Tag Archives: housing

From The Street To A Home

This blog typically addresses national issues. I’m not apologizing for that–the Trump administration poses an existential threat to the America most of us want to retain. Its numerous evils are–to use Joe Biden’s characterization–a “BFD.” But the fact that our national structures are under assault doesn’t mean that local issues have disappeared or become unimportant.

And the fact that the American Idea is under assault by a Christian nationalist movement doesn’t mean that we should overlook–or diminish the importance of– the good works of genuine Christians and other people of faith.

Which brings me to Indianapolis, and the laudable work being done by GIMA–the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, and its “Streets to Homes” initiative, a multifaith call to end chronic homelessness in Indianapolis.

GIMA began as an interfaith effort to make Indianapolis a more collaborative and inclusive city, to make it a “more just and livable place.” In stark contrast to MAGA’s faux Christianity, the faith leaders who came together in GIMA represent the city’s diverse religious traditions, with the stated intent to form what the organization calls “a sacred friendship,” and to collaborate on civic projects that serve the common good of greater Indianapolis.

I first encountered GIMA when the organization was focused on Indianapolis’ eviction crisis, and was impressed both by its  judicious approach to that issue and the breadth of the organization’s religious membership. Representatives of central Indiana’s Black and White churches, synagogues and Mosques exhibited a fellowship and respect that have been glaringly missing from our national conversations– thanks primarily to MAGA’s determined Othering. They identified a civic problem and came together to address it.

The organization describes “Streets to Homes” as follows:

Following the successful community action led by the Black Church Coalition, Indy Action Coalition, and the Validus Movement, The Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance (GIMA) is inviting congregations across Central Indiana to join a multifaith effort to support the Streets to Home Indy Initiative – a community- driven campaign to provide permanent housing and supportive services for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness. This initiative is part of a broader campaign to provide not just shelter, but lasting homes and supportive services for those most in need.

The goal of Streets to Homes is to house 350 currently unsheltered neighbors, and to do so by June of 2026 “through an evidence-based model that includes housing and supportive services.”

As the website explains,

Besides being the right thing to do? 20 years of data demonstrates that providing stability to these neighbors sets them on a path to upward mobility and independence, which ultimately strengthens our community, increases public safety, and reduces the economic impact of homelessness.

We can only do this through a community-wide commitment that includes the business community, philanthropic community, faith community, and civic support.

GIMA is asking faith community partners to contribute $270,000 as its part of the philanthropy community’s commitment of $2.7 million. That commitment “joins with equal pledges from the Housing to Recovery Fund and the city of Indianapolis” in what the organization calls “an unprecedented community-wide coalition.”

Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, the Executive Director of GIMA, tells me that area churches have responded with unprecedented generosity. (What he didn’t say–but I will–is that this diverse, interfaith effort has forced Indianapolis’ city government to become far more focused upon the effort to end homelessness than it had previously been.)

As regular readers of this blog know, I am very critical of the performative “Christians” who disdain both the adherents of other religions and “woke” efforts to ameliorate poverty and hopelessness. GIMA’s efforts are a reminder that there are millions of truly good people in every religious community who focus on the admonitions–common to all religions–to love one’s neighbors and to work for social justice. (MAGA to the contrary, it has been my observation that all genuine religiosity is “woke.”)

I would encourage readers who reside here in central Indiana to visit the linked GIMA and Streets to Homes websites. You need not be a believer, or a member of a congregation, to support this initiative, which is an excellent reminder to those of us who are not religious to avoid painting the folks who are with too broad a brush.

Thankfully, genuine Christians aren’t like Micah Beckwith, genuine Jews aren’t like Bibi Netanyahu, and genuine Muslims abhor jihadists. They’re all pretty “woke”– and the rest of us need to remember that.

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Fascinating…And Complicated

One of the problems of living through the Trump/Musk attack on the rule of law is that their firehose of assaults distract us from considering longer-term issues. I know that I have neglected reading the meaty academic studies that used to help me understand our social and economic environment. I just don’t have enough energy to dive into a lengthy “think piece” after a day of hysteria over the latest illegal and unconstitutional Trumpian eruptions.

But every once in a while, I encounter a really compelling analysis that offers a new way of understanding American culture. And that is certainly the case with Yoni Applebaum’s cover story for the March Atlantic.  Applebaum’s article–“Stuck in Place”–considers the drastic reduction in American mobility that has occurred since the mid-twentieth century.

