Homeward Indy
Homeward Indy
Episode 35 - Changing the Narrative: Elliot Zans and Abe Roll on The State of Homelessness in Indianapolis
Is housing the key to help us build a more equitable society? In this episode of Homeward Indy you’ll gain critical insights into the state of homelessness in Indianapolis, directly from some of experts who are driving change. We're joined by Elliot Zans and Abe Roll from CHIP, the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention, who share the motivations behind the first-ever State of Homelessness event that took place in June. This event aims to educate city and county officials, state legislators, and the public about the harsh realities of homelessness through by understanding the contributing factors behind the 2024 Point-in-Time count data.
Listen as we shift the narrative from statistics to real-life impacts, highlighting the broader economic and policy factors contributing to homelessness, such as housing shortages, high rents, and low wages. Elliot and Abe dive deep into the overwhelming demand on family shelters and the complex issue of housing instability, from couch surfing to temporary hotel stays. Our guests stress the importance of addressing economic factors like rent increases and wage stagnation, particularly in areas like Indianapolis, while centering the fact that every number reported represents a sacred human life.
Finally, we explore actionable strategies to improve housing equity, especially for Black households. Elliot and Abe discuss enhancing the coordinated entry system, the urgent need for state policies to prevent income discrimination, and the critical importance of tenant protections. They share their enthusiasm for community engagement and public education, expressing a heartfelt appreciation for the collective effort required to combat homelessness. Join us for this powerful call to action, emphasizing the necessity of accurate information, community outreach, and sustainable solutions to make a difference in Indianapolis.
yes, people have mental health conditions or substance use and we don't want to ever downplay the severity of those, but that's not what's driving the increase that we see, or anyone in the nation it is.
Speaker 2:People just cannot afford to be housed we wanted to really work as an organization at CHIP on better educating the community and the broader public around the state of homelessness in Indianapolis. What is actually happening?
Speaker 1:We know that all of these numbers are real human lives.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Homeward Indie, a bi-weekly conversation where we meet the people working to end homelessness in Indianapolis and hear their stories. I'm Elliott Zanz.
Speaker 3:And I'm Steve Barnhart. Hello Homeward Indie listeners. Today's episode is a bit of a departure from our normal format to inform you about a first ever event called the State of Homelessness that took place in June of this year. Our guests today are Elliot Zanz and Abe Rowe, both of CHIP, the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention.
Speaker 2:This is a friendly reminder that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they belong to or represent.
Speaker 3:Welcome Abe and Elliot. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks, happy to be here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is going to be kind of different. Obviously, you guys are on the home team here with Chip, but we're going to talk about an event, the state of homelessness. Understand that's a new thing this year, but a big thing. Ellie, you want to tell us a little bit about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this was actually kind of driven by Abe coming to us and talking like making actual time for us to sit down as a team and say, hey, we know other communities do an annual state of homelessness address and that seems like it could be really good and useful. Do we want to do this? And so we planned one and did in about four weeks.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And it was a bit of a whirlwind, but it was really amazing. It was an awesome event. I think it was really helpful. We wanted to talk about a few different things. We wanted to really work as an organization at CHIP on better educating the community and the broader public around the state of homelessness in Indianapolis.
Speaker 2:What is actually happening. Get kind of deep into the numbers. We also were using this as an opportunity to release the 2024 pit numbers from the point in time count. Regular listeners may remember the episode with Sarah Nowlin and Nikki Watson at Horizon House going over the process of what the point-in-time count looked like. So we finally had the numbers from that ready to go and ready to release to the public.
Speaker 3:Gotcha.
Speaker 2:And so we also want to share that.
Speaker 3:So I think you answered the question somewhat. But the intended audience not necessarily the continuum of care, but the general public. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Both and. So, we absolutely had targeted invites to key folks in the continuum of care, especially the folks who had done the point in time count, since we were releasing the data that came of all of their really hard work. But we did want it to be more broad and invite more press and some different people from different levels of the city or county. I know Chelsea had a bigger hand in the invite list. Abe, do you have more insight into our communication plan? I think you might.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I think one of the things we wanted to do was especially with the pit data. I think what tends to happen is we release the pit data and then media kind of reacts to it and we respond and sometimes it gets misquoted or misconstrued. So really like have it released in a way to where we can say here's what it does and does not mean. So I know we invited the trustees, we invited the city, county council, a couple of state legislators as well.
