Evansville City Meeting: 2025 CAPER Presentation - August 28, 2026
Evansville City Meeting: 2025 CAPER Presentation
The City of Evansville held a public meeting on August 28, 2026, at 10:30 a.m. to present the 2025 Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report (CAPER). The presentation was delivered by Haley Hale, Community Development Coordinator for the Department of Metropolitan Development (DMD). The CAPER covers the program year from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026, and is due to HUD by September 30, 2026. The meeting outlined accomplishments using HUD funds (CDBG, HOME, ESG), including data on homelessness, public services, housing projects, and neighborhood initiatives. No public comments were made during the meeting, but a 30-day public comment period opened on August 29, 2026.
Discussion Items
- ESG (Emergency Solutions Grant) Accomplishments: The city received $225,602 in ESG funds, funding nine programs. Seven homeless shelters served over 1,493 people (final data pending). Coordinated entry served 347 people, and Rapid Rehousing served 27 people. Total estimated homeless individuals and families served using ESG was over 2,800 (pending HMIS data). Other notable homelessness efforts included preparations for year-round white flag shelter at UCS and services by Evansville Rescue Mission (anticipated to serve ~29,000 people). The Susan H. Snyder Center for women and children did not receive ESG funds.
- ESG Performance Measures: Three measurable goals from the Evansville Destination Home Plan: increase exits to permanent housing, decrease chronic homelessness, and decrease homeless households with children. All goals target a 10% improvement by 2030. Preliminary Point-in-Time count data from January 28, 2026, showed 5,192 people experiencing homelessness, compared to 4,860 on January 29, 2025—an increase of about 332 people.
- CDBG Accomplishments: Total CDBG allocation was $2,485,311, plus $34,914 in program income, for a total of $2,520,225. Public services (capped at 15%) received $352,000 (~14%), serving 27,806 people total (direct benefit 18,471; area benefit 9,335; plus 2,210 from CDBG-CV). Non-public service activities (25 programs) included employment training, owner-occupied home repairs, child care, senior services, public facility improvements, housing counseling, down payment assistance, and permanent supportive housing. Non-housing activities served 811 individuals/households; housing counseling served 299 people. Public facilities served 266 homeless individuals at UCS shelter (direct benefit) and 1,980 (area benefit). Down payment assistance helped 8 households (up to $15,000 each); owner-occupied rehab completed 13 units. Additional projects underway (Memorial CDC and CAPE rehabs, Van Pollock Park playground, Tri-State Food Bank repairs).
- HOME Accomplishments: Three completed projects produced 5 HOME units: Hope of Evansville (618 Delaware, 1 single-family home), Gratis Development (Cedar Trace, 71 rental units, 2 HOME-designated), House Investments (Delhaven Estates, 119 rental units, 2 HOME-designated). Tenant-based rental assistance (Aurora) served 14 people re-entering society after incarceration. Six projects allocated HOME funds are underway or planned: Grandview Towers (170 rental units), Phoenix Apartments (40 rental units), Memorial Ravenswood Commons (8 rental units), River City Homes (44 leased-to-purchase units), 521 Madison Avenue (1 single-family unit). Pre-development projects include Vision 1505 (32 units), Jacobsville home buyer rehab, and Memorial Villas (Ten Home Blitz).
- Neighborhood and Affordable Housing Updates: DMD attends neighborhood association meetings and United Neighborhoods of Evansville (UNO) meetings. The Focus Neighborhood Council is being revised, with new focus on Central City and Jacobsville. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund (local, $1 million annually) completed 20 owner-occupied home repairs, 2 full rehabs by Community One, 1 new Habitat home buyer unit, and down payment assistance for 18 home buyers (Hope and Habitat, ~$2,000 each). ECHO received pre-development funding for the Reed Street low-income housing tax credit project.
- Funding Process and Other Sources: Grant training held June 24-28, 2024. Citizen Advisory Committee met Jan 16 and Feb 5, 2025; mayor's recommendations; City Council approved allocations and action plan on June 23, 2025. The 2025-2029 Consolidated Plan covers this period. HOME-ARP funds ($2,739,593) are nearly fully expended (~1.5% remaining); remaining funds will support acquisition of Grandview Towers and supportive services by Aurora. CDBG-CV (CARES Act) funds fully expended; grant closeout in progress.
Key Outcomes
- The first draft of the 2025 CAPER will be posted on the city website by the end of the day on August 28, 2026.
- Public comment period begins August 29, 2026, and lasts 30 days. Comments can be emailed to Haley Hale at the address provided in the slides.
- No formal votes or decisions were taken during the meeting; the presentation served as an information session.
