Ardella’s House helps formerly incarcerated women feel at home during reentry

On March 2, Denise Nixon walked out of the State Correctional Institution at Muncy a free woman. And like nine out of 10 inmates in Pennsylvania prisons, she was headed home. But she was returning to Philadelphia empty-handed.

“I didn’t have nothing but my prison sweatpants, a shirt, and shower shoes,” Nixon recalled.

Nixon would have to figure out how to survive reentry with no money, no job, little support, and a list of parole demands to satisfy or risk going back to Muncy.

According to the American Bar Association, she would also encounter the daunting 45,000 legal restrictions and sanctions that those with criminal records face. In Pennsylvania 64.7% of formerly incarcerated people return to prison within three years of release.

Nixon did have one critical asset — a place to live at the recently opened Ardella’s House, a residential facility for formerly incarcerated women designed to decrease recidivism. And she had the ongoing support of Ardella’s House’s founder, Tonie Willis.

Willis started Ardella’s House in 2010 as a program to help women like Nixon bridge the gap between leaving prison and reintegrating into society. However, she wanted to do more than refer women to housing. She wanted to provide them a home.

“You can’t accomplish anything if you don’t have a clean place to live,” Willis said.

For a decade she encountered one obstacle after another as she tried to raise the funds and deal with contractors to rehab the house.

“Sometimes I would feel so depressed I would cry,” she said.

But she refused to quit and last October she opened her doors.

“I learned about Ardella’s House by accident,” said Nixon. “I kept seeing Tonie Willis’ name in the reentry book [at Muncy].” Nixon took it as a sign and started a letter-writing campaign to be accepted. Her determination earned her a spot in the house, which has room for only five women.

Located in a newly rehabbed three-story house in North Philadelphia, Willis designed Ardella’s House to feel like a home. The women do not share a bedroom, they cook their own food, and it is near Fairmount Park to encourage walks in nature. What’s lacking is anything that would remind the residents of being in a cell.

“I want them to want more, and to want more you have to be exposed to certain things,” Willis said, sitting in the dining room of the quiet, immaculate house.

“I walked in and the first thing I saw was I’m home,” said Nija Fleming, the first resident of Ardella’s House. “I felt like I was stepping into my home.”

Fleming, 40, has been unhoused since she was 23, when an assault charge not only landed her in prison but resulted in her losing her Philadelphia Housing Authority home. She was raised by her grandmother who died a decade ago but not before outliving all of her children.

“I didn’t have aunts and uncles and friends,” said Fleming, adding, “[Homelessness] messes with you mentally.”

Nixon, 53, has spent 35 years in and out of prison and county jails.

“Since I was 18 years old I had never been home a full year,” Nixon said. Usually, she depended on returning to her mother’s home. As a hairdresser, she could also count on working in her father’s shop. However, when she left Muncy in March, her father had died, the shop was closed, and her mother was in a nursing home.

Reentry is the period of time between leaving jail or prison and reintegrating into an often unwelcoming, suspicious community. “Reentry is hard,” said Fleming. “I had nothing and I was starting from scratch.”

It’s a feeling that Willis, 65, understood firsthand.

In her early 20s she, too, was incarcerated for two years. Coming home to West Philadelphia meant rebuilding her life and trying to hide from the stigma she felt about being formerly incarcerated.

But when a friend who was formerly incarcerated needed his documents, like his birth certificate and Social Security card, Willis stepped up to help. He referred someone else to Willis, and told her helping people reintegrate into society was “her calling.” She agreed and focused on the needs of women.

“When I did my research I found there were more programs for men than for women,” Willis said. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of incarcerated women increased by more than 525% between 1980 and 2021.

Both Fleming and Nixon described many of Philadelphia reentry locations as “horrible” jail-like institutions surrounded by barbed wire. “It makes you feel like you are still in jail,” said Nixon.

Ardella’s House is part of the Sisterhood Alliance for Freedom & Equality (SAFE) Housing Network whose philosophy is to create safe homes, not institutional shelters, for returning women.

The SAFE Housing Network, which provided about $100,000 to help Willis complete Ardella’s House, was founded by Susan Burton, also the founder of A New Way of Life Reentry Project, which creates welcoming and healing spaces for women to rejoin their communities after incarceration.

Burton served six prison sentences and through that experience realized women needed much more reentry support than was being offered.

Willis credits her mother — the house’s namesake, Ardella Willis — for teaching her the value of seeing the good in everyone. “She gave unconditional love and never saw wrong.”

And she credits Burton with mentoring her in building Ardella’s House.

“I saw Susan Burton walking through the airport one day and ran after her. She told me to apply [to SAFE for the funds to rehab Ardella’s House],” said Willis who compared Burton’s fame in the reentry community to Beyoncé.

Willis now wants to establish another 12 houses throughout the city, as well as find a place for a workforce development center.

She is also working on developing a program for girls ages 8 to 18 to help prevent them from entering the system.

“I saw a flash mob and at least 40 girls were on the corner. I saw the need to start working with them. I want to reach them before they have to come [to Ardella’s House],” Willis said.