Speaker 1:So because it is such a frequently cited piece of data just to say, like this is what it really means and what it shows and what it does not. So if you're going to use it for policy, this is what it's actually saying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's good, yeah, that's good. So we want to get into the presentation itself and share that information for those who were not able to be there or didn't know about it for some reason. But before we do that, elliot said that you were kind of the person who thought of this idea. What were you thinking? What prompted you to say this would be good?
Speaker 1:were you thinking? What prompted you to say this would be good? Yeah, so one of the things that I think is Chip's biggest strength is we are data focused, we want to do things that make sense and are going to work. But just the ethos of who we are as an organization is we know that all of these numbers are real human lives, and I think that often gets lost in anything in any kind of research or sharing of numbers or charts, and so I thought really like let's not just have the numbers and use them, but show people and tell people and remind people like these are real human lives that we're talking about, and I thought this would be a really good way to say you know, here's this report that we have every single year. If it goes, you know, from 1600 to 1700, that's another hundred human beings in our city with no place to go.
Speaker 1:So I really, really the onus, I think, was to elevate it beyond. Here's a required thing that we have to do for the federal government, and these are real humans that we count every single year and kind of remind people and ourselves of that, and in the way that it gets talked about, and I think, from what I've seen it's been successful. I think the coverage of it has been very humanized. I've seen it's been six. I think the coverage of it has been very humanized. Yeah, I've seen people talking about the pit beyond just numbers but saying like, oh, like, these are families and there are little ones and um, so you know, obviously room to improve and it was our first, first rodeo but, um, I think that's kind of been playing out excellent because, because it's been now what a few weeks since it took place.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And actually we're talking in mid-July. The actual event was when.
Speaker 2:June 26th. Okay, june 26th.
Speaker 3:Sorry, so you're receiving this podcast. I know a little as old news, but it's not old news.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because this is going to still be relevant. So we kind of planned this in this way. This will probably be released in September. So hello.
Speaker 3:September future lives.
Speaker 2:But part of this is to keep it an ongoing and fresh conversation, to make sure it's available as widely and in as many formats as possible.
Speaker 2:Something else we really focused on at the State of Homelessness Address is the drivers of homelessness and the broader economic and policy climate that is influencing what is happening and what we're seeing in these numbers and how they impact all of us, regardless of our housing status. And I think that really as well helped to kind of drive home the point because, as we've talked on this podcast many times, it's very easy to dismiss homelessness when you are using a narrative of this person's experiences because of their individual choice, but when you're actually seeing how few housing units we have and how high the rent is and how low wages are, it starts to really hit home in a deeper way, when we are all struggling to pay for groceries and basic living expenses, how much the policies that we have and the economic environment that we have in the housing market that we have, all of these things feed into each other and create this situation that is imposed upon people, and it is not the fault of the citizens, whose society is like failing them in a lot of specific ways.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the thing I always think about when you mentioned that is the analogy that in a way, we're all participating in a game of musical chairs, but in this case it's musical places to live, and when the music stops, we all need to have a place to go. And who is it that ends up without a place to go?
Speaker 2:but the most vulnerable of our community yeah, and who is got more housing than they need, who has multiple places when and is using empty places for airbnb or different things like that, and I know everyone's doing their best to survive out there. So like respect to that circumstance, but it also ends up in less places for families in our city to live.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I realized that the state of homelessness, that title is a great title but in some ways to be more complete, it would be the state of our community.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, yeah, because it isn't just homelessness, it is, yeah, what is the state of our community?
