Okay, welcome to the April 18th 2026 McCannna meeting.

I'm Pat Andrews.

You have the B team today because Kathy couldn't make it.

So I will try to remember what she says at the beginning of every meeting that I've heard for years and years and years.

McCannada 501c3 organization started in 72.

Is that right, Bruce?

Not sure.

Something like 72.

A long time ago.

Far, far away, right here.

And we are an association of neighborhood associations.

So we have groups from all over the county that are members, which you can uh still give your $20 annual dues for your organization to renew or become a new member of McCann.

I have forgotten everything else she says.

So I'm gonna leave it at that.

You're doing very well.

Thank you.

So mayor's neighborhood advocates not here.

When the he or she comes, then we usually have a representative from the mayor's advocate group to make announcements.

So when he or she comes, so we will fit them into the agenda.

I was emailed the agenda, and I don't have printing capabilities, so um we will just go through how this what she has here.

Um community announcements.

Are there any things happening in your areas?

Uh upcoming days like that would be of interest to the wider audience on Channel 16.

That is what she says too.

And it's very important that Channel 16 does a bang up job of making sure that the city government is accessible to everyone, even at 3 a.m.

in the morning.

So please take advantage of that, and uh we really appreciate uh them broadcasting our meetings.

So are there any uh things coming up in your area that you want people to know about?

Okay, well, I have a couple down in Decatur.

Um Decatur Township um has filed uh to sue the city for uh the recent MDC approval of a data center down in our area.

Uh so there is a fundraiser at the Culver's Kentucky and I-465 on April 27th that's being uh held by the Protect Decatur Township Group.

Um, and anyone who uh goes by and uh can buy a meal or an ice cream and all of that will uh help contribute to the cause.

So with that, that is all I have.

Who's bringing that home stream?

Who's the there are several people?

There are people.

Well, since they're not gonna broadcast for up for a bit, um yeah, the the Decatur Township Civic Council is one of the plaintiffs, and then some neighbors.

So are there any other announcements?

Okay, well, we'll go right along.

Um the homelessness issue um is certainly been a problem uh for our community, the broad community for for years and years and years, and um it just feels like things are getting harder and harder for people.

So uh Kathy did arrange both this month and next month to have folks who are averse on the the issues surrounding homelessness in Indianapolis come to McCannna and discuss the that from their point of view what's going on and how the community can step up.

So with that, um I'm not gonna remember last names, but you can introduce yourselves again.

So we have Chelsea from CHIP and we have uh Andrew from um public health and something from safety with the mayor's office.

Okay, and they are gonna come up and tell us about these issues.

Oh you have the laptop.

No, I don't have a laptop, I don't bring a laptop.

Oh yeah.

Oh sorry.

Yeah, we okay.

Well, Jim will help you get all fixed up here.

Yeah, while he's getting set up, I'd love to just introduce myself, why Andrew's getting set up, and then he can introduce himself.

Um, my name's Chelsea Herring Cozy.

I'm the CEO for the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention.

We are also a 501c3 nonprofit here in Indianapolis.

Um, and we work really to support the homeless service sector in helping move strategies forward to more effectively address homelessness in Indianapolis.

Our footprint is Marion County, so we are a local nonprofit working to address homelessness here.

Um we serve in a couple different capacities here in the city.

We serve as the data lead, so we collect all of the data to understand who's experiencing homelessness, how that changes, how we're progressing as a city and addressing it, where there are gaps, and that really helps inform the strategies that we work on.

Um, and I can share some of that data today to just set the foundation a little bit.

Um we also serve as kind of the planning and strategy lead, so as data helps us understand what's happening, what are the the most effective strategies that we can be adopting as a city and aligning people around to try to make a bigger impact?

Um then we also serve as what's called the coordinated entry lead, which it means basically how do we really understand people's housing needs and vulnerabilities to best refer them or match them to housing and services to help them exit homelessness.

Um, so there's a common assessment that organizations that are serving people use to understand what those needs and vulnerabilities are to help match them to available housing service resources so that they can exit shelter or exit the streets into permanent housing, and we help coordinate that process.

So I don't know if you're not showing up yet.

I do my loads.

Yeah.

Oh, this is just a um well good morning.

My name is Andrew Mercury.

I'm the director of the Office of Public Health and Safety of the Mayor's Office.

