Doe Fund Says Facility Near School Would Not Be a ‘Halfway House’
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While some Brooklyn parents protested the proposed opening of what they called a “halfway house” across the street from their children’s schools, the Doe Fund, the New York anti-homelessness organization behind the facility, said that the facility is not a threat.
The Coalition of United Parents to Protect Our Children, made up mostly of PTA members from two public middle schools, 57 and 385, that share a building at 125 Stuyvesant Ave. in Brooklyn, held a rally yesterday outside the City Department of Education to protest the opening of First Step Home, a residential facility that will house 45 ex-offenders enrolled in the Doe Fund’s Ready, Willing & Able program. Neither the Department of Education nor the city government is involved in the facility, which is scheduled to open on October 21 at 124 Stuyvesant Ave.
“First of all, it’s not a halfway house,” a spokesman for the Doe Fund, Bruce Bobbins, said. “It’s a full-scale 18-month program. … The people who live there will have gone through an enormously stringent screening process. They get housing, life-skills training, and educational opportunities. Sex offenders will not be able to apply.”
Mr. Bobbins said the facility will make the neighborhood safer. “These are ex-offenders. If they did not come into our facility, they would be free to move back to Brooklyn on they’re own. Here they are in the strictest facility – we know where they are at every minute. During the day, we know they’re working because we put them to work. At night, there’s a nine o’clock curfew.”
The program has a recidivism rate of 8%, according to a Doe Fund fact sheet, compared to 34% within two years and 41% within three years for Brooklyn overall.
The founder of the parents’ protest group, David Grinage, said he wasn’t reassured. “They say have a 92% success rate. What that says is that there’s an 8% failure rate. They say that there is zero tolerance for violations of their rules and regulations. Unfortunately, one of those violations could, in fact, damage an entire community,” he said.
The Doe Fund already operates two such facilities in Brooklyn, one at 520 Gates Ave., less than a mile away from the First Step Home. According to Mr. Bobbins, there have been no incidents involving that facility and either school.
When the Doe Fund opened the second facility, The Peter J. Sharp Center for Opportunity in East Williamsburg in 2003, Mr. Bobbins added, “There was a little bit of community opposition. But once we opened and people saw what we did, the people who opposed it became some of our biggest supporters.”