Speaker 2:Chelsea said something really wonderful at the beginning of our or maybe it was the end of our presentation actually, but she quoted James Baldwinwin, which made my day, honestly, uh, but basically said something along the lines of not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced, um, and that really resonates with me. I really grapple with the urge to look away from deeply stressful things on a day-to-day and to a degree, you kind of have to to preserve your sanity, because you can only engage so much without without not being able to do the work to undo the problem right. But we have to really look the situation and the policy and the political climate and the reality of where we have found ourselves, both here and nationally and globally. We really need to start reckoning with that, because we're running out of time to do so and innocent people are suffering the consequences and we can I truly believe we can have better quality of life and better access to resources for all folks if we consider this a priority.
Speaker 3:So I take it this was well. This was the first state of homelessness event. I assume you're thinking maybe it would be an annual thing. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so it went really well.
Speaker 3:Tell us a little bit about the logistics of it before we get into the numbers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah for sure. So the logistics were. We had our wonderful intern, penelope, who did a lot of the heavy lifting of finding us a place. We ended up at the basil theater, or basil theater, at the athenium downtown and it was beautiful. It was an amazing venue. The folks at the athenium did just such a phenomenal job of making sure the space was welcoming and accessible and we had everything we needed, so we had to find the place to have it of. Of course, we had to come up with the presentation which Abe can speak to, because Abe did a lot of the heavy lifting for the presentation. Um, abe and Chelsea and I were the ones who presented, which was really fun and such an honor.
Speaker 3:Um, and what about the audience? I mean you mentioned who you invited Did. What was the turnout like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, I don't know if we have a really good number on the turnout. Abe, do you have more?
Speaker 1:At one point I think we hit about 250 in terms of registration.
Speaker 3:It was really rainy that day, so I don't know how many acts showed up, but we had, I think, 250 registered.
Speaker 2:Good interest yeah, there was really strong interest and for the first annual, yeah, and we did have press arrive and come talk with Chelsea. Interest yeah, there was really strong interest For the first annual. Yeah, and we did have press arrive and come talk with Chelsea and that was really good. It seemed really well received. I don't know. I think we had the abilities to say some hard things that we haven't been able to really say out loud and clearly and publicly.
Speaker 2:And now we realize we have to and need to, and it is our role and responsibility and it was really empowering to um acknowledge the reality, because I think, in this work over the course of many years, and this is not unique to indianapolis, but I think there's always kind of this narrative about we're working to end homelessness, we're we're gonna end it, but that's never actually been what we've been resourced to do, nor has it ever been what is actually possible to do with the resources we've been given, and so it was really refreshing to acknowledge that we have been managing homelessness.
Speaker 2:We are not actually set up to move forward ending it and with the way the numbers are looking and the way the economy is going, the inflow of folks coming into homelessness is high and increasing, which we'll talk more about. But I think being able to really own that and be like this is what's actually going on, and now we can reckon with that and respond more appropriately, I hope what were the big and, in your guys, the big messages that you were putting out there to the community?
Speaker 3:What does the community need to hear?
Speaker 1:economic and housing issue. It is not an issue of personal, individual level factors. This is a systemic issue, and it's one that is either going to be addressed by policy or sustained through policy. At the end of the day, it is a political decision. We know what works, we know what does not work, and we just need the political will to end it and to make it happen.
Speaker 3:That's a powerful message to absorb as a community.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's hard and I know it feels very hard right now, I don't know. I feel like there's a lot of despair and there's a lot of hopelessness in our community here and just nationally, and there's a lot of fear and stress about a lot of legislation that's been enacted um grants pass, just was um ruled by the supreme court not in our favor which basically says that cities are allowed to criminalize people for sleeping in the streets when they have nowhere else to go and the city has not provided them with anywhere else to be, which is horrific. This is such an act, this is such a violent law and I think people don't always really understand how truly violent that is. Like that basically means if you have nowhere to go, you are absolutely destitute and you can be arrested for that, like all of the criminalizing of poverty that we've ever historically done, like this is really egregious and it really is going to be dangerously impactful decisions.
