A year into the city’s campaign to end chronic homelessness in Indianapolis by 2028, the Streets to Home Indy initiative has housed more than 200 individuals.
Streets to Home Indy is led by the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention, or CHIP, and shared a recent update on the progress of the program. It targets people living unsheltered and provides housing for individuals, along with other wrap-around services for up to 12 months.
The program kicked off in June 2025 and still aims to reach 300-350 unhoused individuals by the end of this year.
Chelsea Haring-Cozzi, CEO of CHIP, said she sees the progress made so far in the program as very promising.
“I think what's most encouraging is that we're really proving people can move directly from the streets into stable housing much faster when we work together and with that kind of urgency and coordination,” Haring-Cozzi said.
The program has now also reached its $8.1 million fundraising goal for the first phase of the three-phase project.
The initiative is being funded through various public and private means, including $2.7 million from the City of Indianapolis, $2.7 million from the Housing to Recovery Fund, and $2.7 million from philanthropic, faith, corporate, and individual donors.
The second phase will work to address those who are chronically “stuck” in the shelter system and help them also connect with stable housing. This phase will also provide targeted interventions to help people avoid street homelessness.
The third and final phase is then meant to launch diversion practices system-wide in the city to help individuals avoid falling back into homelessness. For this phase, the city will also need to identify long-term funding sources. It comes at the same time that federal funding for housing first initiatives is being pulled back.
Haring-Cozzi also shared that four more encampments have been cleared, bringing the total they have engaged with and now cleared to seven.
Haring-Cozzi said some things they’ve learned in the first year of the program include how to continuously refine their practices for working with community partners and to create an effective outreach plan.
“We're learning how to do much warmer handoffs, for example, between the folks that are working with individuals on the street, outreach teams, navigators, to housing case managers, so that there is a more seamless kind of community of care,” Haring-Cozzi said.
She said the average time from initial engagement to getting the person into housing is just under 30 days. Also, out of those entering housing, 95% have remained housed.
Indiana’s new law that bans public camping went into effect July 1, but Haring-Cozzi said it hasn’t had any real impact on their work so far.
“The passage of Senate Enrolled Act 285, I think, has just heightened the need for effective pathways out of homelessness, and we really see Streets to Home as being part of that solution,” Haring-Cozzi said.
She says her team plans to engage with state lawmakers as the upcoming legislative session tackles the next two-year state budget to potentially provide more support for the initiative.
Contact government reporter Caroline Beck at cbeck@wfyi.org