And our agency uh was created in 2016 by the mayor with the goal of reducing crime in the city by addressing the root causes of crime.

And so our main focus uh has been the gun violence reduction strategy.

We've seen a 52% decrease in homicides since we started that strategy back in 2022.

Uh but we also have uh we're made up of five divisions, so we oversee homelessness response, uh, eviction prevention, behavioral health.

We we operate the assessment and intervention center downtown and um and the clinician-led community response team.

We also um operate the release lobby at the jail, so anytime someone's getting released, we provide a lot of resources for that individual to ensure that they are successful when they re-enter.

Um we have our food division as well as our community balance reduction team.

So that is a little bit about OPHS.

And we will jump in, unless there's any questions, we'll jump into the presentation.

Okay.

Um, next slide.

So I will let Chelsea talk a little bit about these first few things, and then I'll jump in with some updates on the housing hub and our eviction work.

Okay.

So we're here to focus specifically on homelessness today, what we're doing to address homelessness, which is a complex issue.

Um as you mentioned, it's an issue that's been of concern in this community for a very long time.

Um, and it's really complex.

And so before I jump into some of the strategies, I do want to just lay a little bit of a foundation of the belief in which we approach homelessness.

We approach homelessness in Indianapolis as a systemic structural issue.

Um, and what that means is essentially homelessness is driven by a lot of factors, um, particularly factors in what's happening in our um housing market in terms of eviction rates, access to housing and services, um, and a lot of people are being driven into homelessness because of, and you'll hear some of the work happening around eviction prevention.

Because Indianapolis in particular and Indiana as a state have some of the highest eviction rates in the country.

We don't have very strong tenant protections, and so we have huge evictions happening, which can drive people into homelessness if there isn't kind of a safety net to catch people as they're losing housing.

Um we definitely see that as a driving factor in homelessness.

We also have a rising uh housing market with rising rents, particularly coming out of the COVID pandemic.

So rents have increased in Indianapolis by over 30% over the last two years, which is also helping drive or price people out of housing.

Um there's a really interesting statistics that uh that came out of the government and accounting office that shows a hundred dollar increase in rent can lead to a 9% increase in homelessness.

As rents go up and people are already living paycheck to paycheck, that even a small increase can price people out of housing.

And again, if there's not a safety net, friends, family, that can lead to homelessness.

And so when we look at homelessness, we really look at a lot of the structural factors that are really pushing people into homelessness, and we don't necessarily look at it or approach it from an individual perspective, meaning people are homeless just because they've made bad decisions, or you know, they're they're not doing good enough.

That couldn't be further from the truth of what we see out there.

There are a lot of people experiencing homelessness who have jobs, and the jobs just don't pay a wage that allows people to afford housing still.

And they've been priced out of the market, they've faced evictions.

So I just want to level set a little bit, and I think that helps inform some of the strategies that we look at is that homelessness really is a housing issue and a structural issue and not a product of people making bad decisions or just not being able to, you know, earn their way back into housing.

So we look at one indicator every year to understand kind of how homelessness is changing in Indianapolis.

And one of those indicators is called the point-in-time count.

It's an annual count we do on a single night every January in communities across the country are required to do this count.

Um yeah, let's start with that one.

Um it's just it's one benchmark and it's one data point.

We look at a lot of data, but it kind of benchmarks communities year over year to understand within that community what's happening in and around homelessness, and then it can benchmark cities against other cities.

How are we doing compared to some of our counterpart cities?

And all of this data is used to go to Congress.

Um, we are required to report it to the federal government to go to Congress to inform what's happening in homelessness across the country to then help secure resources for communities to help address homelessness.

So on a single night in Indianapolis, and this is based on 2025's point in time count, we're getting ready to release 2026s here in the next month or so.

And side note, we'll be doing a state of homelessness address here in the next month or so.

Um, with it's a public free event.

We would invite anybody to come to that where we'll be talking about the 26th data.

On a single night in Indianapolis, one single night, there are over 1,800 individuals experiencing literal homelessness.

And I say literal homelessness because that means people who are staying in emergency shelters like Bueller Mission, like Day Spring, Family Promise, Holy Family, or in places not meant for human habitation, outside, in encampments, under bridges, overpasses along the river.

This does not include people who are doubled up, who are couch surfing, who are housing in stable or unstable.