Speaker 2:Here. We do actually have power if we organize and coordinate and mobilize as a community and say absolutely not, actually we care about our neighbors being able to afford rent and actually we care about our children and their children being able to access housing one day and being able to have living wages for the work that they do. We have to really have some urgent optimism. I think is a great term that I read in a book about I think it was about climate work but generally like urgent optimism because there are a lot of progressive things. We know what works, we have the knowledge and the ability to implement things that work, but we just really need the community to understand the breadth of the problem and that it impacts all of us and to gather ourselves together with concerted effort, which seems like a really big and vague thing, but this doesn't have to be big and vague. It can be very small and specific.
Speaker 3:Can I ask the question? That might appear devil's advocate in a way, but either one of you can take a stab at it. But when I read about Grants Pass, a lot of what I read it sounded pretty reasonable. The arguments the city cannot do that unless there are places available. Am I incorrect with that?
Speaker 2:I think the danger is in places available and what that does and does not actually mean functionally. I would be very curious to see how this is enacted. When there are maybe there are shelters that exist, are they at an overcapacity on a given night? How is that being proven or determined? Are they safe places for folks to be? Are they welcoming and affirming to all household types? Can single father-led households access a women and children's shelter? So how is there a place to be? Is defined, I am deeply suspect of, and the people who are vulnerable, who are going to be targeted by this, are not people with lawyers, are not people with access to financial resources.
Speaker 2:Obviously, or legal recourse there's public defenders and there are different things, obviously or legal recourse Like, there's public defenders and there are different things. But, like we know, our system is set up for a particular to protect the ruling class who owns property. That is what the system is set up to do. If you own property, the system will protect your property. It is not set up to protect individuals or preserve their civil rights. By and large, and in enacting legal like action, this, there's just so much injustice. It's not so simple.
Speaker 3:there's so so many ways this could go wrong, kind of to use the devil again. The devil's in the details. Yeah, is it doesn't sound bad when you? Oh, we're providing a place for you to live? Therefore, it's illegal to sleep here.
Speaker 2:Well, does that?
Speaker 3:person really have a place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I can guarantee. No city in the US is fully resourced to accommodate every single person experiencing homelessness on their watch. We're not. We never have been.
Speaker 3:We don't even know and we need to get to some of the data that we've been referring to but we don't even know who all is homeless on any given night.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And when you get into definitions of homelessness, that gets a whole other level.
Speaker 1:But yeah, we often don't know.
Speaker 2:We know a snapshot and when we do the point in time count specifically, we get a specific snapshot of a specific population of folks experiencing homelessness, but that does not include all people who are housing unstable or couch surfing, which is something that we touch on.
Speaker 3:Sorry, it's Abe's that we touch on. Sorry, it's Abe's turn to talk now. Yeah, I'll ask this of Abe then. So I'm a community member, what?
Speaker 1:direction are we headed right now? Yeah, so based on our point in time numbers, the numbers are going up. We saw 1,701 individuals on the night of the count, and that's a conservative number 1,700 people. And to Elliot's point, that is just a single snapshot. We know that there were probably folks sleeping in their cars who we didn't find On the couches of relatives or, whatever the case may be, on the couches of relatives, families, in particular, if you're at a parent with children, you're probably not gonna want to be surveyed because there are ramifications if it's known that you're experiencing homelessness.
Speaker 1:so, at a bare minimum, 1701, and it was a five percent increase from last year before.
Speaker 2:yeah and this also doesn't include folks who we encountered and did not consent to be surveyed yes, because there's also it's always asked yeah, there's yeah because folks have consent. No one is coerced or forced to be surveyed.
Speaker 3:We still give them. I think this is such a huge point. Why would a parent not want to be surveyed?
Speaker 2:because if you are unsheltered with a kid, your kid will be taken from you the kid kids cannot be unsheltered minors cannot be found unsheltered.
Speaker 2:Chills through me and it did just then too it's terrifying, like it must be, like I can't, I can't fathom, because I have a bunch of amazing children the best, but parent in the world and lose your job you lose your job or you're working two jobs and they still don't pay the rent, because no one can pay the rent at seven dollars and 25 cents an hour, you could have your children taken from you.
