The Homecoming Project Helps Formerly Incarcerated People Find Housing, Airbnb-Style
The Oaklandside/November, 2020
Oakland resident Ellie Lefiti was 23 when she entered prison. When she walked out of the California Institution for Women in Riverside County in May, she was 50.
“When I first got out, I kept expecting officers to come up to me and say, ‘Joke! Get back in here!’” she recalled. “There was a lot of nervousness.”
Lefiti is one of more than 21,000 people released from California prisons so far this year—a historic wave that’s brought the state’s prison population to a 30-year low. Many received early release due to COVID-19, but Lefiti’s parole hearing was in early March, before the pandemic hit.
Unlike many who leave prisons after a long sentence, she didn’t have to worry about where she would live. While in prison, Lefiti was accepted into The Homecoming Project, an innovative Oakland-based program that uses an Airbnb-style model to secure housing for recently released people. Launched in 2018, the program matches homeowners who have an extra room with people reentering society after long-term incarceration and pays their rent for six months.