SF Welcomes ‘Spare Room’ Program to Help Formerly Incarcerated People Find Housing

Surmiche “Memi” Vaughn had doubts about opening up her home to a stranger who had been formerly incarcerated.

“ I was super skeptical,” she said.

At the time, Vaughn was a single mother of twins who were headed to college, and wanted her kids to graduate with no student debt. She said her father suggested she sign up for The Homecoming Project, which offers $50 a day to people who are willing to rent out a room to someone who has recently been released from prison.

That was three years ago. Since then, Vaughn said she and her husband have hosted 19 formerly incarcerated participants between her two homes in Oakland, and her kids, now in their third year of college, haven’t had to take out any loans. Vaughn said the partnership is a two-way street.

“ It’s funny because they always say that they learn a lot from me, and I say that I’ve learned a lot from them,” Vaughn said.

The Homecoming Project launched in Alameda County in 2018 and has since expanded into Contra Costa and Los Angeles counties. Its growing footprint now includes San Francisco — thanks to new funding from the state of California, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation and the Menorah Park Community Impact Fund, according to Bernadette Butler, director of the Housing Lab at Impact Justice, the nonprofit that runs The Homecoming Project.

In the past, the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office partnered with The Homecoming Project to find housing for formerly incarcerated people. Until now, this meant they could only place people with hosts in other counties.

“We don’t ever, as San Franciscans want to say, ‘we are looking to other counties for services that our families here in San Francisco need,” said Danielle Harris, an attorney with the city’s Public Defender’s Office.

During the program, participants receive case management to help them find a job and a more permanent place of their own.

“This is at the heart a way to address homelessness, and homelessness and reentry are overlapping issues,” Butler said.

She cited a grim statistic from a 2018 report by the Prison Policy Initiative: Formerly incarcerated people are nearly ten times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population.

“This is a real way for community members to help solve this issue by opening up their homes, and they’re also able to do something, and that’s transformative and really help someone,” Butler said.

Over 200 people have graduated from the Homecoming Project since its inception, and the program claims that 98% of participants have graduated with either a job or an “education opportunity” and that none have returned to prison while in the program.

The Homecoming Project is now looking for hosts in San Francisco. The organization said no one living in the city has signed up yet.

Philippe Kelly, who was incarcerated for six years at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center, was placed in transitional housing in Oakland after release. He said he wasn’t happy with that living arrangement, so he’s grateful he was able to find housing through The Homecoming Project.

Kelly said the first step involved touring potential homes and meeting the hosts. He recalled being pleasantly surprised that he would actually get a say in where he might live.

“It gives you an opportunity to engage with the host to see if it’s gonna be a good fit or not, versus, we’ll just stick you here without another option, because if it doesn’t work out, what happens then?” Kelly said.

After touring a house that wasn’t a good fit, he met Vaughn and her husband. He told the couple he was an aspiring audio engineer and producer — a craft he hoped to pursue during the homestay — and he found the couple to be supportive.

“ I thought, this is where I want to be, because they understood the needs that I had at the time, and were going to allow me to explore those things and make my situation in their home that much easier,” Kelly said.

Kelly now lives in a separate house owned by Vaughn.

“Unfortunately, I pay rent now,” he said, laughing.

Kelly said he has a job, and he’s still pursuing audio engineering on the side. He credits his success to the work he’s done on himself and having a welcoming home to help his transition back into society after incarceration.

“To be able to live in a place where you can walk outside your door and just breathe the fresh air, you can look around, feel safe, comfortable and happy means a lot,” he said.