Speaker 2:If you say I'm homeless, yeah, if you're homeless and unsheltered. So there are family shelters, but our family shelter system is stretched oh yeah, it is small. There's waiting lists for every single family shelter. Um, they're not all of them. Take all of the same types of families and they do amazing work. Like no shade to the family shelters Mad respect to them. They've been doing incredible hard work. They're doing their best. They cannot, they're not resourced to meet the level of need that they always are seeing and that is increasing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, abe, you mentioned that the line is going up at a 5% rate. What's happening? That's causing that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's one of the things that's interesting with the point in time count is we don't necessarily get the causal, we don't get the full story and there is no monolithic experience, right, but, um, we do ask the question for folks who are unsheltered.
Speaker 1:You know, you said you know you've been experiencing homelessness since this time, like what has led to that? And by and large everyone mentioned job loss and not having enough income. That Economic, it is economic and that's not to downplay. You know, yes, people have mental health conditions or substance use and we don't want to ever downplay the severity of those, but that's not what's driving the increase that we see, or anyone in the nation it is. People just cannot afford to be housed.
Speaker 2:We just don't have the funds for it and rent has increased in indianapolis higher than anywhere else in the nation, which is just it's a little mind-boggling yeah, it's, it's like india.
Speaker 2:I moved here because of cost of living. I moved here from colorado because I could afford a house in 2017 here on my one job, on my one income, mind you, my income from colorado, which was paying more than I probably would have been making in indiana at the time. But, like it's no long, it's not the as affordable as it was and it's always been unaffordable for a certain level of our population because wages have stagnated for so long it has. We went. A big section of our state of homelessness address was talking about all of the different um. I think this is a good place to talk about universe of need. So when I was looking at, like, all of the contributing factors and everything that was kind of leading into people's different experiences of housing, instability and homelessness, I created this slide called the University of Need on Homelessness, unstable and System-Supported Housing. So this includes people we are already supporting in housing in permanent supportive housing but their housing is dependent on HUD funding year over year and also dependent on those programs remaining open and functional.
Speaker 3:But those people are not in the 1700s, no Right.
Speaker 2:No. So the folks who are included in the 1700s are folks specifically living on the street or in car or in places unfit for human habitation.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, I didn't want to derail you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's okay, that was a good call. This was an important point. Yeah, no, that's okay, that was a good, that's a good call um this was an important point. Uh, folks in emergency shelter or transitional housing are counted um and so yeah, so folks living unsheltered or in emergency housing and there's some overlap not people who've gotten vouchers, who've been through the system.
Speaker 2:No, if, if you're housed, you're not being counted. Yeah, so just considering everyone in our community who is couch surfing or doubled up, they're staying with friends or relatives or family or whoever, or maybe really overcrowded Folks in foster care or unsafe or unstable family situations, are always at risk of homelessness and at increased risk of homelessness, uh, if you have to borrow money to avoid eviction, whether from a program or a relative or someone in your social network. Um, obviously, everyone in emergency shelter and transitional housing. Uh, folks who are experiencing domestic violence or in survival sexual relationships or survival relationships that are not healthy or safe but they're keeping you housed a very common thing, with a lot economic abuse being a big piece of domestic violence, where they'll withhold your money from you and you can't go anywhere. Um, folks in the hospital or who have been incarcerated, who have nowhere to go or maybe their lease lapses while they're in the hospital or medical debt wipes out their ability to pay rent. Obviously, folks living unsheltered on the street or in the car, which I mentioned before. Student homelessness, which tends to be periodic. If you're able to stay in a dorm for most of the year but you don't have anywhere to be in the summer, um, that's also a really hard number to capture. Students are often doubled up couch surfing doing different things, but they might also be sleeping in their cars.
Speaker 2:Um, everyone in program funded. This includes permanent housing and vouchers, um recovery housing. So, focusing in recovery housing that may or may not have a place to go after they're recovering from substance use disorders and addictions. Temporary, temporary hotel stays if you're homeless and you have enough money to keep yourself in a hotel for two months and then you're out of savings, but that wasn't enough to get you into an apartment or there were no apartments to be had.
