INDIANAPOLIS – The City of Indianapolis is preparing to launch a new program that would provide more housing for people experiencing homelessness.
As part of a new “master leasing” pilot program, the city would rent dozens of apartments. The initiative aims to reduce several barriers to housing, such as background checks.
“People living on the street often have very high barriers to housing,” said Rodney Stockment, the city’s senior strategy director for homelessness.
Stockment said the City of Indianapolis has been working on affordable housing development for several years. He also said projects like that take time, so the new pilot program would take advantage of apartments that already exist.
“It’s taking longer and longer to build buildings and it’s become much more complicated financing, so the idea of this is to get units online faster for people experiencing homelessness,” Stockment said.
The idea that originated in Milwaukee, Stockment said. He said the program would pay rent for some 30 apartment units starting in November.
“We’ve got three service providers and then three or four landlords that we’ve been interested in,” said Zach Doering, the city’s senior project manager for homelessness policy.
While the city is already in talks with a handful of landlords, it said several others have also expressed interest in the program, which could be beneficial over time.
“The program starts small and then it’s going to grow over time,” Doering said. “So even if we don’t launch with them, we want to build those partnerships so that when we have more funding, we have people we can reach out to.”
The city will use $500,000 in opioid settlement money to pay for the program over the next year. It will receive additional funding for the next 18 years. Stockment said the goal is to rent up to 180 units over the next five years.
“Most of the landlords who have responded have experienced working with this sort of community, people who are vulnerable,” Doering said. “The biggest upside to the program for landlords is it’s guaranteed payment.”
The new initiative looks to help shelter three different populations.
“One is people experiencing street homelessness and living on the street and are chronically homeless,” Stockment described. “The second is families and the third population is going to be people reentering from the criminal justice system.”
While this program is one step toward addressing homelessness across the Circle City, Stockment said there is more work that can be done to help get people off the streets and into a safe shelter.
“Engagement is everything in this work,” he said. “And building relationships with people. Just because someone doesn’t want to move in off the streets today doesn’t mean they won’t tomorrow. So continued engagement is important.”
Officials are hoping to double the number of units within the next two years, bringing the total to 60 apartments.