This is people who are literally in shelters or outside.

This number hasn't changed much over the last decade or so.

It's remained fairly flat in terms of the number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night.

Of those experiencing homelessness, about 75 to 80 percent are accessing emergency shelters, so staying in a shelter or transitional housing, but about 20% are outside.

And we've seen that number, so even though the overall number hasn't shifted significantly, people are showing up differently in homelessness, and we are seeing more people outside.

And that is true coming out of the COVID pandemic.

So coming out of COVID over the last three years, we've seen a shift and an increase in unsheltered homelessness, and that is significantly concerning because it is very dangerous to try to live and survive on our streets.

A couple other stats I want to share before I kind of go back to them.

What are we doing about all of this?

Um those experiencing homelessness, again, about 20% are outside, about 25 to 30 percent are families with children, which again is concerning, and we see that in what's happening around evictions.

Um the highest population of folks being evicted are families with children and primarily black families with children.

We see that in our shelters too, about 70% of those experiencing family homelessness are black families.

That is significant disproportionate representation, and so major inequity in terms of who's experiencing homelessness in our city.

And again, that is significantly concerning because it also shows more upstream discrimination and housing access and evictions.

And that also is indicated, I think, in our overall homeless population is that black individuals and families are disproportionately experiencing homelessness.

Yeah.

So what is happening to address this?

There's been a lot of work over a lot of years to try to address homelessness and make an impact.

And frankly, we've been fairly flat in our efforts.

That can tell us a couple things.

I can say, well, we're managing it.

We're not seeing major increases in homelessness, but we're also not seeing major reductions, and we need to be.

So the response system has been managing and kind of keeping homelessness at bay, if you will, at a flat level, but that's not good enough.

We need to see major reductions in homelessness.

And so a little over two years ago, we started working very very closely with the mayor's office.

We have been, but basically to say, look, we are not making the kind of impact that we need to, and also we're seeing more and more people show up outside, which really increases vulnerability and challenges people's health and in all kinds of factors, right?

When people are outside, we've got to do something different, and we've got to do something with intention and urgency, and we have to bring some more resources to the table because frankly, the federal resources are not enough to do this at scale.

So about 18 months ago, we worked with the administration to create the mayor's leadership council on homelessness and to bring not just political leaders together, but business leaders, IMPD and law enforcement, the prosecutor's office, faith leaders together to say we need all of you around the table to understand what's happening around homelessness, to bring your influence and leverage your civic will and political will to do something bigger and bolder so that we can make an impact.

And so this table was set in October of 2018 and kind of rolled up its sleeves and said, okay, what's the first thing we need to tackle?

And the response was street homelessness.

It is not okay that people are living and dying on our streets.

We need to be a city where we say that that is unacceptable and that we can end street homelessness.

That is the first thing we need to do.

And the council agreed, and so we got to work.

What is that going to take to do?

And so we launched what's called the Streets to Home Indy Initiative, being the pillar initiative of the mayor's leadership council with the first kind of phase, and it's a multi-year multi-phase initiative.

The first phase being we need to get 300 to 350 people off our streets directly into housing with supportive services.

And that will make a huge impact on street homelessness, and then we need to continue to sustain that work and then move that same approach into shelters to create more flow out of shelters, particularly for families because the shelter system has been very overburdened for families in particular.

So the streets to home Indy Initiative, the first phase is a 12-month initiative that launched mid-July of last year with that commitment to get 300 to 350 people off the streets, out of encampments, out of downtown, into permanent housing.

People are signing leases, they're getting rental support and subsidy, and they're getting supportive services to connect with income supports, employment, behavioral health supports, physical health supports.

And we, as a mayor's leadership council, committed to do this with all local resources.

We need to raise the money to do this, and it needs to be a local effort.

And so when this launched in July of last year, the city immediately brought 2.7 million dollars to the table in opioid settlement funds.

The Indianapolis Foundation brought 2.7 million dollars to the table, and Faith Corporate and Philanthropy committed to raising the last 2.7.

It's an $8.1 million phase one initiative.

We are at 98.9% to the fundraising goal.

We've got just over about 100,000 left to raise, but that didn't stop us.

We got to work immediately last July.

The commitment of streets to home is to go into one location at a time over a four to six week period to house everyone from that location, and then to close that location and maintain closure moving forward.

