Inside a brick building on Chicago’s West Side — once part of a sprawling Sears Roebuck campus — is an adult transitional center, or halfway house, that’s home to 250 men completing sentences for criminal convictions and preparing to reenter society. 

Just down the hallway from their living quarters, a high-ceilinged former gymnasium holds an unexpected sight: a two-story under-construction home, complete with exposed insulation and electric fixtures.

This is where residents of the halfway house, and other men and women who have been involved with the criminal justice system, train for a new chapter in their lives: work in the solar industry. 

It’s part of a larger workforce initiative to inject equity into the state’s clean energy transition.

Illinois’ 2017 and 2021 clean energy laws created job training programs that prioritize people from marginalized communities, and include remedial education, interpersonal and professional skills, and wraparound services to help them with childcare, car problems, mental health needs, and other challenges. 

The state has a specific focus on including the formerly incarcerated in this effort, and the Safer Foundation, headquartered in this brick building, has been central to achieving that. 

Since 1972, the nonprofit has equipped people who were formerly incarcerated with skills and helped them get jobs. Safer President and CEO Mark Yates said that clean energy is a promising sector, offering entry-level jobs, opportunities to advance, and carpentry and electrical experience that also translates to other fields. 

Safer says that its relationships with employers like utility-scale developer Millennium Solar Electric and residential installer SunRun help, since companies are often reluctant to hire people with criminal convictions or gaps in work history.

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