City’s New Reentry Center To Open At Goodwill

by Laura Glesby The New Haven independent

Starting in 2026, New Haveners exiting prison will be dropped off at Goodwill of Southern Connecticut’s office at 61 Amity Rd. — instead of at Project M.O.R.E.’s Grand Avenue headquarters — for case management, basic supplies, and help reintegrating into society after incarceration.

Per a contract unanimously approved by the Board of Alders on Monday evening, the city’s Reentry Welcome Center will officially reopen at Goodwill after over four years of operating at Project M.O.R.E.

The contract with Goodwill comes from the tail end of a three-year, $2 million grant from the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance first awarded to the city in October 2023 to support reentry services for formerly incarcerated residents.

The city has committed to providing Goodwill with $250,901.64 of those funds to open the Reentry Welcome Center from Jan. 1, 2026 through the grant’s expiration on Sept. 30, 2026. According to Tirzah Kemp, the director of the city’s Department of Community Resilience, the city is in the process of securing additional funding for the program.

“We’re gonna make changes, increase staff, increase services,” said Mary Loftus, the program coordinator for Goodwill of Southern New England’s reentry initiatives. “We’re really excited about this new venture.”

“I want people to know that they’re going to feel safe when they come home,” said Kemp.

Kemp envisions the Goodwill center as a place where people exiting prison can immediately “receive a welcoming intake” to assess the resources they might need.

They might receive bus passes, according to Loftus, or “welcome kits” containing personal care products — “whatever it is they need when they get dropped off.”

A local affiliate of the international thrift store chain, Goodwill of Southern New England has experience running career and financial literacy programs for formerly incarcerated people.

The organization currently runs a recurring five-day course, Good Path, for anyone with a criminal record to develop skills for job applications, job retention, and financial literacy.

On the classroom wall, Loftus said she’s hung up a sign defining the word “fail” as an acronym for “First Attempt In Learning.”

“Once they finish the class, they work with our employment specialist who will help them find a job,” explained Loftus. According to Loftus, Goodwill works individually with students who need financial support for expenses ranging from food safety certifications to photo IDs to security deposits.

The Reentry Welcome Center will build upon those existing programs. Loftus said that she intends to hire a case manager to work closely with people who were convicted of more serious charges.

She also envisions hiring a “community advocate” with personal experience in the justice system. “If we lose contact with somebody, they’ll be out there making sure everything’s OK,” she said.

And the center will proactively reach out to incarcerated individuals who are preparing to transition out of prison, Loftus said, to start making plans and building relationships beforehand.

Department of Community Resilience Director Tirzah Kemp at a spring budget hearing. Credit: Laura Glesby File Photo

A previous iteration of the city’s Reentry Welcome Center operated out of the reentry organization Project M.O.R.E., starting in early 2021, funded in part by a federal Community Development Block Grant.

Then, in 2025, several staff departures at Project M.O.R.E. — including the program manager in charge of the center — left the program in limbo.

“The communication became almost non-existent,” said McKenna Booker, the coordinator for the city’s Office of Violence Prevention. She said that vacancies at the organization coincided with the timeline for the city to renew the Reentry Welcome Center contract.

The city sent out a new Request for Proposal for a nonprofit to house the center on Aug. 14, 2025, accepting applications through Sept. 16. Although the city encouraged Project M.O.R.E. to apply for the opportunity, according to Booker and Kemp, the organization did not submit a proposal.

“We fully support Project M.O.R.E.,” Kemp emphasized. “They are a staple in our community and we would love to continue our relationship with them.”

A representative of the organization did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this story.

A few factors will be different at Goodwill compared to Project M.O.R.E.

First, the reentry center will be located on Amity Road on the far west side of town, rather than at Project M.O.R.E.’s 830 Grand Ave. headquarters just north of Wooster Square.

According to Loftus, an advantage of the Amity Road location is that “it’s a very neutral location” — “not one of the areas where people are afraid to get dropped off at” — that’s right by a bus line and connected to a “little shopping plaza.”

According to Kemp, the program will incorporate more thorough data collection about the impact of various programs and services. “My priority is to be outcome-driven” and “really track what we’re doing,” Kemp said, which will provide “accountability.”

With respect to finances, “we’re working with Goodwill around sustainability so it’s not just contingent on our funding,” Kemp said.

The overall goal of the program, said Kemp, is “trying to decrease recidivism.” She described the reentry center as a “public health, trauma-informed, and violence prevention approach to assisting these individuals.” It’s an effort to “address the root causes that people face when coming home.”

One Alder’s Vote

Hubbard shared a Facebook post from Goodwill honoring her story in April.

When Hill Alder Angel Hubbard joined her colleagues in a chorus of “Aye” votes in favor of the contract on Monday, she said, “I wanted to cry.”

“This is my real life story,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard doesn’t remember the precise year that she first went through Goodwill’s five-day course. She estimates that it was about a decade ago, years after her own exit from prison.

“My past did consist of me fighting a lot,” Hubbard said. “The housing complex that I grew up in, we had to survive. So yes, I did get arrested a few times.”

It’s a past that she hasn’t forgotten about in her role as an alder. “I have been incarcerated, so for me it’s always a blessing to step foot in City Hall. From prison to part of the city,” she said.

“I’m not ashamed of my past, because that’s why I can stand tall today and not be moved or wavered,” Hubbard added. “I know the storms that I’ve been through. It was because of those thunderstorms where I can now tell a person, ‘Here’s an umbrella so you don’t get wet.’”

She recalled finding a sense of “family” at Goodwill, both among her fellow classmates and in the mentors, including Loftus, who worked there.

“They don’t look at you as a criminal. They don’t look at you as someone from your past — they look at you as someone who is trying to correct your past,” Hubbard said. “They treated you as a person, and not what was on paper.”

At the same time, Hubbard noted, the Goodwill staff held participants to a high standard. They wouldn’t provide security deposit assistance, for instance, unless recipients could demonstrate that their rent was realistic for their income. “They don’t set you up to fail. They don’t sugarcoat anything,” said Hubbard. “They give it to you straight up and raw.”

After completing the five-day class at Goodwill, Hubbard became a shift supervisor at the organization, and she now returns to tell her own story to new participants in the class.

She said she tells them: “Do not look so much in your past. Look in your future.”