At 4:30 on August 20th, local citizens concerned about homelessness and the city’s thus-far insipid response to that growing phenomenon should plan to attend a showing of Beyond the Bridge. It will be held in Clowes Hall and will be followed by a panel discussion facilitated by Sam Tsemberis–chosen as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2024–and a founder of “Housing First.”
Homelessness has been spiking around the country, as housing costs have increased and housing supply has failed to keep up with demand. Between 2022 and 2023, the nation saw a 12% increase in homelessness (in major cities, the increase was 15%). There are many facets to the problem: national corporations buying up rental housing and jacking up prices certainly hasn’t helped. Morton Marcus recently noted that the increase in single-person households has also contributed to the scarcity. The situation with affordability is so severe that many people with full-time jobs have found themselves homeless.
The Brookings Institution conducted one of several recent research projects on the issue. All of the studies I’ve seen are consistent with the Brookings conclusion that punitive measures–clearing encampments, making “public camping” illegal, etc.–aren’t just unhelpful, but counterproductive. As the Brookings report notes, Treating homeless people as criminals can actually make both homelessness and crime worse.
So what does work?
Rather obviously, increasing the supply of affordable housing.
The cities and regions that have embraced the evidence on housing and homelessness have seen positive results. For instance, when the City of Houston and Harris County provided more than 25,000 homeless people with apartments and houses between 2011 and 2022, they saw a 64% reduction of homelessness during the same time period. After Milwaukee County implemented its housing-first program in 2015, its unsheltered homelessness population decreased by 92%. When the City and County of Denver implemented its Social Impact Bond (SIB) Program in 2016, which provided housing and support services to chronically homeless individuals, 77% of participants maintained stable housing after three years, the usage rates of the city’s detoxification services reduced by 65%, and arrests reduced by 40%. The significant cost savings associated with these reductions in public service usage offset the spending associated with supportive housing.
What is less well-known is the broad-based benefits that smart housing policy can have on another critical—and often conflated—issue facing localities: public safety. A strong body of evidence shows that when people are housed stably, they commit fewer survival crimes like theft, robbery, trespassing, loitering, and prostitution.
Increasing the supply of housing is a longer-term solution, so the Brookings report also discusses evidence-based short and medium-length measures, including reforms to zoning and land use laws that unduly restrict housing types, strengthening tenant protections, interceding before evictions occur, and reforming other counterproductive policies. (Several other policies are discussed at length, and you really should click through for that discussion.)
As I have previously noted, Indiana’s legislature has been consistently unwilling to help tenants. The churches and nonprofit organizations funding the Clowes Hall presentation will thus focus on what local officials can–and should– do. Again, the research reporting on successful programs undertaken elsewhere suggest that a Mayor’s leadership is critical.
Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett needs to take at least the following steps.
- Convene a meeting that includes the widest variety of stakeholders and provide them with the data. (Here in Indianapolis, whatever we’ve been doing clearly isn’t working and they need to know that.) Then provide them with the overwhelming research confirming that the solution is housing.
- From that group–perhaps augmented by academics working on the issue–form a task force. That body should identify what our current approach is missing, what is needed, and what resources will be required. The task force should include service providers, law enforcement, healthcare representatives, and city administrators.
- Identify a representative of the city administration to act as a liaison to the task force–someone with the authority to ensure that its recommendations are followed with action. The appointment of such an individual would also be a signal that the city is serious about addressing the problem.
The Mayor should also use the “bully pulpit” of his office, in addition to ensuring that the necessary resources will be provided.
Mayor Hogsett has recently directed a significant amount of energy into efforts to acquire a professional soccer team. Surely eradicating homelessness is at least equally important. (Granted, I’m not a soccer fan…but still!)
Meanwhile, we all need to attend the August 20th Clowes Hall event. The film and panel both promise to be eye-opening. Solutions will be offered–ammunition for lighting a fire under the city administration.
Despite our retrograde legislature, we can end homelessness in Indianapolis.
We just need political leadership– and sufficient political will.
Great ideas. Thanks for this.
I always enjoy reading an essay that clearly defines a problem and then presents solutions. The more the better.
At the Department of Veteran’s Affairs we did what may have been the first research on this in 2009. The result showed that housing first was the only real solution. Since then we know how, because cities tried it.
When I was in DC I rode the Metro everyday past vacated warehouses and industrial buildings. You don’t need to provide a single family house, just a place to be!
“…and sufficient political will.”
