There comes a moment in policy when the system is forced to say out loud what affected families have known for years, and March 12, 2026, was one of those moments. Local Law 132 — originally introduced as Intro 1100 and sponsored by former Councilmember Carlina Rivera — officially went into effect. It requires the NYC Department of Social Services to count any period of involuntary confinement in a city jail, state prison, or residential mental health facility toward an individual’s eligibility for supportive housing.
Put plainly: Jail is not a home. It never was. Now, New York City’s eligibility rules finally reflect that.
Before this law, if you were homeless and incarcerated for 90 days or more, the city treated your time inside as a “break” in homelessness. Your clock reset. The months you spent in a cell on Rikers didn’t count toward the housing that could stabilize your life. You came out and started over, back at the end of a line you had been near the front of.
The numbers are damning. In 2023, one-third of people admitted to NYC jails were unhoused before incarceration. More than 40% released from state prisons to the city entered shelters immediately. More than half of those detained on Rikers have a diagnosed mental illness. These are people trapped in a cycle that the city’s own rules were reinforcing.
The coalition that changed this deserves to be named: the Corporation for Supportive Housing, Rivera, Comptroller Brad Lander, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, the Supportive Housing Network of New York, and the directly affected New Yorkers who testified.
As someone who has spent years in criminal justice policy, from monitoring conditions in New York’s correctional facilities to analyzing how systemic gaps hollow out good reforms, I know that passing a law is just the beginning. However, this one corrects a specific cruelty: punishing people for being incarcerated by erasing their path to housing when they come home. I’ve seen the Justice-Involved Supportive Housing program (JISH) transform outcomes for people caught in that cycle. According to the Mayor’s Office, 87% of JISH residents had no arrests while in supportive housing, and half have lived in their homes for six to 10 years. That’s not a program that manages crisis. That’s a program that ends it.
The timing of this law is not coincidental. In January, Mayor Zohran Mamdani restarted Just Home at Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx, which had been stalled under the previous administration. It provides 83 permanent apartments for formerly incarcerated New Yorkers with complex medical needs. On February 12, the NYC Health Department released an updated RFP to expand JISH with $4.8 million in new funding and up to 190 new homes, bringing the total to more than 350 apartments. The city is not just changing the rules. It’s building the infrastructure those rules require.
Such efforts must also be protected. In November 2025, HUD released a funding notice that would have capped permanent supportive housing at 30% of Continuum of Care spending, which currently represents 87% of the program. A coalition of attorneys general from 20 states sued and secured a preliminary injunction blocking HUD’s changes. Congress included protections in the FY2026 appropriations bill. However, the litigation is ongoing.
If you or someone you love is coming home from incarceration, know this: Your time confined now counts toward supportive housing eligibility. Your clock does not reset. Contact the Corporation for Supportive Housing or the Supportive Housing Network of New York. Ask your caseworker directly. Cite Local Law 132. This is your right. Use it.
It costs approximately $400,000 per year to incarcerate one person on Rikers Island. Supportive housing operates at a fraction of that cost while delivering what incarceration never has: stability, dignity, and a real chance to stay home. We were spending more to make people worse and making it harder for them to access what makes them better. That’s not a policy failure. That’s a moral one.
New York corrected it. Now we must make sure the correction holds.
Delaine Dixon, MPA, is a program analyst at the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice.