Speaker 2:We talked about overcrowding. If you're living paycheck to paycheck, you are at risk of homelessness. It's terrifying, no one wants to think of. At risk of homelessness. It's terrifying. No one wants to think of it that way because it's so scary. But we know, um, and this also includes victims of human trafficking, whether labor trafficking or sexual trafficking uh, who also are unlikely to have resources, maybe undocumented as well, um, and also anyone who is here undocumented and can access basically nothing, because, despite popular myths and beliefs, if you do not have a social security number, you cannot access any hud funding or hud funded housing programs. Um, so this is like all the people in our community who, at any given time, are at risk or experiencing homelessness, and so it's much broader than just that one guy you see on the street. It includes that and this is not an exhaustive list either.
Speaker 1:So that's happy, sorry um just for context of like the scope of that, if we look at our inventory just for the permanent housing it's about 3 000 on any given night between permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing and other permanent housing like vouchers.
Speaker 3:So that's about double the size of those that are unhoused on any given night.
Speaker 2:Yep, that seems right. And also, vouchers are probably an undercount. Yep, that seems right.
Speaker 3:So about 4,500 to 5,000 people in Indianapolis that are this sounds inhumane in the system in one way or another are either unhoused or they're at risk of very much at risk of becoming unhoused if that system does not maintain which, as you alluded to, elliot, that's a lot. Where the funding has to go is to keep that maintained.
Speaker 2:And then when rent raises, keeping even the same number of people in housing is harder too, because fair market rent increased this year, so that also provides a challenge because it reduces the number of people providers can take on caseload and engage with and help house.
Speaker 3:We're going to start running short on time here, but what are other big messages that either of you have from the state of homelessness? I know you mentioned the one, Abe, that's so critical that we all have to keep in mind, and that these are people, not numbers, and that it's a society thing, not just this small segment of our society issue.
Speaker 2:What are other things.
Speaker 2:So one thing that we didn't even yet touch on, but was a good third of our presentation, was our racial equity goal, and so the Blueprint Council, which is the governing body of the Continuum of Care, issued a goal last year that we would like to reduce Black homelessness specifically by 35% by 2025.
Speaker 2:We had a few different strategies to approach this.
Speaker 2:We did not have additional resources I do want to clarify, we were not given, like there was no extra funding that we were able to come up with for this but we did have some strategies around this, which included improving our coordinated entry system, which is how we allocate our limited housing resources to folks in need. We wanted to make it more equitable because we knew it was not very equitable racially speaking and we needed it to more accurately reflect the populations we were serving. So a lot of work was done around that. We also have some strategies around having centralized housing resources, which we're still working to implement, and we also had a strategy around improving housing case management. Those are pretty long-term, big lift strategies, I will be real, but our coordinated entry system work has been the first approach and has done a pretty good job. We did improve equity so far for our coordinated entry assessments, and what that actually means is that we had more Black households being referred for housing programs and for vouchers. Abe, you're my data friend. Please do a better job of explaining this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. So, um, we looked at who was given a housing assessment to see if they were eligible. Um, how many people are then referred and then attain housing, and we have seen that increase. Um, it's about at 60 percent are black households. We would like that to be higher if we want to meet the goal. We'd like to see about 65 percent of those referrals and attainments going to black households, but that's compared to about 50% before all the work done. So I know there's been a lot of really, really intentional work on the coordinated entry system and we're starting to see the fruits be paid.
Speaker 3:So people getting into that coordinated entry system. What that does is then makes them, it gives a record that makes them available for various kinds of a system. Otherwise nobody even knows they exist within the continuum.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, if you're wanting to get someone into permanent supportive housing, they have to go through the coordinated entry. Yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 3:Anything else about the racial inequity that exists within our city?
Speaker 2:Yes, black family homelessness is the thing we have to be focusing on. If we are not housing black families, we are not going to move the needle on the racial equity With the emphasis on families yes units more than one and more than one individual yes, specifically a household with one adult, at least one adult and at least one child under the age of 18, or a dependent elder, or it can be kind of broadly defined, but if there's an adult head of household and any kind of dependent family, homelessness, but especially minors.