So that not only are we housing people, but then we are permanently closing encampments and maintaining closure and reactivating those public spaces.

But we have housed over 135 people directly from the streets into housing with supportive services.

So 135 people are no longer trying to survive on our streets.

We have permanently closed three encampments.

We've worked three downtown zones and housed about 66 people out of the downtown area.

This week we just closed another encampment and are actively working three other encampments in the same area, and we'll be in that area until about mid-May, and then have two other locations we'll be moving into this summer.

Again, with the goal of having housed over 300 people by end of summer.

We look at not just are people getting into housing, but then are they connecting to services?

Are they staying housing?

Are they shifting some of their health care utilization?

So we look at big metrics like are people connected to case management.

And 100% of people who have been housed are connected to case management services.

They serve as a hub and spoke then to other services, behavioral health, employment.

We're still working with in terms of folks needing to be rehoused.

Some of those individuals have had institutional engagement, hospitalization, or incarceration, still working then when released that they're released into housing and not back to street homelessness.

We look at how engaged to house rates.

So as we go into encampments and areas, how many people say yes to housing?

Yes, I want housing and don't want to be out here.

And what we're seeing consistently is an over 90% engaged housed rate, which I think is an important part of the story is that people don't want to be homeless.

People don't want to live outside.

When there's a real offer of housing with services, people are saying, Absolutely, I want that chance.

I want that opportunity to get stable.

The folks that aren't aren't saying, I don't want that, I don't want to be housed.

These tend to be people with more severe mental illness that are having a hard time meaningfully engaging.

So what we've also created through this process is a complex care work group of our health care partners, Aspire, adult and child, Eskenazi, community health that are opening up pathways for those who may have severe mental illness to go into and get more acute levels of care and treatment.

And so again, we're not finding the kind of misleading narrative of people just choose to be out there or want to be homeless.

That couldn't be again further from the truth.

So streets to home Indy again is a proven model.

We didn't come up with this model ourselves.

We've been following other cities across the country for the last two years who have adopted a similar approach and are seeing significant results in reducing street homelessness.

So we've been working with folks from Milwaukee, from Dallas, from Oklahoma City, from Cleveland, from New Orleans, who are a little further ahead of us in this, have adopted a similar model.

We're bringing it to Indy, we've adapted it to Indy, and we are also seeing significantly promising results through this initiative in terms of number of people housed, staying housed, connection to services.

And one of the metrics I'm most excited about is we are housing people off the streets in under 30 days.

The average right now is 26 days from initial engagement to somebody signing the lease and moving in.

Compared to the rest of the homeless response system, that is a vast improvement.

It's typically taken about 100 to 150 days to house folks.

So what we're trying to do and demonstrating is possible through streets to home is that we're housing people much faster.

We're getting people into housing with services, people are staying housed and then starting to connect again to health care and things that we find impossible when they're on the streets.

And then the other promise again, as I mentioned, is then we're closing camps permanently, maintaining those closures, and in appropriate cases, reactivating those spaces for whatever their original usage.

So just as an example before I hand it over, one of our first sites was Black Mountain.

That site was intended for redevelopment, but it had a camp on it.

We were able to house everybody from Black Mountain, then close it to future camping, and it is already under redevelopment now.

And that's the intention of all of this, too, is to serve people well and to also make sure public safe uh spaces are safe, healthy, and thriving.

Thanks, Chelsea.

Um, you know, the the streets to home and need program has become even more important with this state legislature's passage of a bill that will effectively criminalize homelessness that goes into effect on July 1.

And so it's really important that we house as many of our neighbors off the street as we can so that they aren't constantly being moved around by this new will.

Well, you saw an earlier slide, we didn't address it, but it talked about the four kind of core competencies of how the city is addressing homelessness, and it's not just rehousing individuals who are already homeless.

And one of those that you probably heard a lot about in the media is our housing hub that we that is currently under construction.

The system here in Marion County is very prohibitive for some folks to enter.

And when I talk about the system, I mean the shelter system.

So all of our shelters have requirements in order to gain entry, and uh that that becomes a challenge for people from certain with certain backgrounds.

So maybe you're a family with an adult child with disabilities.

Well, there's nowhere for you to go and stay together in our shelter system.

Uh if you have a pet, a lot of people live outside because they have pets and they can't go inside in any of our existing shelters.

