He is one of the state's greatest public servants.
He's never held elective office, never accepted a state paycheck and never had a public expense account.
He has survived three and a half years of investigation by the state attorney general, damaging to his reputation and his organization's finances, and yet he has remained optimistic.
His greatest concern is for the clients he can no longer serve, ex-cons and ex-addicts now back on the street because his programs have been forced to close amid the state probe.
"We have lost thousands of people because of legal difficulties," said the Rev. Peter Young, whose programs to help newly-released convicts transition to meaningful lives garnered him public and private support across the state.
In the midst of the worst heroin epidemic since the 1960s, many of the clinics and halfway houses operated by Young's organization are empty. Until recently, his programs received about $5 million in state funds to clinically treat about 5,000 people a day from Buffalo to Brooklyn. His housing programs sheltered roughly 1,200 people a day. Donations made up the rest of the operating costs.
"In every city, we have a hundred here, a hundred there," he said, bemoaning what has occurred — not because of what it's done to him, but because thousands of people who were in treatment are back on the street.
Young's legal problems started when he reported to authorities that two employees had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars in state grant money. One employee turned state's evidence. Authorities reviewed and dismissed allegations that ranged from improper use of grant money to serving free meals.
Young had to explain that the Wednesday night spaghetti meals at the Schuyler Inn in Menands, where ex-convicts and ex-addicts bussed tables and worked as hosts and chefs, were an incentive to get potential donors and volunteers to mingle with criminals and see their transformation first-hand.
My late husband and I were among the guests. Others were people who attended Young's Sunday Mass at Mother Theresa Mission. Many were people like us who donated time and items like household furnishings, old computers and used vehicles to his programs. Residents of Albany's South End ate there, as well as friends and family of those in the culinary rehab program. Other areas are hospitality, signage, office and computers.
Young believes his strong after-care program, affordable housing and job training are the reasons why only eight percent of his clients return to prison or addiction, according to a 10-year SUNY criminal justice study. The state's rate is 76 percent.
During 55 years of priesthood — his ordination anniversary is May 17 — Young has raised up thousands of New Yorkers from the gutters of crime and addiction to become taxpaying citizens.
Young, who served as a pastor at St. John's in the South End and later at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Bolton Landing, came to see the need for programs to help the incarcerated and addicted transition to meaningful and productive lives in his years doing double-duty as a state prison chaplain. Through his efforts, the state in 1974 passed a law to decriminalize public intoxication, allowing judges to send people to treatment.
Ironically, when the state needs its proven home-run hitter in recovery treatment, Young is sidelined, awaiting the equivalent of a dismissal by the attorney general. His staff is dispersed, his hard-won sites to house ex-cons and ex-addicts empty. He says the probe has already destroyed his group's fundraising. And still, he hasn't lost hope.
"I'm just waiting for their decision for when we can get back into full play," he said.