When I was young (late Ice Age), it was a given that lots of Americans moved each year.  I never considered the social consequences of that fact of American life until reading the essay in which Applebaum asserts that diminished mobility constitutes “the single most important social change of the past half century.” Mobility, he says, was key to the American character.

Entrepreneurship, innovation, growth, social equality—the most appealing features of the young republic all traced back to this single, foundational fact: Americans were always looking ahead to their next beginning, always seeking to move up by moving on. But over the past 50 years, this engine of American opportunity has stopped working. Americans have become less likely to move from one state to another, or to move within a state, or even to switch residences within a city. In the 1960s, about one out of every five Americans moved in any given year—down from one in three in the 19th century, but a frenetic rate nonetheless. In 2023, however, only one in 13 Americans moved.”

I was particularly struck by the connection Applebaum drew between mobility and acceptance of diversity.

These ceaseless migrations shaped a new way of thinking. “When the mobility of population was always so great,” the historian Carl Becker observed, “the strange face, the odd speech, the curious custom of dress, and the unaccustomed religious faith ceased to be a matter of comment or concern.” And as diverse peoples learned to live alongside one another, the possibilities of pluralism opened. The term stranger, in other lands synonymous with enemy, instead, Becker wrote, became “a common form of friendly salutation.” In a nation where people are forever arriving and departing, a newcomer can seem less like a threat than a welcome addition: Howdy, stranger.

The essay grapples with the reasons why Americans have abandoned our former itch to move, and largely blames the progressives whose insistence on preservation–historic and otherwise–has led, in his analysis at least, to NIMBYism, and a “defense of communities in their current form against those who might wish to join them. Mobility is what made this country prosperous and pluralistic, diverse and dynamic. Now progressives are destroying the very force that produced the values they claim to cherish.”

If this assertion is true–if the efforts to preserve and celebrate existing structures and places have morphed into resistance to a wide variety of changes we once embraced– it would seem that we are experiencing yet another lesson in unintended consequences.

Appelbaum argues that we should make an effort to restore the bygone mobility that led people to move for better jobs, less expensive homes, a better quality of life, and/or just a desire to try new things. He advocates for what he calls “three simple principles.” One is consistency; he says that rules applied uniformly across a city will tend to produce neighborhoods with diverse populations and uses. Another is tolerance; he notes that organic growth is messy and unpredictable, but the places that thrive over the long term are those that empower people to make their own decisions, and to build and adapt structures to suit their needs. The third is abundance; he argues that the best way to solve our current housing supply crunch is to add supply, especially in places that are attractive and growing, so that housing becomes a springboard.

I certainly agree with the argument that we need to build more housing; I’d have to think long and hard about the other two–but then, I’m undoubtedly one of those “progressives” that values historic districts and the zoning laws that prevent your friendly liquor store from locating next to my house. Surely there is a middle ground…

That said, arguments that tie mobility to entrepreneurship and acceptance of diversity echo similar concerns about the end of frontiers. They’re reasonable and persuasive.

It’s complicated.

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Homeless Hoosiers

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. 

 

 

 

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The Rent Is Too Damn High!!

Remember the candidate who ran for Mayor of New York some years back whose single-issue political party and campaign slogan were both “the rent is too damn high”?”

What made me think about him was a recent meeting I sat in on, with Senate candidate Marc Carmichael and a couple of local experts on housing. Marc wanted to be brought up to speed with what has become a significant national issue: the cost of housing (and especially the lack of housing for low-income renters) and the range of national policies that might address the problem. (The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Jim Banks, has been too busy waging culture war against abortion and trans children to bother with legislation that might actually help people; Carmichael actually wants to “do the job.”)

Marc wasn’t the only one who learned a lot in that meeting. I did, too. So I was interested in a recent publication by the Brookings Institution titled “Ten Economic Facts About Rental Housing.”

The publication reports what most of us know: rental housing has become considerably less affordable over the past several years. We have low vacancy rates and high rent inflation, resulting in housing costs that strain the budgets of lower-income households.

The very low unemployment rate and recent strength in wages makes clear that housing instability in the U.S. is, in large part, a structural problem, one that will not be fully solved by a strong economy. Fiscal support for federal housing benefits is inadequate, eligible households wait years for benefits, and the number of single individuals experiencing homelessness has risen. Any effective solution will require policy actions by lawmakers.

