Men at Hope Village, a 300-bed halfway house in southeast D.C., say concerns over coronavirus have left them locked inside the facility without access to essential supplies and toiletries.

Community efforts to deliver donated supplies have faced resistance. And a look inside the facility shows residents are being seated in groups larger than 10 people.

“There are a lot of hungry people in there, and people who are very anxious and scared about what’s going on there and that they’re not safe,” says Tammy Seltzer, director of the D.C. Jail & Prison Advocacy Project at University Legal Services.

Hope Village staff say they are following guidance from the Federal Bureau of Prisons restricting residents’ movements, and a spokesperson denies there are supply shortages. An inspection on Thursday from the Corrections Information Council, an independent government agency that monitors the conditions at locations where D.C. residents are confined, found that the halfway house is adequately stocked with cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and food.

That has offered little consolation to advocates who have long scrutinized conditions at the only halfway house for men in D.C. and who fear the outbreak is only making those conditions worse.

‘The Current Policy Right Now Is That You Can’t Leave’

The men at Hope Village are at the end of prison sentences, typically within six months of release. Under normal circumstances, they are allowed to leave the facility to go to jobs or search for work and housing, and they can pick up supplies on their way home. But Hope Village spokesperson Phinis Jones says that has been suspended during the outbreak.

“The current policy right now is that you can’t leave,” Jones told WAMU Wednesday. “The [Federal Bureau of Prisons] has decided that it is not in the best interests of the community or the men for them to leave the facility,” because of fears about contracting and spreading the coronavirus. The Federal Bureau of Prisons has suspended outside visits to prisons, but hasn’t publicly released specific guidelines for halfway houses.

Unlike prisons and jails, Hope Village has no commissary selling items to residents—only vending machines with a limited selection of snacks and beverages.

“You’re really dependent on yourself and your family in terms of providing basic supplies like toiletries,” Seltzer says. With movement and visitations limited, Seltzer, as well as a resident of Hope Village, say those inside are out of many necessities.

Jones insists that the leadership of Hope Village is working on ways to reduce the population in the facility and to adjust operations, adhering to guidance from the Bureau of Prisons regarding coronavirus. He says three residents have been tested for coronavirus and are quarantined in their own rooms. Two of these tests have come back negative and the third is pending.

Jones also says claims about a lack of toiletries are overblown.

“All of this noise about no soap, no water and that kind of thing is just fabricated,” he says. “It’s just not true. We have plenty of soap, plenty of water in every building.”

“Hope Village staff indicated that residents are still required to clean their apartments each morning, and cleaning supplies including disinfectant are available in each building for the residents to use at any time,” said the report the CIC wrote following its inspection on Thursday. “Staff also indicated that each resident has their own bar of soap; they are not required to share with other residents.”

The CIC inspection consisted of a walk-through of dining and storage areas as well as a conversation with executive staff and program staff at Hope Village. Hope Village did not allow CIC staff to interview any of the men currently incarcerated there. According to the inspection report, “Hope Village staff indicated that—with approval from the Bureau of Prisons—a future time would be scheduled to provide that opportunity.”

A View Inside Hope Village

Speaking to WAMU over the phone Wednesday, a current resident of Hope Village refuted Jones’s claims, saying there is “no hand sanitizer, no gloves, no soap,” aside from the supplies residents were able to procure themselves (hand sanitizer is often considered contraband in correctional settings). Over FaceTime, the resident showed a dorm-like living situation where men were housed in bunk beds, four to a room. He shares a bathroom with four roommates and there is no soap, he says.

The resident spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears retaliation from the halfway house. These fears are not unfounded: A 2016 report by the nonpartisan Council for Court Excellence found that men who violated the halfway house rules were being sent to Piedmont Regional Jail in Virginia—174 miles from the city—and then later found guilty at Hope Village hearings where they were not present.

While a second dining hall has been opened, the rooms are still packed. In a video the resident shared, about 20 men can be seen eating together in a small room.The CIC inspection report confirmed that the dining area seats 20 to 25 people at a time—approximately five men per table. Health officials have urged the public to limit gathering to groups of 10 or fewer.

