Brandon Reid: A Journey Through Loss and Redemption

When a 100-Year Housing Ban Hits a Reentry Advocate

Brandon Reid thought he was just looking for an apartment near the university. He wanted to get a dog. Everything seemed fine during the initial conversation at Hampton Gardens until he disclosed his criminal history. That’s when they told him about their policy: if you’ve had a conviction within the past hundred years, you’re completely ineligible for housing.

“They told me basically that if I’ve had a conviction within the past hundred years, I was completely ineligible for housing. And then maybe like 118 to come back and say I’m ready. I mean I hope I live that long. I don’t think it’s going to happen,” Brandon told me.

The irony wasn’t lost on either of us. Brandon works at Criminal Justice Ministry, helping formerly incarcerated people find housing. His organization owns buildings with about a hundred units specifically for people coming out of prison. Yet here he was, more than ten years removed from his last conviction, being told no.

From Italy to Addiction at Seventeen

Brandon’s story starts in an unexpected place. Born on Shepherd Air Force Base in Wichita, Texas, he moved to Italy when he was two years old. “I grew up believing I was Italian. Of course. I went to Italian schools and then came back to the United States when I want to say 10, 11, but I know I was in third grade.”

Life in Italy included privilege but also family abuse. After his mother divorced and remarried a wealthy doctor, there was domestic violence. They left suddenly, returning to the United States when Brandon was around ten.

The real turning point came when his grandparents died. “My grandma died in 2000. So, they died. Your world kind of turned dark? Yeah, I would say that,” he told me. His grandfather moved in with them as he was dying, and Brandon’s mother was working two jobs to support two teenagers. “She was in survival mode at the time, and trying to take care of two kids, two teenagers at the time.”

At seventeen, during his junior year reading Macbeth, Brandon decided he’d had enough. “I literally walked to a principal’s office. I called my mom and said, hey, I want to drop out. And I think at that point, she was under so much stress. And just financials, all this kind of stuff. She was like, alright, that’s fine.”

The Swift Descent Into Harder Drugs

What happened next was rapid. “I started smoking weed. I mean, that was the very first kind of thing I did. Um, you know, I would, yeah, I’d start smoking weed. Um, and I can text, actually, the very first time I smoked weed, I freaked out. Um, but, you know, my addictive brain, um, I did it again the next day, right? Um, so, um, that very quickly within, I’d say a month or two, um, I was starting to do harder and harder drugs within a year. I’d already done meth and cocaine, and then a year later, shooting heroin.”

Brandon knew immediately he was different from others who experimented. “I knew I was an addict the first time. I mean, the first time I smoked weed. I mean, there was no doubt in my mind. I had no doubts.”

Prison and the Decision to Survive

His first felony came at eighteen, caught at three in the morning with muscle relaxers, an Ativan, and some weed. The pattern of probation violations, house arrest, and returns to custody continued for years.

At Boonville Correctional Center, known as “the Thunderdome,” Brandon faced his biggest test. “So the young guys went, so you can imagine it’s a 115-pound 24-year-old gay man. I was absolutely terrified when I showed up. It’s an open bay. There’s no cells.”

Someone took all his belongings his first two days there. Brandon made a choice that would define his prison experience. He went to the middle of the bay and called out whoever had taken his things. When he returned from the yard, everything was back.

“You can’t be disrespected,” I told him, and he agreed. “It doesn’t matter what size you are, it’s a different world, very primitive. Integrity, and it’s about respect.”

The Moment Everything Changed

After multiple stints in and out of prison, Brandon’s mother delivered an ultimatum. “I remember calling my mom and like Brandon, you’re at a point, like you’re kind of at crossroads here. You can either just become someone who just continuously comes to prison and lives the prison life.”

By then, Brandon had become deeply embedded in prison culture. “I was very fascinated by it. It was very glamorizing to me. I felt like cool that I was in prison. For some reason. I know that sounds really sick.”

But his mother’s words hit home. “I know I’m intelligent. Like, I can do stuff, like, you know, and I got my GED and while I was in prison, and I said, let’s just try this, you know, and it was relatively easy, to be honest with you.”

Building Criminal Justice Ministry’s Model

Today, Brandon helps run programs that address exactly what he experienced. Criminal Justice Ministry’s Release to Rent program takes people directly from prison and provides fully furnished apartments. For the first two months, residents pay nothing. After that, they pay 10% of market rate, increasing by 10% each month.

“So we get in there. They get a fully furnished apartment with every single thing in it and from bed to toothbrush,” Brandon explained. The organization owns six to seven buildings and outsources additional units, totaling around a hundred apartments.

The model recognizes what Brandon learned the hard way: that financial pressure is one of the biggest drivers of recidivism. “I always tell people, you know, hey, look like what would you do for your family? You know, what would you do for yourself? Like if it had to be illegal, you know, that’s what it has to be, but you have to survive.”

Brandon’s story came full circle that day at Hampton Gardens. The same system he works to change reminded him that for some people, a conviction never really ends. But his work continues, one apartment and one person at a time.