Building a successful life without a place to call home is hard to imagine, but this basic necessity is often out of reach for formerly incarcerated people according to the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI). Barriers to employment, combined with explicit discrimination, have created a little-discussed housing crisis.

This PPI report provides what was the first estimate of homelessness among the 5 million formerly incarcerated people living in the United States, finding that formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public. The report breaks down this data by race, gender, age and other demographics; we also show how many formerly incarcerated people are forced to live in places like hotels or motels, just one step from homelessness itself.