A focus on finding homes for formerly incarcerated mothers wins this year’s HCP Challenge

Emma Donnelly and Christina Lee advocate for highly vulnerable populations in affordable housing policy competition

Houston’s affordable housing crisis impacts people across a broad spectrum of backgrounds and socioeconomic levels, in neighborhoods across the city. That’s why the Rice students participating in this year’s Houston-Centered Policy (HCP) Challenge approached the topic with an array of potential solutions.

Christina Lee and Emma Donnelly won first place in this year’s HCP Challenge. (Photos by Katharine Shilcutt)

Eight teams of students pitched a panel of experts their ideas in Farnsworth Pavilion Feb. 21, offering policy proposals that ranged from financial incentives for landlords aimed at decreasing discrimination against those with housing vouchers; intergenerational housing for elderly people struggling to get by; transit-centered development that recognizes cheaper housing often means a longer, tougher commute to work; healthy housing metrics that show developers the true cost of building in polluted areas; and ordinances aimed at creating more mixed-income housing by requiring builders to set aside a certain percentage of units as affordable.

“Every presentation was awesome. I’m just so impressed with this talent,” said Houston City Council member Dwight Boykins, who judged the presentation alongside Tom McCasland, director of Houston’s Housing and Community Development Department; Tory Gunsolley, president and CEO of the Houston Housing Authority; Amanda Timm, executive director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC); and Stephan Fairfield, founder and CEO of Houston’s Covenant Community Capital.

“We are honored to be here on the Rice University campus as a group and really and truly honored to be asked to come and do this, because you guys are the future,” Boykins said before announcing the winning team, which took home a $500 cash prize.

That team focused on a small but often overlooked demographic: formerly incarcerated mothers. Three out of four female prisoners in Texas are mothers, Emma Donnelly and Christina Lee explained during their presentation, and 79 percent of felons are routinely denied affordable housing. That means these women — and their children — represent a highly vulnerable population that’s routinely ignored and underserved.

Connor Rothschild, Marlena Fleck, Allison Yelvington and Alec Tobin presented a policy that would streamline permitting for accessory dwelling units.

“Christina inspired me to do the challenge but also pick incarcerated populations because she’s been working with New Hope Housing,” said Donnelly, a Duncan College freshman who met Lee during an Urban Immersion week focused on social justice issues.

In addition to her volunteer activities at the Houston non-profit devoted to building better affordable housing, Lee, a Lovett College sophomore studying political science, has also been interning in the Harris County criminal court system. The hands-on understanding acquired during both experiences was eye-opening.

“It’s a very different process reading about this in literature and then actually seeing it happen,” Lee said. “One of the things is that oftentimes, children are corollary and not really considered in this conversation. That’s what really motivated Emma and I to start focusing the conversation on who we are affecting, truly, by putting women in prison.”

Their policy proposal, termed Reentry Initiated through Services and Education, or RISE, promoted pre-exit programs and post-exit housing for mothers leaving the prison system as well as mentoring and advocacy services in areas of town where these women already live: the Fifth Ward, South Park and Greater Fondren Southwest among them.

Katherine Simmers and Luis Adame addressed the housing crisis from the perspective of elderly populations.

A lack of stable housing upon release, they noted, is a huge risk factor for recidivism. Equally pressing is the fact that children whose parents are involved in the criminal justice system face their own host of risks, including the high possibility of becoming involved in criminal activity themselves.

“What was really shocking to me is that we have all these statistics on the damages of incarceration to communities and families, but there’s really not a ton about what we can do to solve the problems,” Donnelly said of the semester’s worth of research she and Lee put into their presentation.

Offering potential solutions to these problems was gratifying, they said, as was the opportunity to learn how to craft the type of public policy that ultimately addresses these issues in the real world. And that’s ultimately the goal for the Center for Civic Leadership’s (CCL) annual competition, stewarded each year by Libby Vann, the center’s director of programs and partnerships.

The panel of judges included experts and policy-makers from across Houston.

“Dr. Vann really understands policy,” Donnelly said. “And in places where we had ideas, she taught us how to navigate and actually construct a policy because neither Emma nor I have experience in it.”

“One of the things that most impressed me with this year’s HCP Challenge participants was how motivated they were to seek out resources and knowledge off campus,” Vann said, citing work that each team did with local officials and community leaders all across Houston — even reaching out to affordable housing advocates as far away as Los Angeles. “One team even presented their policy ideas to a community health class at the University of Houston for critical feedback.

“They all recognized the value that this type of community-based research brought to their understanding of the issues and to the quality of their policy proposals,” she said. “This community-informed, engaged learning approach really captures the kind of work we do at the CCL, and it’s rewarding to see students embody that approach to public policy work.”