And so it several years ago, the uh mayor announced a 12 million 12 million dollar contribution to the construction of a housing hub.

And that idea came from a state legislative uh body that was created a year prior to that, and they identified the need for Indianapolis to have more shelter beds.

But they also indicated that we couldn't just have a shelter, just adding beds to the system is not the right approach.

We needed to have a facility that really was focused on rehousing individuals and also diverting individuals and families from homelessness.

So the housing hub is what we came up with, and the facility when it opens, uh, sometime mid to late next fall, um, will have a hundred and fifty beds, and that is 25 units of four for families of any kind.

It will have uh 20 beds for excuse me, 50 beds for single individuals, and 20, 10 beds for couples.

So we're really trying to address those groups of people that can't go into our traditional shelter system.

It will also have a navigation, I'm sorry, a uh day room, which is very similar to what Horizon House is already operating.

And they will be the operators of this new facility, the new uh data center, which is where individuals can come in, they can access their daily needs and uh work with their case managers.

And then on the second floor of the facility, also operated by Horizon House, will be um the housing navigation center.

This will be a facility where partners from all across the continuum of care can come and meet with their clients, they can make sure that they're getting their documentation.

We expect that the health department will have some uh some will come into this facility for you know birth certificates and things like that.

Uh, we will work with the BMBs to make sure that uh that they can be at the facility and help with getting driver's licenses.

And so it's really supposed to be a one-stop shop for individual individuals and families to be able to access all of their needs.

We we really implemented a very similar type of response during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Crown Plaza Hotel.

We brought all of these resources to one location, and we were able to house folks really quickly out of that hotel.

So we're trying to scale that model at this new facility.

Um, all in, it is a $32 million investment.

Again, I said I mentioned the $12 million coming from the city, and we also received a $20 million grant on the state of Indian IHCDA.

But that is not enough.

The the mayor's office has contributed substantially more than any previous administration to stopping homelessness and making sure that we are engaged in uh in solving for homelessness, and one of those ways is to divert homelessness altogether.

Uh back in 2021, we started what we call the tenant advocacy project that places uh free legal aid and housing navigation services in all of Marion County small claims courts as well as the superior court.

Um anyone who's facing eviction can go to their court wherever that eviction is taking place, and they can engage with a tenant navigator or a legal aid representative at the court.

They can also get connected to legal aid ahead of time, and I think this is what is really important because evictions in Marion County happen very quickly.

It's about three to four weeks from the moment that you're notified of your eviction to the date of your hearing.

And so we it's really important that we get folks connected to legal aid early in the process.

So calling the mayor's action center or the tenant hotline at the mayor's office will get you connected as soon as you get that information.

We're also piloting getting that getting information about the mayor's hotline, uh, excuse me, the tenant hotline out to folks, and so we're going to be using social media to target those areas where evictions are the are the highest uh highest rate of eviction, excuse me.

Um last thing I want to say about our eviction prevention work is that uh the tenant advocacy project is no more.

Uh we have merged that program with the Marion County Eviction Diversion Initiative.

And so this this slide is a little bit outdated.

The new initiative is now called the Indy Housing Stability Partnership, and we are in partnership with the Lawrence Township Small Claims Court to provide navigation services across the county.

And so I just wanted to note that this is no longer just a city initiative, we're working with multiple units of government here in Chicago.

Uh the city has also started uh working with our partners to implement what we call winter contingency.

And this we are in our second year of really being the lead agency in providing uh winter contingency support, and winter contingency is uh is the the time of year starting around November or December through the end of March where we increase the number of beds that are available for individuals to make and families to make sure that they can come inside and get out get away from the uh really cold temperatures during those months.

And uh this year we operated two facilities on top of what wheel emission and our other shelters are doing, and we house uh we we have the ability to house 40 families, 10 single women, and at a separate facility, we piloted a weather weather contingent model, so for single men and couples.

This model is is based on a model out of Kansas City where we only activate those shelters when the temperature outside is 25 degrees or lower.

Previously, so this is this is an improvement.

Previously, the city's response would we would only open a facility like this if the if the wind chill outside was negative 15 degrees, and that was based on someone who is already housed whose uh heat may go out, and and so it would be they would be unsafe in their home.