The resident also says families have been given one time slot a week to drop off supplies, and outdoor time is extremely limited.

“Fifteen minutes every other day pretty much is what it’s been,” he says. “To walk around this little parking lot area.”

The men at Hope Village are given three meals a day, but Seltzer says serving size has been a long-standing problem at Hope Village.

“We’ve always gotten complaints for a long time … that [men at Hope Village] don’t get enough food, that they’re hungry all the time,” Seltzer says. “And normally they supplement as much as they can … but they’re not allowed to go anywhere.”

Standoffs Over Supplies

This week, as concern over supply shortages spread, there were two confrontations between staff and people trying to bring items for the men inside.

Ward 8 Council member Trayon White, along with Black Lives Matter activists and other community members traveled to the six-building complex in the Garfield Heights-Woodland neighborhood Tuesday night to deliver water, toothpaste, deodorant, snacks, and other items. White streamed the delivery effort to Facebook Live. At one point during the nearly 90-minute broadcast, a person identified as a Hope Village staff member asked White and others to leave.

“Y’all want them to eat? Leave the premises,” he said.

Staff eventually allowed men to collect some of the offerings. In the Facebook video, a long line of men from one building picked up bags that White and activists brought.

There weren’t enough care packages for the roughly 200 men in the facility, and White returned on Wednesday afternoon to deliver more supplies. In a phone conversation broadcast over Facebook, Jones, the Hope Village spokesperson, told White the delivery would not be allowed, and drop-offs were limited to family visitation times.

Looking For Solutions

Jones told Councilmember Trayon White over the phone Wednesday (broadcast on Facebook) that Hope Village has put in a request to the Bureau of Prisons that men eligible for home confinement be allowed to transfer out of the facility—but “a significant number have no place to go” and would be going to homeless shelters.

Seltzer says she has been urging city officials to look into opening more transitional housing for people returning from prison in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Ninety percent of our clients … are homeless at the time they go in and they are homeless when they come out,” Seltzer said. “I think the city needs to be working on both releasing people and making sure there is housing people can go to.” Many of the city’s existing shelters, Seltzer said, are not accepting new residents in an attempt to keep conditions safe for existing residents.

In the meantime, advocates are working to get answers from the Bureau of Prisons about its policies for release of halfway house residents and its requirements and guidelines for halfway house providers. The Bureau of Prisons has issued broad guidance in response to coronavirus, adjusting protocols around visits, screening of inmates and staff and other operations and said it has distributed guidance to halfway house providers.

Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, chair of the council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, sent a letter to the BOP this week about the conditions at Hope Village. The BOP responded, saying that it was looking into the situation but not hearing the same reports as Allen about conditions.

“My concern is that when you have the firsthand accounts from the people who are inside and from the families, essentially locked down and having a challenging experience at best in terms of getting supplies, I think it’s deeply troubling and concerning,” Allen said. “We need the Federal Bureau of Prisons to do better and make sure they’re taking care of D.C. residents.”

Advocates in D.C. have for years expressed frustration about a lack of local control over criminal justice. Most incarcerated D.C. residents are placed in federal custody.

“We’re the only place in the country that has a system like this where our residents go through a federal system, which means that we have a real challenge with accountability,” Allen says.

Paula Thompson, the co-chair of D.C.’s Reentry Action Network, says the coalition of nonprofits has “spun into action … to get supplies to the residents of the facilities where our D.C. residents are.” The halfway house facilities include Hope Village, the Fairview Halfway House for women in D.C. and a halfway house in Baltimore where she says “many” D.C. residents are also housed.

“All of our member organizations and other organizations who do this work have had to shift resources to respond to what we see as an urgent and significant need,” said Thompson.

The mobilization to get supplies into Hope Village comes a month before the company’s contract with the Bureau of Prisons is set to expire. The facility has been at the center of a long contract dispute that has left the future of the city’s men’s halfway house in limbo for more than a year.