Meeting Transcript
Hello, my name is Haley Hale. I'm the community development coordinator for the Department of Metropolitan Development. I'm here to present about the City of Evansville's 2025 CAPER. It is now 1030 a.m. on August 28th, 2026. For those of you who are following along on the live stream or maybe reviewing this later as a recording, you can utilize the attached slides to follow along. What is a CAPER? The City of Evansville annually receives HUD funds, which are housing and urban development funds, and these are appropriated through three programs community development block grant, home investment partnerships grant, the emergency solutions grant. As part of receiving that funding, Evansville is required to submit an annual performance and evaluation report known as the CAPER, which is made available for at least 30 days to allow for sufficient time for public comment. The purpose of a CAPER is to provide information about accomplishments completed during the program year that the report captures. In this case, it is the 2025 CAPER reflecting our 2025 program year that ran from July 1st of 2025 to June 30th of 2026. We are required to submit the CAPER within 90 days of the end of the program year. So this will be due on September 30th. The goal of the CAPER will be to compare anticipated performance performance accomplishments that were projected in our annual action plan and compare them with what was actually achieved. So the CAPER is used to report on the city's outputs and outcomes, and we utilize accomplishment data from various sources to provide that update. Some of examples of that data is monthly monitoring reports from our CDBG subrecipients, HMIS stage reports for homeless activities funded with ESG, and then various other reporting methods that can be used for more location based activities such as housing and public facilities improvements. We commonly see CDBG and home utilized for these types of projects. So we're going to go into each source of data. The main source of information that goes into the CAPER will come directly from monthly monitoring reports that are submitted by agencies that were awarded HUD CDBG funds within the relevant program year, in this case program year 2025. CDBG covers a wide range of programs, but in general, the data that's presented will be represent representative of people served. Agencies are required to supply program and client data that includes but isn't limited to their overall numbers served, the clients' income levels to establish that a low to moderate income benefit was achieved. Client demographic data such as race and ethnicity, program successes and challenges, and any other funds leveraged as a part of the program. There are a couple ways in which data is collected about participants for CDBG. In most cases, this is going to be data directly supplied by interaction with participants through the program funded. Other activities are structured more broadly and capture the data on a more geographic basis. We often refer to this as an area benefit activity. So in order to qualify for area benefit, the agency has to identify a clear service area and that the boundaries which make up that area. We're typically looking at areas of that are already of interest for things like economic revitalization, anti-poverty initiatives, where and it's considered that anyone within the boundary established will be benefited. Agencies that are utilizing emergency solutions grant are going to have a focus on homeless individuals and families served. To do that, they utilize the homeless management information system, also known as HMIS, which is in our case, in the case of Evansville and the state of Indiana is managed by IHCDA. The purpose of utilizing HMIS is to track progress towards HUD's homeless services goals. And annually, that data is going to be aggregated into SAGE reports that are referenced and attached to the CAPER. We'll go into more detail about it later, but the three general activities that the City of Evansville engages in with ESG funds are going to be street outreach, emergency emergency shelter, and rapid rehousing programs. There is a supplemental source of data as well that goes hand in hand with ESG a lot of times. It is the annual point in time count. We do not perform the point in time count. It is led by the state as part of their continuum of care. But it does nonetheless represent data that's significant for Evansville because we are part of the state's coordinated entry system as well as being an ESG grantee. The purpose of point in time count is to provide a census of people experiencing homelessness, both sheltered and unsheltered. And it also includes a housing inventory count, which is the inventory of the beds and units in HUD funded programs that are dedicated to serving people experiencing homelessness. So something to consider with both HMIS and the point in time count is that all participating agencies are required to participate in the coordinated entry system so that the assessment and data collection pieces of those programs are very standardized and able to be aggregated. Some activities create low and mod income benefit when they're tied to real property rather than a service provided. And so these types of activities will entail usually some physical impact to the environment and might be a unique one-time project rather than an ongoing service. Project and location based data can be presented in various ways depending on the function of what that activity will do. So the relevant outcome indicator is going to be included in the activity descriptions provided in this presentation. Some examples of what HUD considers outcome indicators or otherwise what you consider what is being measured by an activity will include people, housing units, public facilities, jobs, businesses, and a few other categories not listed here. Common site-specific projects that we fund with CDBG and home would include affordable housing, construction, or rehabilitation, public facilities and infrastructure improvements, code enforcement, remediation and owner-occupied home repair, and acquisition demolition and disposition activities. That's not an exhaustive list of things that are site-specific, but these are some of the most common things that we might use our city funds for. We'll also discuss the trainings and public hearings that were necessary to get to this point. Unduplicated is essentially the same thing as saying new within the program year.
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