This is Indiana, so be prepared for the state legislature to decide what Indy can do for the state. Housing First is on the way out with SCOTUS approval of Grants Pass. Even CA’s Gavin Newsom has changed his heart and allowed the clearing of encampments. I expect LA and San Fran to follow suit. Asheville, NC, is another city that has a terrible homeless population. Many services are located within short distances from encampments, so homeless folks travel to Asheville.
The billionaire behind the Grants Pass decision is Joe Lonsdale, who was co-founder of Palantir and founded Cicero Institute:
https://ciceroinstitute.org/issues/homelessness/
Joe is anti-Housing First. He claims that it takes many dwellings to finally secure housing for homeless people because they are addicts and have mental illnesses. Cicero’s theory is to provide marginal accommodations with treatment first.
The former CEO of our behavioral health facility claimed there are no such things as homeless people. He believed it was a choice, and that was true in many of the cases I worked with. The shelter provided came with rules and regulations. Sometimes, it came with religious teachings. They also couldn’t drink or do drugs. Those were dealbreakers, so they chose homelessness.
I expect Indiana’s deep red legislature will join the red states’ adaptation of the Cicero Institutes model, which is treatment first before housing.
Entertainment is much more important than lives. Follow the $$$
So disheartening to read Todd’s penultimate paragraph. Drinking and drugs are not a choice , they are a disease. Obviously, treatment and housing should come at the same time.
It’s a much bigger issue than just folks not being able to afford rent. You have a certain number that are military or ex-military rather. You have a certain number that lost their homes, and you have a certain number that are Riff Raff, including gypsies, scammers, thieves, substance abusers, died in the wool alcoholics, and along with that, addicted to gambling.
One way to stop some of this, is to make panhandling illegal. And those who are serial criminals, they need to be in some sort of work program.
Here, you have some seedy hotels, prostitutes, drug dealers, the scammers, all hang out. Usually, they are there on the states dime. They work the intersections because a lawsuit was filed and they won permission to be on public property even if it’s to panhandle. The take is usually about 500 to $750 per person per day. At night, they are playing the slot machines in the gambling cafes and gas stations, The Thornton’s gas stations have UV lights in the bathrooms instead of regular lighting. It makes it difficult for them to find veins to inject. Business as usual!
One size doesn’t fit all. And providing housing doesn’t fix the problem. There are so many who are veterans, that refuse to go to the huge veteran facility that offers housing right up the street here. Because they’re not allowed to drink or smoke weed or pop pills. They have to get clean, and go to class to stay. Needless to say, most don’t stay, because they don’t want to get clean, and they don’t want to go to class. And they’re right back panhandling along with the self-identified gypsies.
Like I said, it’s not a one size fits all, and the problem is much more complicated than just sticking your finger in the dyke so to speak. They’re also is a quite a large element of undocumented immigrants, many of them claiming to be burying someone different every week. They find a picture, carry around empty milk containers, asking for help with some innocuous dead person. Usually a child so it tugs on the heartstrings.
So what to do about that? Taxpayers get tired of all of the shenanigans, and it tends to harden the compassion and empathy, especially when you can see these folks are not being truthful about their situation.
Then, like with PADS They can sleep in the shelter, and then they have to leave in the morning. Come back to sleep, rinse and repeat. Petty crime goes to the roof, you have assaults, and other unfortunate actions.
It’s a failure of society and government, because this is allowed for one thing, and folks are not forced to do anything except what they feel like doing which in this case, is mostly nefarious.
Shelter, for education and food, and, some sort of work program. A busy mind is less likely to get involved in activities unbecoming.
Around here, most of these fast food places are begging for workers, $16 an hour is not enough because they can make more panhandling and praying on people’s emotions. Sometimes food is bought for these folks, and they walk right behind the fast food places and throw it in the dumpster.
Like I said, it’s complicated!
I know there will be people who dislike the idea of giving or subsidizing housing for homeless people. They view it as unearned charity, and think it undeserved.
Regarding those people, I think their moral compasses are broken. But also, it’s not cost effective, and maybe this could sway them. Maybe people aren’t clear about just how much it costs the taxpayers to keep a person in jail? From what I can see in the literature, it’s almost $10000/month.
The people aren’t criminals. They are our fellow humans and simply deserve basic human dignity. Give them housing, at the very least.