And so we knew that we needed to increase that to a 25 degree air temperature because if you're outside a negative 15 degree wind chill, that's it's impossible to survive, right?

Um, so that's what we've done.

We've done this year.

We piloted that, and we at one point during what we're calling Snow Mageddon, we had about two weeks where it was very cold and snowy this winter, uh unique to this winter.

We housed 160 individuals in that facility, and we were only supposed to house 70.

So it really took all of our partners to come together and be able to provide the supports at that weather contingent uh facility this year.

Uh I just want to touch on a couple of other uh key metrics that came out of the family shelter.

We again operated a family shelter that served 48 families at any given time.

This year we have already rehoused 38 families from that facility, and we have 10 more families that were working to ensure that they are housed before we we totally wrap things up.

We also were able to house several single women out of the facility.

Um I actually want to I'm gonna get out of this for a moment and show you all PHS's dashboard for winter contingency because I think it's very helpful to real to understand just how many folks we were able to impact this winter.

And while you're doing that, I mean, all of so obviously you're hearing about a lot of different things that are working together, but they're all working based on this premise.

Nobody should be living and dying on our streets.

So, how do we make sure that they're there enough pathways for people not to have to try to survive on the streets?

And so with streets to home, we're doing that again through a direct housing approach.

But as somebody may become newly homeless, we want to make sure that they don't end up on the street.

So then being able to activate lower barrier shelter access, additional shelter in the coldest, most dangerous months of the year, so that if somebody does experience a housing crisis, they do not have to sleep in their car or try to survive in an encampment or under a bridge, that there are enough options and resources that we have no street homelessness in Indianapolis because we believe that is completely unacceptable that people would have to live outside because they can't access housing, shelter, um, or places to be inside warm and safe.

Can I ask a question?

Sure.

Um you guys are doing an admirable job of getting people once they have reached the street.

My question is catching them before they reach the street.

And in my mind, I think about lack of education, lack of wanting to have that education, and two having financial what do you call it understanding financial matters and have an understanding how to spread their resources in a more intelligent way.

Um, instead of buying, you know, I'm now taking certain things probably out of context, rather than buying soda, having having something that is more nutritious, and so on and so forth.

And I guess my question is is catching people so that they don't get into the situation.

It's like you catch the criminal, but how do you get somebody from starting a life of crime?

Yeah, I mean, I think we can all probably speak to this.

I mean, part of sadly, part of what our responsibility is is what is the response once somebody does right experience a housing crisis to one, try to prevent them from having come into shelter the streets, and that's part of what the um housing what's the new Indy Housing Stability Partnership Yes, is you know, when somebody's in a housing crisis facing eviction, how to prevent that from becoming homeless experience.

But you're talking about even going further upstream, right?

Before that even happens, how do you help support people in stabilization?

And I'll be frank, I mean, that is a big part of the work that a lot of our community centers are doing.

So Southeast, Hawthorne, Mary Ray, John Bonner, Urban League, of trying to work with people more upstream before they're in crisis, before they're becoming homeless to work on financial literacy, to work on improving employment, you know, getting a promising or better job to increase wages, because frankly, the housing wage in Indianapolis is about $26 an hour.

That the National Low Income Housing Center calculates what what would you have to make an hour to essentially afford a fair market two-bedroom rental in your city?

And that's $26 here in Indianapolis, and we know people are making far less than that.

Working full-time.

I mean, even if you're working full-time at McDonald's these days, right, which is never meant to be people's full-time jobs, but has become that, it's still what, $15 an hour, maybe $16 an hour.

So to your point, that is what a lot of our community centers are focused on is working with people.

How do we get you a better job?

How do we connect you to programs that can scale you up so that you can make greater wages to be able to afford housing?

How do we work on financial literacy?

How do we work on whatever the other factors are that are kind of putting people at risk so that we're not seeing them?

Um I I don't want to speak for our community centers, but I'm gonna guess you're gonna hear that the need is probably far greater than what they have capacity to serve.

Um what about I know that whatever?

Let me back it up because you made a couple of comments.

How when you survey the folks who end up homeless or are homeless, um, how is there a correlation with education?

Is there a correlation with budgeting properly?

You know, I don't know that we've done analysis or even know how to assess do people know how to budget properly.

I mean, I don't we that's not a good idea.

For the wage yet, but we do, I mean, yeah, we look at wages, we look at I don't have the education metrics, um, levels of education and things like that.

