Housing: The first and highest hurdle

Housing remains a huge barrier to successful reentry, according to dozens of interviews for this series over the past year.

And without stable housing, “you can’t get a job. You can’t focus on mental health, you can’t focus on substance use,” said Leslie Credle, who directs Justice 4 Housing, a Boston nonprofit dedicated to reentry housing.

“God, I can name like 12 organizations that are led by directly affected people. And none of us are getting the resources that we need to operate.”