By Mary Hanssens

The distance from Washington Square to Norris Square is slight, but the two are worlds apart. The view from Washington Square in downtown Philadelphia is scenic and peaceful, as offices and apartments surround a historic site. The view from Norris Square in Kensington is often disturbing, as aging buildings surround a microcosm of the problems confronting American cities.

Spanning these two contrasts is a partnership forged by a Center City lawyer and a Catholic brother to combat the worst ills of city life—crime and addiction—with a residential program for ex-offenders called Hospitality House.

The work began ten years ago when Sister Peter Claver moved to a convent in Northeast Philadelphia. Although in her eighties, Sister Peter began a ministry to men in prison and quickly realized the need for services to reintegrate them into the community upon their release. She recruited people in the criminal justice system to help convert her ambitious ideal into reality.

One of the recruits was Philadelphia trial lawyer Gerald McHugh. In his professional life, McHugh is a protégé of legendary advocate S. Gerald Litvin, but before settling into Washington Square, McHugh had seen another side of life, having taught in the Philadelphia prisons and written a book on prison ministry.

Hospitality House first opened its doors on the third floor of an operating Catholic rectory in West Philadelphia. “It was like a Bing Crosby movie, with these two heroic advocates for the poor, Sister Peter and Father Jim Daly, the pastor, raising funds and rallying the parish to support a hard-nosed group of ex-convicts,” McHugh says. “Children in the parish school even raised money with a candy drive.”

Despite such inspirational support, the program was in danger of faltering for lack of a director to supervise its operation full time. “Good intentions do not make a program,” McHugh says. “No one was prepared for the complexity of the undertaking.”

Enter Joseph Dudek, a brother in the same religious order as Sister Peter, who had worked in the Hough Section of Cleveland, where the first urban riot of the 1960s erupted. The son of a Pittsburgh electrician, Brother Joe has a down-to-earth manner of relating to people and a hands-on approach to solving problems, which McHugh describes as a “blue-collar” ethic.

Brother Joe moved into the rectory and quickly concluded that it was not practical for housing ex-offenders, whose habits sometimes clashed with parish life.

“The last straw might have been the morning the mother superior from the convent notice a fire ladder hanging from one of our windows,” Dudek recalls. A quick check revealed that the ladder had been used to smuggle in a resident’s girlfriend, with the two “engaging in conduct a celibate religious was not intended to see.”

The program moved to a house in Germantown owned by a board member of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, and McHugh soon realized he would need to advise the program’s board of directors on subjects that, as a litigator, he knew nothing about – zoning, licensing, non-profit status, tax exemptions. He embarked on a mission of continuing legal education volunteered by former law school classmates. He also learned that a struggling new program didn’t always have the luxury of operating in strict compliance with code. “I would tell Joe how many residents we could take according to L&I, and he would tell me the most creative way of stretching the rules.”

The program survived the move away from its parish roots and started to evolve into something more sophisticated than a simple shelter. Dudek settled into his role as program director, and McHugh assumed chairmanship of the board of directors.

“We didn’t want to be just an address for the parole board,” Dudek says. “We wanted to create an environment where there was some chance, however, difficult it might be, for men to escape the cycle of crime.”

The program’s basic premise always has been to stress responsibility and self-reliance as its residents become reacclimated to life outside prison. Each resident is asked to sign a social contract and is expected to contribute a percentage of his income, whatever it might be, to program support. The residents’ needs are varied. Job skills among ex-offenders are scarce, and many lack a high school education. A vast majority also have drug and alcohol dependencies, requiring therapy and sometimes detoxification.

The variety of needs required a variety of responses, all of which required money. As a result, Dudek and McHugh were forced into the unwelcome role of fund-raisers. “Promoting the cause of ex-offenders does not have quite the same sentimental appeal as healing the sick and the lame,” Dudek says. Writing proposals, soliciting corporations and developing political contacts became the principal order of business. Volunteers filled the gaps when services could not be funded, and at times laid off staff members would continue to work without pay.

The greatest difficulty in attracting support always has been the misconception that programs for ex-offenders are soft on crime, a view Dudek rejects. “There is a false dichotomy in public thinking that one has to be either pro-enforcement or pro-rehabilitation, which is nonsense,” he says. “The two goals have to interrelate, or neither will be effective. That’s why we insist residents be responsible for their actions even as we work to support them.”

Ironically, while promoting rehabilitation through Hospitality House, McHugh was negotiating with the city to establish a police mini-station in his West Philadelphia neighborhood and participating in drug vigils to drive crack dealers off corners. “Don’t even try to tell someone who has been followed home by drug dealers he’s naive about crime,” McHugh says.

The program’s unsentimental approach is illustrated in its hiring of ex-offenders, including program graduates – on the theory that the hardest person for an addict or ex-convict to fool someone with a similar past. The approach has been successful, winning the attention of Sheriff John Green and earning the program a commendation from City Council.

In 1990, the program took its greatest gamble, taking over two large properties on Norris Square that had been centers for the homeless. Although the properties were fully licensed and zoned and provided ample space to operate, they also increased the program’s overhead. The financial survival of Hospitality House was in doubt.

To ease the strain, the program’s board of directors voted to contract with the Department of Corrections to help formally supervise inmates on parole. Until that time, Hospitality House had refused the entanglement of government contacts, fearful that the combination of red tape and legal responsibility for parolees might compromise its principles. Ideology yielded to necessity, however, and the program began accepting referrals of parole violators who face reincarceration but are sent instead to Hospitality House for one last chance.

Some parole officials were skeptical of the program’s seriousness, but over time the willingness of the staff to hold residents responsible for their conduct won over most of the doubters. Hospitality House is never at a loss for residents.

Most recently, Hospitality House earned certification as a drug and alcohol-treatment center through the efforts of an ex-offender staff member who completed the necessary training and set up a treatment protocol to meet state licensing requirements. Even that achievement was not without difficulty, though. Welfare officials in charge of reimbursements were uncomfortable at first with ex-offenders’ holding key staff positions, again leaving the program with greater commitments than it had resources.

For Hospitality House, surviving against the odds is hardly new. And so Brother Joe will continue to head downtown (only now to the Widener Building), or McHugh will head north after a day of depositions, to meet with other board members to find new paths to explore. After ten years, they simply refuse to believe there is any obstacle that can’t be overcome.