“When you’re inside for that long,” he said, his graying blonde eyebrows raised in recollection, “you think you know everything there is to know about living and surviving. Then you get out here and you realize you’re a blubbering idiot.” 
Being HIV positive only made the transition more difficult. “It’s not something you announce,” he added. “And you know there’s going to be a stigma as soon as anyone knows.” 

But for Jerry and others like him, there is hope and comfort in the form of Project Street. The program, which is run by the AIDS Center for Queens County, provides transitional housing for former inmates who are HIV positive. By easing their clients back into the realities of modern living and providing them with consistent attention, the busy employees of Project Street build a scaffold around which former prisoners can rebuild their lives. 

The program started in 2004 with a mandate to create a transition that would actually work.“Why was there this recidivism? How were people getting lost? We needed way more than a rubber stamp operation,” said T. Haywood, an ex con who is now an independent living skills specialist at Project Street. The center offers everything from legal advice to on site primary medical care, to classes on basic life skills. 

“It’s much more than housing,” said Harold, a tall Rastafarian with a salt and pepper beard who is a client. “This is a refuge and it’s somewhere you can come to for support, no matter what the situation.” 

According to Haywood, many people do not understsand the challenges that await ex convicts. Few employers are comfortable hiring them, and while applicants are tempted to lie on their applications, their past is often discovered nonetheless. In addition, former inmates have few skills that are suited for today’s labor market. 

“I had a guy come back after years in the pen, saying he got job training in small motor repair—lawnmowers. Lawnmowers?!” Haywood asks, stunned. “Man, I don’t see any lawns in the South Bronx.” 

The attention to practical help is what really strikes former prisoners, who come here from any of seven penitentiaries across the state.“Oh it’s the simple things,” said Jerry, another client. “You have to re learn all these things like getting up and taking care of yourself, learning to use a MetroCard, even using a coffeemaker. Jeez, when I first came out, I was using socks or pieces of ripped shirts for filters. ” 

Ellen, a honey voiced black woman in her late 50s, agreed. Ellen’s graying hair is neatly pulled back, revealing soft wrinkles around her eyes and a broad grandmotherly smile that shatters the image of the ex con stereotype. 

“When I got out I didn’t have a coat on my back, I didn’t have nothing, I didn’t have nobody. I came out here with the shirt on my back, literally, and let me tell you, it was a cold day,” she recalled. 

Penniless, with no family to connect to, and hardly any direction to go, Ellen headed straight to Project Street. She quickly got a coat. “And a microwave and an ironing board and towels and food from the pantry,” she added. 

Ellen is one of the program’s success stories. She has been living on her own for two years now, and is even pursuing her GED. Years after she has re integrated, she still comes back at least once a week. 

On a recent, cold afternoon in Long Island City, she was standing outside Project Street’s main entrance, gingerly clinging to a Marlboro Red. She said she comes back because it gives her “footing.” 

Another client walks past her, entering the building and acknowledging her with a quiet nod. Ellen stares off across the horizon toward the New York City skyline, letting out a thick puff of smoke that disappears quickly into the wind. She added: “But I also come back for the new ones, you know? I want to help them understand.”