Keep emergency placements open beyond the end of the emergency.

During COVID-19, shelters closed, and individuals leaving custody were placed in hotels, which made release possible for some people whose home plans could not otherwise be approved. That housing was produced by the emergency and ended with it, returning individuals to the same precarity that made the placement necessary in the first place. Corrections agencies should not treat the end of an emergency as the end of the obligation: an emergency placement should remain open until the individual has somewhere else to go. Community-based and social service agencies should be funded to hold a share of that capacity between emergencies, rather than assembling it under pressure each time.