Over the past several decades, cities across the United States have had trouble dealing with abandoned properties as factories close and people move out of urban centers and into the suburbs.

It’s a double restoration. Not just of the house but of the person.

Simultaneously, the incarceration rate for women is growing faster than that of any other sector, with re-incarceration rates being particularly high as many mothers leave prison without homes or any means to provide for the families with whom they are reunited.

In consultation with various local development organizations, Vanessa Thompson and several other prisoners worked together to organize their project and then to describe it to their state legislature through a video filmed in the prison.

They envisioned a program in which, upon their release, female prisoners would be given jobs renovating abandoned Indianapolis properties. They would be provided with food and a temporary apartment while putting in 5,000 hours of renovation work. Then, when they had completed their hours, they would receive their payment: a formerly-abandoned, newly-renovated Indianapolis house. They would receive a home, and one less city lot would be vacant.

Read the full article on recidivism and housing by Stacey Egger at Philanthropy Daily.