Join us on Thursday, October 6th at 8:30 am (coffee and conversation starts at 8:30, panel begins promptly at 9 am) for our first event in the 2011-2012 Occasional Series: Beyond Conventional Wisdom-Creating Reentry Housing. Safe and affordable housing is central to one's stability and success in reentry-and it can be one of the hardest needs to meet. PRI director Ann Jacobs will be joined by presenters JoAnne Page of the Fortune Society, andRyan Moser of the Corporation for Supportive Housing to discuss innovative strategies employed in New York City to create housing for formerly incarcerated people by literally turning obstacles into opportunity.

Ms. Page, Executive Director of the Fortune Society, will discuss the Fortune Society's successful efforts to develop a housing project in Harlem. She will highlight their work with the community and the lessons they learned about the conditions under which NIMBY (Not in My Backyard) transformed into community support. This presentation coincides with the release of In Our Backyard: Overcoming Community Resistance to Community Housing, which is a collaboration between the Prisoner Reentry Institute and the Fortune Society. The toolkit provides strategies that can help organizations overcome the many challenges that they may face when they try to create housing for formerly incarcerated individuals. The toolkit will be available following the October 6th event.

Mr. Moser, Managing Director at the Corporation for Supportive Housing, will discuss FUSE (Frequent Users Service Enhancement), an approach successfully used in New York and other jurisdictions to interrupt repeated rounds of institutional and emergency care. In the case of New York, FUSE improved outcomes for small and distressed population that regularly cycled between jail and homeless shelters, and were a disproportionate drain on both systems. The FUSE model of analysis, planning, and collaboration focuses on supportive housing, enhanced with intensive case management, and coordinated health and wellness services,to interrupt patterns of repeated rounds of institutional and emergency care,

For those interested in attending, please RSVP to pri@jjay.cuny.edu. *A live webcast will also be available for those who are unable to attend in person.