NON-PROFIT HELPING REHABILITATE CRIMINAL OFFENDERS

GREENSBORO -- Mike Cummings used to see his dad working in the office late
at night and wonder why.

"He used to always tell me I need to stay busy," said Cummings, 29, a
Pleasant Garden resident who was smoking crack cocaine at the time. "I used
to think 'man, he's wasting a lot of time.'"

Cummings says he now works 80 hours a week. And he's been clean and sober
since his arrest for possessing crack in December 1999.

Cummings heads a crew for a moving company as a resident of Delancey
Street, a non-profit rehabilitation program for criminal offenders.

Cummings and 30 other residents live and work at Delancey Street's
Greensboro branch inside a spacious home at 811 N. Elm St. in Fisher Park.

"It's given me a new sense of self-worth, a lot more confidence than what I
had," said Cummings, who teaches a science class at Delancey Street for
residents seeking their GEDs.

Across the country, Delancey Street has helped turn more than 10,000 former
convicts, drug abusers and homeless people into productive citizens.

Mimi Silbert, a psychologist and criminologist, founded Delancey Street in
1971 with ex-con John Maher in San Francisco. It was named after a Lower
East Side street in New York known as a home for hard-working immigrants.

Its 1,000 current residents live at branches in Greensboro, New Mexico, New
York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Delancey Street residents live and work in group homes where criminal
rehabilitation blends with vocational training, drug and alcohol treatment
and the bonds of friendship and family.

"They are put in an environment in which they have to work their way up
from sort of the bottom under supervision from people very much like them,"
said Tom Ross, a former Guilford County Superior Court judge and supporter
of Delancey Street over the years.

During the two-year minimum stay, residents learn skills in school or
business, bookkeeping, catering, sales, merchandising and marketing.
Residents are also tutored.

And there are three rules enforced during their stay: no drugs or alcohol,
no violence and no threats.

"It's a struggle," said Delancey Street resident Jennifer Dockery, 32, a
former drug user who ran away from home in Oklahoma City at age 15. "You
learn from your mistakes."

Delancey Street receives no government funding. Residents support
themselves by operating a dozen businesses, including a moving company, a
gourmet restaurant and print shops across the country.

In Greensboro, Delancey Street residents help the community by
participating in Fisher Park's annual cleanup, an Easter Egg hunt and an
oyster roast in March.

"They just have really stayed involved with the surrounding community,
which is part of their original charter, original goal," said Liz Urquhart,
president of the Fisher Park Neighborhood Association.

Delancey Street, however, drew some opposition in the community after
program organizers hoped to expand into a second home next door they bought
in 1999.

Guilford County Superior Court Judge Catherine Eagles in September upheld a
city Board of Adjustment decision barring Delancey Street from using that
home for the same purpose, ruling group care facilities in that
neighborhood such as Delancey Street must be at least one-quarter mile apart.

Delancey Street managers said they're not sure what will happen with the
house, referring questions to Silbert. Silbert did not return telephone
messages left at her San Francisco office.

Betty Ruffin, 67, who lives across the street, exchanges hugs with
residents during regular visits.

"Those people could be my sons or my sons' friends," said Ruffin, a Fisher
Park resident for about 15 years. "Thank goodness there's a place like
Delancey Street."