Linda Bird was 89 cents away from having to make a really tough decision.

That was the account balance last month for her two transitional-living homes in New Danville, which have been helping female prison inmates for years.

Eighty-nine cents. And she had a mountain of bills for the upcoming month.

Bird and her husband, once again, reached into their own pockets and kept the facilities afloat.

"We've put every penny in this," she said this week. "We can't support it forever."

Government funding for nonprofit "halfway houses" such as Bird's BIRD Ministries is down. Likewise with private donations, officials say. The numerous transitional homes that serve as safe havens for dozens of local parolees each year are feeling the pinch.

With the account almost empty, Bird nearly pondered the unthinkable: closing the doors.

"I don't want to," she said. "But if things don't pick up … ."

The well is drying elsewhere, too.

Lancaster city-based Transition to Community, a longtime staple for male inmates, has been pushed to drastic reform.

In a month, TTC might lay off its already-few full-time employees and merge with Potter's House in Leola — unless the skies clear quickly.

Randy Martin, chairman of the TTC board, said funding is down $6,000 to $8,000 per month compared to last year.

"Significant givers just are not able to do it anymore," Martin said Friday.

The almighty dollar is the only thing that can sustain the local halfway houses, officials said.

But are their efforts to prevent parolees from returning to criminal habits a practice worth saving?

Advocates say the houses help keep recidivism rates in check. But some law enforcers and attorneys question the costs of keeping them open.

NO PLACE TO CALL HOME

On average, 500 people are released from Lancaster County Prison each month, according to prison data.

Almost half — 46 percent — of those prisoners didn't have a single visitor during their incarceration, according to Lancaster County Re-entry Management Organization.

Many of those prisoners are paroled without a place to call home.

"It happens all the time," said Cory Miller, a Lancaster lawyer who has represented many clients who used halfway houses. "They have ostracized their family" through their crimes.

Parolees without support are more likely to return to their cramped steel-barred cells, officials said.

"You shouldn't walk out of the prison gates at 6 a.m. and have no one to meet you there," Scott Sheely, director of the RMO, said. "If you don't get off on a good foot, it's going to be a problem. A big problem."

Recidivism is the main reason Lancaster County Prison is overcrowded, data suggest.

According to federal data on national trends, roughly two-thirds of paroled prisoners will end up back in jail within three years.

Donald Raiger, deputy warden for administrative services at Lancaster County Prison, provided a more specific picture of local recidivism rates.

A majority of prisoners who return do so because of parole or probation violations, Raiger said.

The proportion of former inmates who return for new criminal acts — new charges, essentially — is in the 25 to 35 percent range, Raiger said.

"The problem in Lancaster County," Raiger said, "is we have such a large number of parole violations."

Parole or probation can be violated for relatively minor infractions, such as losing a job, Raiger said.

'A LANDING PAD'

Transitional-housing centers provide parolees necessary options, said Scott Martin, chairman of both the Lancaster County Board of Commissioners and the county's Prison Board.

Aside from a bunk and a bite to eat, halfway houses offer programs to recovering drug and alcohol addicts. They help their residents find jobs by reaching out to employers willing to hire ex-cons.

Residents also receive supervision and counseling services.

"They respond well, in part because there are often ex-cons as counselors, so they can credibly understand the mindset of the inmate," Jim Gratton, a longtime local defense lawyer, said. "I think these type of agencies are absolutely necessary if we want ex-convicts to have any realistic hope of successful return to society."

"It's a landing pad," Miller said, "for the difficult time of literally being thrown out of 625 E. King St."

But it's a choice, Martin and others pointed out. A judge doesn't order prisoners to these facilities. Parole and probation workers can't force an ex-con to reside in one of the homes.

And there is no contract or commitment that a resident has to stay for the suggested six-month rehabilitation period.

"There has to be a willingness to change on the part of the recent inmate … for it to work," Gratton said.

That's where the line gets fuzzy, according to Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman.

"You have to remember that you cannot force someone to want to change," Stedman said.

COST OF LIVING

RMO statistics suggest it takes at least $5,000 to support a halfway house resident to the point that he can provide for himself.

The RMO received $141,000 in government funding last year for such work, Sheely said. Most of that was used for 24 ex-cons who stuck with a halfway house program, Sheely explained.

That comes to roughly $5,875 a person.

Twenty-one of those 24 are still free, according to RMO data.

Bird said she gets a couple calls each week from women who need a place to live. Many were recently released from jail, she said.

"We don't have room," Bird said of her two houses, which together can handle about 10 residents. "A woman and her child on the street — that's serious."

"Our budget is half what it used to be," Bird said. "People still give, but not as much. They don't have as much."

TTC's two facilities, in Lancaster and New Holland, can house up to 13 residents, Randy Martin said. Those residents are having trouble finding the jobs that can help pay for their stay, Martin said. That, on top of shrinking private donations, are the reasons for the upcoming merger with Potter's House.

Prison and parole officials work closely with TTC and BIRD Ministries. Without those houses, officials speculated, there would be an influx of new residents at already-crowded shelters such as Water Street Rescue Mission.

When shelters are full, some resort to street living.

Bird fears more recent inmates could reach that point.

"We're holding on by our fingertips," she said.

bhambright@lnpnews.com