Brookings research shows that approximately one-third of U.S. households rent, although the share of renters varies considerably by age of the head of household, ranging from 21 percent of households headed by someone 65 and older to 58 percent of households headed by someone ages 25 to 34. Renting also varies depending upon the head of household’s education, income, and race or ethnicity.

The paper identifies the ten facts that influence housing costs, and the link includes explanations of each. The explanations are well worth pondering, and if you want to gain a broader understanding of these complex issues, I encourage you to click through and read the entire report. But here, in brief, are the factors Brookings identifies:

  • 1. Households are more likely to rent if the household head has no college degree, is in a lower income quintile, or is Black.

  • 2. One-third of rental units are single-family rentals.

  • 3. Rental vacancies have returned to pre-pandemic levels, while multifamily housing starts have leveled off.

  • 4. Rental housing vacancy rates are highest in the Southeast.

  • 5. Rental price inflation is declining to pre-pandemic levels.

  • 6. Rent inflation looks similar across U.S. metropolitan statistical areas.

  • 7. For renting households with low earnings, rent is consistently more than one-third of their total expenditures.

  • 8. Federal housing assistance consistently falls short of housing needs.

  • 9. Single adults are driving the rise in unsheltered homelessness.

  • 10. Families wait years to receive a housing choice voucher.

A number of these structural causes are related to policy choices at both the state and federal levels. Housing assistance is part of America’s tattered and bureaucratic social safety net–and the failure of that assistance to materially address the problem is one more “data point” that should be considered in a much longer-range discussion about the holes in that net. That said, there are clearly areas where a renewed focus on actual governance would ameliorate at least some of the problems renters face.

At the end of the day, voters need to recognize the differences between culture warriors and policymakers–between candidates focused on the often-boring, day-to-day “grunt work” of actual governance, and the antics of the rabid Christian Nationalists who have neither the knowledge of nor interest in the mundane but incredibly important details of economic and social policy.

The embarrassing television ads being run in Indiana’s primary contests tell me that–at least on the Republican side–candidates are confident that voters fail to recognize that distinction–or, for that matter, the distinction between genuinely local issues and those requiring a national response.

In November, Americans will choose between serious candidates who are willing to educate themselves on the issues and committed to actual governance–to doing the job– and performative buffoons like Banks whose messaging is intended to inflame and divide– the culture warriors who have absolutely no interest in the complexities of the day-to-day issues with which so many Americans struggle.

It is said that in Indiana, an R next to a candidate’s name is sufficient to elect a turnip.

I am cautiously optimistic that this year will be different.

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A Message From GIMA

The Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance–abbreviated to GIMA–is a local organization of   faith leaders from a wide variety of religious traditions. Those leaders have come together to collaborate on civic projects that serve the common good of greater Indianapolis–unlike the Christian Nationalists and other theocrats I so often criticize on this site, they are intent on making our city and state a fairer and more equitable place.

The organization is currently focusing on the city’s lack of affordable housing and the crisis in evictions, and it has produced a short video that focuses on–surprise!–the failure of the Indiana legislature to enact enforceable minimal protections for tenants whose landlords fail to provide even minimally-habitable properties, or refuse to make critically-needed repairs.(In all fairness, those abusive landlords represent a relatively small percentage of all landlords in the city, and are disproportionately out-of-state investors. But they cause a lot of misery.)

GIMA focused its efforts on this issue because of what it describes as the “current landscape” of the problem.  Its website offers data that confirms the severity and extent of the barriers facing tenants who lack financial and legal means to hold those landlords accountable.

Housing instability, particularly evictions, is receiving its due attention in this critical moment because it’s nearing a full-blown crisis. According to Eviction Lab, Indianapolis is second only to New York in total evictions and Indiana is number one in statewide eviction filings since 2020. We recognize that there are several excellent non-profit organizations that provide direct services, as well as coalitions that amplify the voices and needs of those grappling with the impact of evictions and homelessness through advocacy. We also know that many congregations periodically collect food and clothing – and even temporarily house the homeless.

Those efforts are meaningful, but woefully inadequate to the scope of the problem.

Rather than offering my “take” on the issue, I encourage you to click through and watch the very short (just over 6 minutes) video.

And if you live in Indiana, call your State Senator and/or Representative and ask them to support SB 277–Senator Walker’s tenant repair fund bill.

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