Formerly incarcerated face complicated path in aftermath of Hurricane Ian

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• Judy Woodruff:

  As another hurricane moves through Florida, it is clear the Atlantic hurricane season is not quite done yet.

  William Brangham has more on some of the people these storms impact the most.

• William Brangham:

  Judy, Nicole hit Florida just weeks after Hurricane Ian struck the southwest part of the state and killed more than 100 people.

  We know storms like these can devastate vulnerable communities. But one group that is often overlooked in natural disasters is the formerly incarcerated, a group that can face some unique challenges even in the best of times.

  We spoke to one formerly incarcerated woman whose home was destroyed by Ian. She fled to Tampa, but then found that her criminal record made it very hard to find housing, even though it has been years since she was released. And she's not alone. Hundreds of thousands of people come out of Florida's prisons and jails every year.

  And, in a state with so many hurricanes, there can be added layers of complexity for them.

  Here's the story of another Florida resident dealing with these same issues. It's part of our series Searching For Justice.

  Thirty-three-year-old 33-year-old Seth Campbell has been out of prison for a year. He was born and raised in Florida, so he knows about hurricanes. But his experience with some of the state's worst storms has been different.

• Seth Campbell, Former Inmate:

  Most of the hurricanes I have been in, I have been in institutions during them.

• William Brangham:

  Wow.

• Seth Campbell:

  Yes, a couple. Like, Irma, I was in the county jail. So…

• William Brangham:

  You didn't have to do any prep for it, because right the jail, prison took care of it.

• Seth Campbell:

  Right. Right.

  And so — was, I wasn't ready for what was about to happen.

• William Brangham:

  So, when Hurricane Ian was on track to make landfall not far from his home in Sarasota, he didn't know how to prepare.

• Seth Campbell:

  I started at another house. The electricity went out there. And we were about an hour into the storm. And I felt we could make it, so we traveled here.

  What I saw, I thought, was like the middle of the storm, and it was the worst. But, literally, I know it kept getting worse. So when we got here, right, the electricity goes out here. And, like, another thing I wasn't prepared for was the cellular service going out. You couldn't check on your loved ones anymore because you couldn't call out.

  When you are in the midst of it, and now you have ones, like, truly affected, like people with — who no longer have homes, and it's no longer about me or what I was prepared for. It's like I wasn't prepared for this turn in life.

• William Brangham:

  Experts say that, after a natural disaster, formerly incarcerated people can find themselves competing with the rest of the population for already scarce housing, jobs and other resources.

  So, they can often be the ones pushed to the back of the line.

  David Kirk is a sociology professor at Oxford University. His 2020 book, "Home Free," looked at the outcomes of people released from Louisiana prisons right after Hurricane Katrina.

• David Kirk, Oxford University:

  We're talking about destabilization of not only housing, but jobs, labor markets, services that the formerly incarcerated oftentimes depend upon, for example, mental health treatment.

  If you have got a kind of a temporary, even if relatively short-lived, situation where services are disrupted, that can be enough to, in essence, make it so that people fall back in old patterns of behavior, drug use, things like that.

  Barbara Richards, Project 180: Did you get a chance to talk to the guy?

• William Brangham:

  Barbara Richards directs Project 180, a Sarasota-based nonprofit that helps people reentering from prison.

  In addition to linking people to addiction, treatment, employment, and help with their finances, Project 180 runs a pair of houses for formerly incarcerated men in Sarasota. Seth Campbell is the house leader for one of them.

• Barbara Richards:

  We have even had men who have graduated from our residential program continue to live in one of our houses because they couldn't find a place out in the community.

  So, now, with so many people displaced, a number of people have come up here seeking housing from more devastated areas, and they're having a hard time, and they don't have any criminal history.

• William Brangham:

  For Seth Campbell, the immediate stress of the storm has subsided, but plenty of challenges remain.

  This summer, he opened a small apartment cleaning company with his girlfriend, but Ian brought that business to a halt.

• Seth Campbell:

  Everybody is still worried about that. They don't want the house cleaned. They want their yard clean and that tree down in their front yard and their fence fixed.

  So, cleaning is — like, it's on the back burner.

• William Brangham:

  So, last month, Campbell started looking into disaster loans from the Small Business Administration.

  But the SBA says it won't give financial aid to people who are — quote — "not of good character," and its disaster loan forms asked about an applicant's criminal record.

• Seth Campbell:

  I honestly didn't want to complete the application. I don't think anybody should feel that way, because, from my understanding, like, I have served time for my crimes. Like, why are they still being held against me, when I'm trying to be a better, productive member of society?

• William Brangham:

  In a statement to the "NewsHour," the SBA wrote that just point 0.1 percent of application denials over the past two fiscal years were due to character reasons, and it encouraged anyone impacted by a disaster to apply if they have uncovered losses.

  But formerly incarcerated people don't only have to weigh their interactions with the government after natural disasters. In 2017, when Hurricane Irma struck along Florida's Gulf Coast, the sheriff of Polk County, just east of Tampa, faced criticism for tweeting — quote — "If you go to a shelter for Irma, and you have a warrant, we will gladly escort you to the safe and secure shelter called the Polk County jail."

  He also warned that — quote — "Law enforcement officers would be at every shelter checking I.D.s."

  Experts say sentiments like that could deter not just those wanted for a serious crime, but anyone with a criminal record.

• David Kirk:

  Individuals that have had pretty negative interactions with the government, and that certainly applies to people that end up in prison, that, even when they get out, for a lot of different reasons, they don't want to have anything to do with a variety of government institutions, not just the police and the criminal justice system, but anything.

  And so they may be less inclined to try to access resources that are available to them in the wake of a hurricane.

• William Brangham:

  It's an example, Barbara Richards says, of the systemic changes that are necessary.

• Barbara Richards:

  When an individual comes back from jail or prison and is unable to successfully start their lives, the way we might consider them to be successful, what results from that is poverty, homelessness, unemployment, a return to criminal behavior.

  And those are social issues that affect all of us.

• William Brangham:

  Issues that may only worsen when the next storm hits.

  For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham in Southwest Florida.

• Judy Woodruff:

  An important, but overlooked aspect of what happens after these terrible storms.

  Thank you, William.

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