Melissa Bailey Photo
After a life in prison and a year on the streets, Joe Burgeson threw in his lot for one of 12 newly available apartments.
Burgeson (pictured), who’s 55, has been searching for a permanent home and job for 14 months, since he returned to New Haven from his latest stint in prison. A talented writer who never went to college, he won a scholarship to Gateway Community College, but had to postpone it when a tenuous housing situation fell apart.
These days Burgeson has been sleeping in a shed. He’s sober, working hard to keep from slipping back into habits that have landed him in prison for most of his life.
One state court social worker said Burgeson “stands out” from the 80 clients she works with every month — for being resourceful and persistent in the face of tough odds. As the city put together a plan to open 12 public housing spots to ex-offenders, she wrote a letter urging that he be considered.
Click here to read about the housing program, which gained official approval on March 16.
Burgeson now stands in line with over 30 people who’ve interviewed for the 12 housing spots in just a week in a half, said City Hall prison reentry coordinator Amy Meek. Interested candidates set up appointments with Meek, who also counsels them on other housing options. As she spoke, she was in the middle of conducting more interviews. The flood of interest is another sign that the demand for ex-offender support services far exceeds the supply, she said. About 25 people return to New Haven from prison every week.
For Burgeson, securing a permanent home would be a huge step in a recovery journey.
He’s come a long way.
“Mindset of Toughness”
The soft-spoken, slender man told his story at a recent interview in a downtown coffee shop. He carried a black backpack heavy with shampoo, soap, and a notebook of his poetry. When a reporter showed up, he was just finishing the Sunday New York Times crossword. He set it aside and recounted how he came to this place in life.
Burgeson grew up in Fair Haven. Early on, he said, he developed a “mindset of toughness.” By age 13, he was sent off to reform school in Meriden. Between ages 14 and 16, he got arrested dozens of times, he said, for stealing cars and petty crimes. At 16, he got arrested for burglary and ended up at the Whalley Avenue jail.
“Midnight I turned 16,” he said, “I became a criminal.”
He would spend the next decades growing into a life of crime.
In jail, he said, the guys who got the most respect were the “stickup” guys, who used the threat of force to rob stores.
“I aspired to be a stickup guy,” he said. “I became that at 21,” when he committed his first stickup.
“Then I went to prison, and the guys who got the most respect were dangerous. I became dangerous.”
Soon, he set the bar higher. He learned that the people who got the most respect were convicts.
“I became a convict,” he said.
He spent 33 out of 41 years in prison. Between 1977 and 2000, he spent only seven months on the outside. Most of the crimes — robbery, burglary, larceny — came as he struggled with addiction and sought money for drugs.
The latest stint stemmed from two robberies at Dunkin’ Donuts stores in February 2006. He said the robberies were not planned.
“I was just going on impulse,” he said, to get money for drugs.
After his arrest, something finally changed inside him, he said. The change came “in the hole,” in solitary confinement at the Whalley Avenue jail. It was a cold winter day. He lay on the floor, shivering in a jumpsuit, covered by one blanket. No one else was around — “just you and yourself.”
“I just surrendered,” he said. “I just felt a weight come off of me.”
In prison, he spent time reflecting and writing. His poem “No Passage” earned him second place in a national prison writing contest. It reads:
I hate that door.
It’s open when I’m out
and locked when I’m in.
Sometimes I kick it.
Cold steel, dull, unyielding, indifferent.
Not like wood.
Wood has heart and resiliency,
resounding with its own natural character
when struck.
Like a wooden door,
I once was alive.
And, too, I am set upon a threshold,
neither going out or coming in.
My life passes through me
and doesn’t take me with it.
I hate myself that door.
Sometimes I kick it.
Burgeson spent 2 1/2 years in prison for his two most recent offenses. He said he’s working hard to make sure that sentence was his last.
The Search
After spending five months in a drug rehab program, Burgeson returned to New Haven. On Jan. 14, 2009, one of the coldest days of the year, he got dropped off on the Ella T. Grasso Boulevard.
That week, he said, he started looking for work. It wasn’t easy.
Having spent most of his life in prison, Burgeson doesn’t have a trade. In prison, he did janitorial work. Between prison terms, he worked a few jobs washing dishes at a restaurant.
Burgeson tried every avenue he could think of. He went up and down Chapel Street, knocking on all the doors of the restaurants, asking if they needed help in the kitchen. He applied to jobs at Yale, St. Raphael’s hospital, and in construction and landscaping.
