Indianapolis announces plan to end unsheltered homelessness by 2028, Mayor notably absent

The City of Indianapolis announced a plan Tuesday for housing 350 unsheltered people across the city within the next 12 months. The plan will place unhoused people into supportive housing and provide wraparound services to keep them off the streets long term. 

It’s part of a nationwide model called “Housing First,” which prioritizes housing people first and then deals with other chronic issues, including health problems or addiction. 

The city’s most recent count of unsheltered homeless people on just one night in Indianapolis was almost 340. City leaders say their plan aims to end chronic unsheltered homelessness by 2028. 

“This allows folks to get rapidly rehoused, find the stability of four walls and a door, and start to stabilize and get connected with services much more quickly, rather than waiting for housing while living on the street,” said Aryn Schounce, senior policy advisor in the Mayor’s Office. 

Schounce said the initiative, dubbed Streets to Home Indy, will start by moving people from homeless encampments around the city into permanent housing. She underlined that camps will not be closed until individuals are housed. 

“The units need to be available to move forward and get folks off the streets,” she said. “So we would be monitoring and making sure that, as we do camp closures, especially larger camp closures, that the housing units are available for those individuals to be rehoused.”

The city will cover rent for unsheltered individuals working directly with landlords to find available units across the city. The program builds on a pilot program last year where the city covered rent for just 30 units. 

According to city officials, covering rent as well as providing wraparound services will cost roughly $22,000 per individual every year. The program is supported by roughly $8 million in city and philanthropic funds.

This is the first phase of a multi-pronged initiative. Phase two will work to bring more federal housing vouchers to the program and begin working to house people in the city’s shelter system. 

The final phase of the program aims to identify “long-term funding sources” to help divert some 2,500 people from ever entering homelessness.

The first phase will cover rent for a roughly 12-month period for unsheltered individuals brought into the program. 

But Rob MacPherson, Vice President for Advancement at the Indianapolis Foundation, said people would not be sent back to the streets after that period had elapsed. 

“This is permanent housing with supportive services. It's not temporary housing. It's not transitional housing,” he said. “We are going into this with the intent that everybody is going to be housed permanently, and we're going to maintain that housing stability standard at a really, really high level.”

According to city officials, the plan is to slowly phase in federal housing vouchers and local affordable housing programs as those become available. 

Federal housing vouchers are overseen locally by the Indianapolis Housing Authority. That agency underwent a federal takeover last year to help sort out years of mismanagement and currently has an “administrative freeze” on issuing new vouchers, according to officials. 

Tuesday’s virtual press conference was originally meant to be in-person, but the event was cancelled abruptly just a few hours before it was expected to take place. 

The mayor’s office said the cancellation of the in-person meeting was “in light of recent events,” but did not specify what those events might be. 

The night before the Tuesday briefing, the Indianapolis City-County Council meeting became chaotic following the release of an investigation into how the Mayor’s office handled allegations of sexual misconduct. 

Despite his absence at the press conference, a spokesperson for the Mayor said the issue of supportive housing is still a top priority, “Mayor Hogsett’s commitment to end chronic and unsheltered homelessness in Indianapolis remains unwavering.”

A city-wide plan to end homelessness by 2023 fell short. Local pressure from the faith-based community and other partners has helped move the city towards Tuesday’s announcement.

Contact WFYI and Side Effects Public Media's Health Reporter Benjamin Thorp at bthorp@wfyi.org.