PS It seems there are still people incarcerated on marijuana-based charges. If the sources (e.g. Last Prisoner Project) I looked at are correct, they should all be immediately released, too. (Imagine there were still people incarcerated from the prohibition days. Idiotic.)
John Sorg. I don’t know how you reconcile your attitude toward homeless people with all the Scripture quotes you are so fond of sharing with us. Guess anything can be justified if you stick to the Old Testament.
Sharon,
Based on my experience working with the homeless population, John Sorg is accurate in his description. It’s complicated.
Many of the housing options for homeless people in my community are run by Christian Missions, so there are rules and usually some religious classes. Most of the guys I worked with would rather be in jail than sit through a bible class.
Also, there are way too many abandoned homes in communities where they can shelter themselves, use drugs and alcohol, etc.
The only people you can reach and assist are the ones willing to help themselves. Usually, those people just fell on hard times and need temporary help. You get them into the system, and they get back on their feet within a short time.
Like John said, it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.
The housing crisis is a multi-market supply chain problem that capitalism is not capable of dealing with. The only answer is somewhere between regulating capitalism and socialism completely owning the problem.
The details of the optimum solution require functional politics.
We are being denied that at the moment by extremism preventing effective collaboration between socialism and capitalism
The first step is to fix the entertainment problem, which caused the political problem preventing a functional marriage between socialism and capitalism.
I can’t imagine being homeless. I guess I was lucky to have a mother and father that took care of me. They didn’t take me to church however I went to church on Sunday mornings with my neighbors. Of course I was born in the 1940s. My parents were born in the 1920s. Both had 7 or 8 siblings. Times were hard and they survived. All of my aunts and uncles lived in houses. There was only one that I can think of that depended on his family for support. They gave willingly.
man,homeless,hasnt had a decent shower since when, looks fo r work, repeat, homeless man hasnt had a decent shower since when. though one would like to think panhandlers sit around spending their daily fortune in slots, begin the day yourself with these people, ya might find many have mental issues and health issues that dont allow them fulltime employment of they just cant cope anymore..repeat scenrio, but maybe some mental/health and mentor ship is far more needed for those who have had unforeseen $ issues,and wound up homeless. walk a mile in those shoes before one heaps the slants.. id rather give a few bucks to them, than support some org that pockets most of it.
its unfair to judge them,no one wants to be homeless in America. repeat..
With all the breaks (tax abatements) that businesses get in Indiana, the legislature could impose a relief tax to help the homeless. There’s an extra tax in downtown Indianapolis that went to build a stadium that’s still being collected. Why not divert some of that money to rehab old buildings for shelters instead of supporting wealthy sport team owners. The needs of all the community are being put on back burner for the entertainment of sport fans. Maybe sport fans from the suburbs that don’t like to view the homeless when they attend DT games could pitch in some money at the gate to help the homeless?
Sharon Miller,
Truth is truth! Or, should we rather live in alternate realities? We all do what we can do, can you refute anything that I’ve said? You can’t! Unless you decide to live in an alternate reality of course. Scripture has nothing to do with it. And how you can claim it does, shows a certain disaffection towards truth. The folks that are living the way they are, are not willing to change, as I mentioned! So what do you do? Leave it be? Or, do you try to be proactive! Do you try to get folks educated, do you try to get them jobs to be self-sufficient! Or, is it just okay to let people run through traffic and panhandle? Or maybe go into the gas stations and shoot up in the bathrooms. Think about your comment, and how narrow-minded and thoughtless it is!
Todd,
Thank you!
I am reminded of the quote I learned years ago –
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
Anatole France
But – Indianapolis = sports = Indianapolis
We obviously need more teams and more stadiums
Thanks for this post – a dose of the facts on this topic is refreshing
There are many nonprofit programs in Indy which support the homeless population.
Now that the problems have been so adequately outlined, how about listing/profiling some of the existing programs?
Ideas for additional solutions to problems often can be seen existing, sometimes on a non governmental scale, in the same communities where those problems are observed. Go talk to those at Horizon House to find some solutions which might be advantageous.
It is not like there is nothing being done.
The new downtown taxing district created to funnel some money into homeless solutions is getting some real pushback. Owners of a few of the big buildings are balking at a $200-300K annual price tag.
Good comments. It’s complicated, and while there is no 100% solution, we need try something.
Len, that was one of my father’s favorite quotations, and is mine, too. I think that most people either don’t understand or just gloss over the root causes of homelessness (which are also varied). But getting people housed, and giving them additional support to manage their lives would go a heck of a long way.