Speaker 3:So those are the individuals that have the least choices when something bad happens in their family. They lose their job, medical expense, whatever. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it goes back to there's not a lot of places for them to go, especially depending on the family structure, and then, if there is no place to go, there's less incentive to seek out services, because it can be punitive and you can lose your kids, like we talked about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and then, um, I don't want to get too number heavy but, um, you know, when we talk about this being an inequity for black families, it's been as high as 80 percent of the families that we see are black. This is, it's not a, you know. Oh, 51 percent, like the eight out of ten of the families who we saw a few years ago were black families. So if we're to move the needle on making our system equitable, we have to really be intentional about working with families.
Speaker 2:And this is also difficult because family support in our system is especially low. We don't have very many units for families. We don't have very many units big enough. Hud has a two heartbeat per bedroom rule. That means if you're a bigger family and you can't find a three bedroom house for what is fair market rent and your voucher will cover, you're just out of luck. There's so many different ways that this impacts and that's just one of the many. But when you're looking at how many people in Indianapolis are black, which is just under 30.
Speaker 1:In Indianapolis, are black, which is Just under 30. So about 30% of Indianapolis is black. Of the entire population experiencing homelessness, it's as high as 53, 54. And then when we specifically looked at families this year, it was 67% and that was actually a pretty significant decrease. It's been as high as 70, 80% Wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which is just egregious other other things from the state of homelessness that you want to share yeah, I think I want to recap some of our calls to action from the end of it and what our system actually needs.
Speaker 2:So like all right, that's a pretty bleak picture of what's going on, but what so? What do we need to be doing differently? So we need investment in supportive and affordable housing Desperately. We need strategic and aligned investment in high performing interventions that we know works Housing first, with excellent wraparound case management. It's not housing only. You also need the support of services. We need a functioning and responsive public housing agency that prioritizes homelessness. We need more special purpose vouchers allocated to the homeless response system, so dedicated for specifically this population.
Speaker 2:We need state policy that prevents income discrimination, provides tenant protections and incentivizes investment in housing development. Um, that is critical. We have to have tenant rights to keep anyone housed, because at this point we can sometimes house folks, but keeping them housed when eviction is a business strategy, uh, is really difficult, because it's more beneficial for especially out-of-state landlords to evict people over and over and then collect tons of application fees, which are completely unregulated, than it is for them to maintain anyone in housing or have any kind of grace to keep folks housed, which does not serve anyone, it does not serve our economy, it does not serve our community, it does not serve our children, and we need champions to protect and advocate for housing first, not criminalization or band-aid solutions. We know housing works. Housing is health care, housing needs to be a human right and housing is integral to every aspect of human life. If you do not have shelter, you can't really work productively, you can't access your medical care and keep yourself okay, you can't protect your kids, you can't be safe, it's really hard to live. It's really hard and it doesn't need to be that way. We also recapped policies that don't work.
Speaker 2:So we know what does not work is fining or criminalizing people for being homeless, divesting in public housing and affordable housing. Homeless divesting in public housing and affordable housing, only focusing on crisis response and temporary solutions does not work. We do need our shelter system to be resourced and also the shelter can't be the focus. People have to have a place to leave shelter too, preempting local efforts to reduce barriers to housing and scale solutions. So that is like nimbyism saying we don't want public housing. If you want people to not be sleeping on the streets, they need access to public housing and we need to have more collaborative community ways of making this work. And it doesn't have to be it doesn't have to be hostile like it is, and we know treating homelessness as a criminal justice and law enforcement issue does not work. It trauma, it increases barriers. If you have a criminal record, it's harder to get a house, get housing again, like it's this vicious cycle that we have to end.
Speaker 2:So what we do know does work is eviction prevention, universal rental assistance, increasing wages, repair and preservation of affordable housing, because the housing also needs to be safe and habitable and clean and not infested, falling apart or moldy.
Speaker 2:The plumbing needs to work.
Speaker 2:We need low barrier, sufficiently resourced housing focused shelters.
