Currently the City is considering “doing something” about the fact that many people with criminal offenses on their record have a difficult time finding a place to live. It is a real problem. But in true form, the Council simply wants to mandate that people who rent housing would have to simply ignore that record all together. This mandate won’t work. As I’ve written before, here and on Facebook, many times, the problem with renters with criminal records, bad credit, or spotty rental history is risk. Helping to offset this risk is a big part of making it easier for people who are motivated to get back on track to find housing. Another problem is vacant houses waiting for demolition before new housing is constructed. Because of problems with the Tenant Relocation Assistance Ordinance (TRAO) and rules preventing demolition of existing structures until a permit is issued, builders end up having to leave houses vacant to avoid slowdowns or problems with relocating existing tenants. Those buildings end up being havens for crime and squatters and even arson.

Imagine if we found a solution to both of these problems.

Yesterday, I spoke with Amy King who owns Square Peg Development in Seattle. King and her husband have created a non-profit called Weld Seattle that is working with builders to create short term housing for people releasing from the prison system using temporarily vacant housing waiting for demolition. Weld is an impressive start up, only 9 months old, that tackles the challenges of keeping vacant buildings secure, providing low cost housing for hard to house people coming out of jail, and creates training opportunities and jobs in the construction industry where labor is scarce.

Here’s a simple explanation of what Weld Seattle is all about:

Vision
Everyone deserves an opportunity to reintegrate, belong and thrive.
Mission
To ensure a successful reintegration by overcoming obstacles to housing, employment and community connection.
Our People
Individuals actively engaged in reintegrating into their community following incarceration or recovery.

As I’ve written previously, there are many challenges to people when they leave prison or jail, and housing is a big one. People who otherwise would be released often have to wait, in jail, while they find an address to release to. This means extra time in a cell for them, and more costs for the government. The Department of Correction’s voucher program is a big help in this transition, but it’s often not enough. Landlords don’t have a crystal ball that can tell them how a person is going to act once they get into an apartment; all they have to go on is past behavior.

For most of us, this isn’t that big of a deal. But when the past includes criminal behavior and jail time as well as bad credit and no or little good rental history, people renting housing just don’t have much to go on to protect themselves from bad outcomes. It’s not a question of being biased against people with jail time in their past, but trying to figure out what comes next and will the person end up being a financial liability or worse in the future.

What Weld Seattle does is create value for builders, putting people in homes that otherwise would be vacant, the beginnings of a good rental history, training and a job for the person exiting the system, and more workers for a labor market in housing construction that is running low on qualified workers. We’ll be watching and working with Weld Seattle closely both to create safer and higher use for vacant buildings and to support Weld Seattle’s broader effort to take advantage of the tremendous potential of people coming out of prison.

The City Council could easily make this harder to do by passing a mandate that doesn’t take into account what people leaving prison need (which is more than just a lease and an apartment, but a job and a support system) and what landlords and people renting their homes need to offset the risk of renting to someone with a record. We all need to take a chance on people who are trying to turn their lives around, and they need support, and opportunity not just a mandate that is intended to punish land lords and that won’t give them the kind of broader support for them to be successful.