You Did the Time. Now Prove You Deserve a Home.

There's a moment every formerly incarcerated person knows. The one where you walk out, papers in hand, and realize the system that just released you has no real interest in helping you stay out. No job lined up. No savings. And when you go looking for an apartment, a number in a database decides whether you get a roof over your head before you ever get to say a word.

For a long time, the law had almost nothing to say about that.

New York City decided to change it.

What the Law Actually Does

On January 1, 2025, New York City's Fair Chance for Housing Act went into effect. The law does something deceptively simple: it stops landlords, brokers, and co-op boards from running a criminal background check until after a conditional offer of housing has already been made. You get evaluated as a tenant first, before your record enters the room.

Once an offer is made, landlords can look back five years for felonies and three years for misdemeanors. If they decide to pull the offer based on that history, they have to tell you in writing, share the report they used, and give you five days to respond with context or evidence of rehabilitation (Fair Chance for Housing Campaign, 2024).

Simple. And also, a real shift in how reentry actually works.

The Problem It Was Built to Solve

The numbers behind this law aren't subtle. In New York City alone, nearly 750,000 people carry a conviction record, roughly 11% of the adult population. Of those, 80% are Black or Latinx. Across 14 states, 79% of formerly incarcerated people and their families reported being denied housing because of a conviction. That's not a coincidence. That's a pattern.

And the consequences compound fast. The Vera Institute has documented that housing instability increases police contact, increases the likelihood of rearrest, and feeds the revolving door between homelessness and incarceration. Research shows formerly incarcerated people experiencing homelessness are seven times more likely to reenter the criminal legal system than those with stable housing. The system penalizes people for not having a home, then makes it structurally difficult to get one. That's not an accident. That's design.

What It Does and Doesn't Fix

The law is meaningful. It doesn't erase records or eliminate background checks altogether, but it forces housing providers to evaluate a person before a database entry does. For someone like Darren Webb Jr., who spent six years after release trying to secure an apartment despite working and going to school, that ordering matters enormously.

But limitations are real. Federally subsidized housing is exempt, which leaves out some of the most housing-insecure people coming out of incarceration. Enforcement requires people to know their rights and file complaints, which takes legal access most don't have. And moving the background check to later in the process doesn't undo the racial disparities baked into who gets convicted in the first place.

What the law gets right is the underlying logic: incarceration doesn't end at the gate. Housing, employment, voting, family, these are all extensions of the punishment, and they outlast the sentence by years. There is no evidence that barring people with conviction histories from housing makes communities safer. What it does is make failure more likely, and then blame the person for failing.

New York City's Fair Chance for Housing Act is a start. The question is whether anyone else is watching.

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References

Coalition for the Homeless. (2024). The Fair Chance for Housing Act: A victory for housing equity in NYC. https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/the-fair-chance-for-housing-act-a-victory-for-housing-equity-in-nyc/

Fair Chance for Housing Campaign. (2024). Statement: The Fair Chance for Housing Act becomes law today. https://www.fairchancehousing.org/news/2024/1/20/statement-the-fair-chance-for-housing-act-becomes-law-today

Fortune Society. (2023). City council takes historic action to tackle housing discrimination by passing the Fair Chance for Housing Act. https://fortunesociety.org/media_center/city-council-takes-historic-action-to-tackle-housing-discrimination-by-passing-the-fair-chance-for-housing-act/

Shapiro, L. (2024, May 20). HUD targets public housing discrimination against formerly incarcerated people. Truthout. https://truthout.org/articles/proposed-hud-rules-would-protect-convicted-tenants-from-public-housing-eviction/

Vera Institute of Justice. (2025). Fair chance housing. https://www.vera.org/publications/fair-chance-housing

Webb, D. (2026, March 18). The Fair Chance for Housing Act: A starting point for stability and cost reduction. Commentaries on NY Real Property Law. https://commentariesonnyrealpropertylaw.substack.com/p/the-fair-chance-for-housing-act-a