Speaker 2:We need an investment in housing first, across the board. We need to expand and scale affordable and permanent supportive housing, as we said, like we are maintaining about 3,000 plus folks in affordable housing, or that's not even counting affordable housing. This is just in our permanent supportive housing. We need more access to that because there are still many people who don't have access, and we need investment in community-based mental health and behavioral health services, peer supports and tenant supports. We need stronger tenant education and protection so tenants can advocate for themselves and have resources to come back to when they are being unfairly discriminated against or treated in the course of their renting, because they deserve safe housing and we need greater enforcement of habitability standards and accountability, and those are the kinds of things we need to be pushing for at a policy level as well as like. We have to come together as a community, as businesses, as homeowners, as people who care about how our kids are doing and how the kids next door are doing. We have to come together on these issues.
Speaker 3:Abe, I know you guys have covered a lot of ground here just in the last 45 minutes or so, but can a listener who wants to learn more? Is there a place for them to go to access more detail on this?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so. All of our slides and the recording from the event are on our website, so it has all of the data that we've mentioned. We also have data dashboards boards, so if you're interested in specifically focusing on equity, or if you're curious about veterans or youth, it breaks all of the data out, and all those subpopulations as well, anywhere on our website.
Speaker 2:And we can link it in the show notes.
Speaker 3:Okay, and if I was a person who was listening to this, who one of those things of the needs resonated with me, that's maybe something I could be involved in or address in some form or fashion. What would be my first step?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's a lot of different ways to engage. So if you are interested in advocating, you can connect with the Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition, which does some great work around tenant and policy protections and could definitely use more energy and participation and community involvement. There's also the National Alliance to End Homelessness, which does some pretty fantastic work. I think half of our team is out at their conference right now. You can volunteer and donate. You can participate in the annual pit count which we will be soon about to organize for 2025. Support Street Reach Indy. That's again just the most fantastic flex funding to bust barriers like application fees, utility arrears, just any ridiculous thing you can think of that is stopping someone from housing or attaining a job Street Reach can help with and it's really fantastic. That is my favorite thing and it's available to the whole continuum of care. And it's really fantastic that is my favorite thing and it's available to the whole continuum of care, so it's not organization-specific.
Speaker 3:You can volunteer with a specific organization that speaks to you or donate to the work that they're doing. And just to put a little plug in for Homeward Indie, we have a long list of previous episodes that will familiarize you with what some of those could be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. Go through our episode library, hear about the work being done, see what calls to you, get involved, pay attention. I would just really advocate paying attention to legislation, having conversations with friends and family, educating yourself as much as possible about the issues and seeing where you can send letters. Show up, get people together to collectively send letters or go to the state house or do these different types of political action that folks are doing. Again, the Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition might be a great place to start for that, because they are already on on the page, they know what's going on and then also just engage with families and individuals experiencing homelessness. Their people treat them with love, respect and compassion. Give people grace, give people the benefit of the doubt, and this just kind of goes for everyone in your network. Talk to your network of influence. If you're a landlord or you know people who own businesses downtown. Have some conversations, point them to some of these resources and help them become better educated, because the narrative that we develop through our experiences is not the full picture and when you have more information, you can be better aimed to act with compassion and integrity and toward a better community.
Speaker 2:If you don't want folks asking for money. Advocate for universal basic income. If you want people to be doing better, raise the wages of your employees. There's so many direct ways we can interact. Engage with mutual aid funds. Go fill up someone's GoFundMe if you had a windmill. There's a thousand ways you can help.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I just think about too, when you were talking about engage with the people around you. One of the things that can be done is to just let them know that this body of information exists. Send them to the website, chip's website to see these facts. I think the more people understand the situations kind of gets back to that quote. You need to face it before anything's going to happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you have a business or a group of people who want to know more and want someone from Chip or one of our partner agencies to come talk to you, reach out. We probably will it's something we do. We do public education I love to go me and abe love to go talk to folks about this. We will come to your business and educate all of your baristas, or whatever you're doing excellent could be fun, excellent.
Speaker 3:Well, elliot and abe, thank you so much for uh, for sharing all this with us, uh with our listeners. Thank you for the amazing work that you're doing. Thank you, it's great to be here much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's an honor, thank you.