One of our UU Pen Pals, Michael, was just released from prison downstate on Friday evening—without any advance notice— given a train ticket to Chicago and sent on his way to Safe Haven (pictured above), a shelter/halfway house in Chicago on Roosevelt Road. I had been in touch with him because, according to his sentence credits, he should have been out two weeks earlier, but that did not happen. He is a single (divorced) guy in his 40's. He has no family or outside support except $200 "getting out money" given by the UU Prison MInistry. All of his worldly possessions were in a small laundry bag. (His mentally ill sister, who was supposed to be taking care of his possessions, has gone missing, is probably homeless, and has not been heard from since April). He bought a phone at Walmart, but then, while walking to Goodwill to get a few clothes, got dizzy, passed out on Harlem Avenue and fell, hitting his head on the pavement. He was taken to the Loyola ER by the Forest Park ambulance. He called me from there. A CT scan attested he was OK; he was released, and I then met him at Burger King, across from the hospital on Saturday afternoon. I bought him a meal (the first time he had eaten since Friday).

His phone was missing! However, as we looked for it along the sidewalk of Harlem, and I called its number, a Good Samaritan answered and said he had the phone. We picked it up from a young guy at a bus stop in Oak Park. (The Forest Park Fire Department also kindly checked and called me back to say they had not found his phone.)

We then went to Safe Haven. After giving him some initial grief, Safe Haven agreed to admit him. Clean enough, but not palatial: 4 guys to a room and strict rules about coming and going—a lot like prison. We returned to Goodwill, where he bought a few clothes, and I went to Walgreens to purchase him some basic toiletries & a charger for his phone. I dropped him off at the Blue Line to take the El back to Safe Haven on Saturday evening. He thanked me profusely and asked if it would be OK if he called me a few days later to let me know how he was doing.

Before he went to prison (he was in for 2+ years) he worked in construction, and hopes to get a job in construction ASAP. Some years prior, he had suffered a serious injury at work, undergone two surgeries, with plates inserted in his spine, and gotten hooked on pain killers. His burglary charge was related to drugs. In prison he has been clean, taken every class he could find, and says he will "never go back."

But, he, like everyone I have worked with, vastly underestimated the stress of coming out of prison. People imagine it as the end of the awfulness they have experienced in prison, and do not anticipate all the barriers and difficulties they will encounter. They are unprepared for how expensive everything is, how hard it is to just attain the basics of food, shelter, clothing, proper documents, and transportation—particularly, as in Michael's case, with no family or friends supporting them on the outside. I'm putting a GoFundMe on line, and hope folks will donate. People like Michael are almost forced to steal if they get no help.