The Blair County Prison Re-entry Coalition is hoping it can help its first couple of clients soon, based on information at a recent meeting from a member of the Pennsylvania Prison Society who’s been talking with two inmates stuck in the county jail for months, due to a lack of home plans.

At the coalition’s request, the Society member intends to obtain permission from those two female inmates to share their contact information, so coalition-connected agencies can scout for housing opportunities that would allow the inmates to leave, according to temporary coalition Director Ken Dean.

“If we can get two people out of jail, that would be awesome,” Dean said. “We’ve got to start somewhere.”

Although it’s been in existence for a couple of years, the coalition has struggled to gain traction, due to problems that include difficulties connecting with inmates.

The agencies represented among the coalition membership have access to housing programs that could be helpful for the stranded inmates, according to Dean.

The short-term effort to help that pair aligns with a new, but longer-term effort to obtain grants — perhaps from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency — that would enable the coalition to set up a pilot project, in which the coalition or an allied agency would buy or lease property where an inmate could live — with full “wraparound” services to ensure that inmate makes a successful transition back into society.

The coalition would need enough money to launch and operate such a pilot program for six months — or even a year, according to Dean.

A coalition member proposed the pilot plan because recent discussions with private landlords showed that those landlords tend not to trust that accepting a recently released inmate would work out for them, the member said.

“They want a perfect world,” the coalition member said.

That isn’t realistic, according to another coalition member.

Landlords frequently must deal with tenants who have no connection with prison, but whose behavior is far less than ideal, the second member said.

If the coalition is successful with the pilot project, private landlords would recognize that the agencies involved in the coalition “take it seriously,” which should promote trust in the more expansive transition program the coalition would like to eventually create, the second member said.

“We can show landlords what we can do,” Dean said.

The Center for Community Action has expressed a willingness to help the coalition apply for relevant grants, Dean said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.