Everywhere he asked, he said, he got the same answer: No jobs. Not for you.
“What seems to kill me is my record,” he said.
In the past 15 months, the longest he worked was three days on a roof job.
Burgeson didn’t give up. He got creative. He posted an ad on Craigslist offering to work for rent.
Meanwhile, he applied for a scholarship to start taking classes at Gateway. Both plans worked out, at first. He enrolled at Gateway. A couple in a suburban town read his Craigslist ad and took him in.
In one day, however, his housing situation fell apart. The couple sent him out on a cold, rainy night.
With no home, Burgeson couldn’t commit to studying at Gateway, he said. The strains of homelessness were too much. He withdrew before classes started and postponed the scholarship.
After that setback, he hasn’t had any more luck finding a home. There’s state aid for sober house, but it requires supplemental income, he said. Going to a shelter would put him back with the same population he’s trying to move away from, he said. “A shelter is like jail.”
So he’s been sleeping on the streets, even when it’s cold.
Burgeson is doing well on other fronts: He found a clinic where he gets methadone for neck pain. He got health care for medical problems. He said he has not used drugs in the last six months, and has been on a recovery path for four years.
“I would never imagine when I started the recovery journey that I’d still be jobless and homeless 14 months out,” he said.
“Not Giving Up”
Katie Heffernan, a social worker for the Public Defender’s Office at Superior Court on Church Street, said she finds it hard to believe, too.
“It’s surprising to me, with someone of his fortitude, that he hasn’t landed a job,” she said.
In her work, Heffernan sees a lot of people — about 80 to 85 per month — who have been convicted of serious criminal charges. She helps connect them to support services.
Heffernan (pictured) met Burgeson in 2006. Since then, Burgeson visits her a couple times a month to check in. These days, he emails every day. He checks in to vent, or ask her advice. He reaches out when he’s at his wits’ end.
When she tries to point Burgeson toward resources to find housing or a job, she said, she finds he is “several steps ahead” of her.
“I’m just always so impressed with him,” she said. “Joe really stands out in a pool of people who are struggling to make ends meet.” He stands out, she said, in his resourcefulness, his persistence, his writing talent, his capacity for self-reflection and in reaching out for help.
Heffernan racked her brain to think of a single ex-con who is currently employed. Most land jobs or homes through networks of family or friends. Burgeson has no living family. His three siblings all died at a young age, in their 30s, from drugs and alcohol, he said.
Having no home is a serious obstacle to recovery, Heffernan said. For starters, she said, having a roof over your head is an opportunity to get good, solid sleep.
“Without that, your defenses are down. So often, you go back to using drugs, or selling drugs.”
She said it’s remarkable that Burgeson has made it this far without falling back into a pattern of using drugs and committing crimes.
“It would be tremendously easy for him to resume a life that he’s lived,” she said. “That’s the kind of life that he knows. But he’s made a choice not to live that kind of life again.”
Heffernan said unlike many others in his situation, Burgeson is not to one to make excuses. He’s quick to make connections and find resources.
“It is frustrating to watch this individual struggle despite all of the effort he has exerted,” she wrote on in a letter recommending Burgeson for assistance from City Hall’s new prison reentry initiative.
Last year, he spoke at a public hearing in favor of the city’s new Ban the Box initiative, to get rid of the space on initial job applications asking if one is a convicted felon.
Burgeson said that question — Have you ever been convicted of a felony? — is the biggest obstacle between him and a job.
“Your slate’s wiped clean — that’s the biggest lie of the criminal justice,” he said.
No matter how much time you do, he said, “your debts are never paid.”
Legislators are now pushing to ban the box at the state level. Burgeson, who has a pending application for seasonal work with the parks department, is holding out hope for a job and a home.
“I’m not giving up,” he said, “but I could see where someone does.”
I'm sorry if i sound cold blooded but how is this guy to be trusted by an employer? Hes on methadone which is basically a drug and has a history of armed robbery. Would you let him in your business? I mean the guy is just months removed from prison. That suburban couple that took him in his quite courageous and a bit lucky they still own their possessions. Hopefully he turns his life around but he has a long way to go to rebuild his reputation. Keep up the good work Joe and hopefully someone gives you a chance and you prove your on the straight and narrow. Just call me skeptical thats all.