Investing in Hope

We're excited to congratulate the Greenburger Center for Social and Criminal Justice on breaking ground for Hope House, an Alternative to Incarceration (ATI) program for people living with serious mental illness and accused of felony level crimes.

Hope House in the Bronx, NY, is a barrier-breaking pilot program offering up to two years of residential treatment in a therapeutic environment as an alternative to incarceration, and with a sustained focus on reentry to the community. The Greenburger Center emphasizes that:

"Re-entry planning will begin at the time of enrollment. The goal of Hope House residential and therapeutic programming will be stabilization of any substance use disorders, management of psychiatric symptoms, and the treatment of underlying mental and physical disease."

The groundbreaking marks success in a 10-year effort by the Greenburger Center to obtain the regulatory and funding approvals needed for this program. 

V-Cap provided technical assistance over four years that resulted in an unusual use of New Market Tax Credits to support development of an ATI pilot program. The NMTC transaction generated $1.9 million of project subsidy. V-Cap financing helped fill the gap in funds needed for the project.

Hope House is an important initiative aimed at reversing the criminalization of mental illness, and the needless and racially disparate deprivation of life and liberty tied to avoidable incarceration. 

In 2016, approximately 383,200 people with serious mental illness were incarcerated in jails and state prisons.

See the excellent explanation here from the Greenburger Center on how the Hope House program will work. 

Congratulations to the Greenburger Center team on this important step toward opening Hope House.