a place to live alongside job assistance and other support.
In New York, Hudson Link, which has offered college courses in prisons for more than 25 years, now operates reentry housing that provides rent-free accommodation and wraparound services to help its alumni rebuild their lives. In California, several campuses of the California State University system have opened dedicated housing for formerly incarcerated students. Thousands of miles east, the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative opened three houses in the Nashville area in 2024.
Formerly incarcerated people are 10 times more likely than the general population to be homeless, due to factors including scarcity of affordable housing, public housing bans for certain criminal records, employment barriers, and rental policies that bar people with criminal records. For formerly incarcerated college students specifically, 36% experience homelessness.
More than two decades ago, when Sean Pica was a student in the same program he now leads, he wrote his capstone project on a manual typewriter while incarcerated at Sing Sing. It was a research proposal for using formerly incarcerated people to rehabilitate dilapidated homes in impoverished communities.
Years later, Pica had that yellowed capstone sitting on his desk when a donor stopped by. The different fonts from the manual typewriter caught her eye. When Pica explained he’d written it 19 years earlier while living in Sing Sing, she wrote a check for $500,000 on the spot.
“We bought a house before we even planned it,” Pica said.
More and more Hudson Link alumni were coming home, and Pica saw a gap: “New York has a tremendous amount of incredible reentry support, but not reentry support for formerly incarcerated college educated people.”
Removing the pressures of reentry
Hudson Link opened its first house in 2018. The program, called New Beginnings, operates on a model designed to remove the pressures that can derail reentry. The houses are rent-free, with no time limits on how long residents can stay. “I don’t want a clock ticking,” Pica says. “You move in and now you hear that clock? Like ‘Oh shit, I got 69 days to figure out where to go next.'”
Hudson Link hires its own alumni to renovate the houses, paying them by the day. This provides immediate employment for residents while they’re building the spaces they and future alumni will live in. The houses provide furnished rooms and the cupboards are stocked with food. Residents can focus on building careers, pursuing graduate degrees, or simply saving money — goals that would be difficult or impossible while scrambling to pay rent and meet basic needs.
The model is working. Two of the first residents who renovated that initial house are now homeowners themselves, Pica said. Currently, 23 residents live in three houses in Ossining. A fourth house with nine beds is currently under construction.
All the houses are within walking distance of Hudson Link’s office, a deliberate choice that makes support easily accessible. The office itself feels more like a living room than an administrative space. Returning alumni drop in regularly to get help with everything from job applications to transportation tickets. They can also go “shopping” next door at “The Boutique,” where they can pick out donated professional attire and other clothing.
Hudson Link’s second house, dedicated to women, was named after the program’s original coordinator, Miss Muhammad — known to everyone as Mo — who was herself formerly incarcerated. Like the men’s houses, it provides rent-free accommodation and wraparound support, serving women who often face additional barriers during reentry, including limited housing options and family reunification challenges.
‘The single hardest thing I’ve done’
For all its successes, Pica is blunt about the difficulties of running housing alongside an education program. “It has been the single hardest thing I’ve done, personally or professionally,” he says.
The challenges are both structural and deeply personal. There are house rules, and Pica has had to have difficult conversations about substance abuse and even ask residents to leave. “I have folks living in these houses that I was in a [cell] block with,” he says.
The hard work has paid off for the residents. For Gonzalez, the housing provided breathing room during an overwhelming transition. In those first weeks home, it became a safe place as he reacclimated.
A year and a half later, the house continues to be his base as he commutes daily to New York City for his job at a city-funded alternative-to-incarceration program where his behavioral science degree and lived experience help him guide others away from incarceration. A monthly pass on the regional train costs nearly $300, but not paying rent has allowed him to save money toward getting his own place.
“I’m gonna work towards finding the right place for me, but I know that I have this to fall back on until I’m ready to take that next step,” he said. “It’s one less thing to worry about.”
He’s planning to move to his own apartment soon, sharing rent with someone to be able to stay closer to work. Now, as a veteran of Hudson Link’s housing program, he’s also in a position to help newer residents navigate their first few weeks home, just as Rowley once helped him. “It’s like an ongoing cycle where we rotate and help each other,” Gonzalez said.