We can share some, I can bring some of that data back.

But I think you know what we find, and and what's really disheartening for me is that there are a lot of people experiencing homelessness who are working, who are working and still cannot then afford to get back into housing.

Um, I mean, there's an example, and this is just one example of a gentleman that reached out to us, he's staying staying at Wheeler Mission, he works at an Amazon Fulfillment Center.

He's making a decent wage, but once you've lost housing, you need anywhere from 2500 to 3,000 just to get back into it because you have to pay a security deposit, first month's rent, application fees.

And he said, I can once I get back into housing, I can afford the rent.

I just don't have $3,000 laying around for that to get back in.

And so that's I mean, we've connected him with a resource, one-time assistance to help with that security deposit to get him back into housing.

So there are a lot of factors, um, but we've created an environment where people working full-time right now still cannot afford rents, and so how do we offset some of that?

So the other thing that we see we see in we have people come to us, uh this is Norm Northside Community Council, and they were built, they want to build new housing.

Yeah, and supposedly there are set asides for affordable housing.

Do you do you feel that that there are enough of those set asides, and B that the now what they set aside and what they're charging is still way too high, or what?

So we Chelsea and I are not really as involved in the long term.

I don't want to speak for you, but in the uh housing creation space, although any new housing creation that we can that we can build in Marion County is going to help with supply and demand and hopefully bringing down the cost of housing.

Um our partners at the Department of Metropolitan Development are working really hard to incentivize more affordable housing creation.

Um there's several uh you uh units in the pipeline that are being constructed, and uh they're also working really hard to diversify the type of housing that's going to be built in the future.

Um some of our zoning laws have had to be have been looked at and have been adjusted so that we can begin to build more different styles of multifamily units.

So, you know, focusing again on duplexes and triplexes and making it easier for developers to get through the development phases so they can start construction.

That's a lot of what um the Department of Metropolitan Development is focused on.

If it would help us if you could give us some uh background as to what we might ask the developers when we see them as to here's the type of housing, here's the the cost of housing, or that we need something that when the person comes in there, if they qualify to pay the monthly rent to waive certain certain fees.

Yeah, and I don't know, I'm not sure who's coming in May, um, but that may be a good like having somebody from DMD talk about some of the challenge uh things they're doing to make development more streamlined, more efficient, because I think they have polled, surveyed a lot of developers of like what are the barriers to building and developing more affordable housing and what could we help streamline?

I will say to answer your question, there is not enough affordable housing.

And I know there are efforts to bring more, um, but we're tens of thousands of units short of affordable housing, and so one of the things is we have to continue like pedal to the metal of figuring out how to incentivize developers to bring more affordable housing in neighborhoods everywhere across the city, not just relegated to certain neighborhoods, right?

But everywhere across the city where there's access to transportation, so you know, transportation-oriented kind of development where they're in neighborhoods with access to food, grocery stores, right?

Often affordable housing is being developed in some places or certain neighborhoods, but not across the city, and so we need people to have more choices.

Um and the bigger thing, not just in development, then we have to then work with developers and landlords to be open to then accepting and working with rental assistance programs.

So it's not enough that the housing is developed in there, but what we also find is some then property managers and landlords say, but I won't rent if you're bringing up housing voucher to the table, or I won't rent to you if you're working with an agency that's helping pay your um rent rent for you, and that in my opinion is a form of income discrimination, shouldn't matter how rent's being paid as long as it's being paid, but we have a policy environment in Indiana where landlords can say, I won't accept a housing voucher, even though it's a form of payment, and that becomes then discriminatory to a lot of the people we're trying to get into housing because they are working with some kind of rental subsidy program, and if landlords aren't willing to accept those, then we don't, even if they're built, we don't have access to those units.

I think what's being how much longer do you have to give your overview?

Oh, I mean, we can wrap that up and take questions if we're going to say that.

That's fine.

And then we free the so um, you know, we wanted to provide an opportunity for you all, some opportunities where you and your neighborhoods can help.

Um if you see an encampment, you can report that to 311, or you can call the um the IMPD non not 911 but the uh 311.

Thank you, yes.

And then um we've already talked about the numbers of in of folks that we've been able to house, but make sure you're sharing this important information about the good work that the city and chip are doing.

Um we're also actively fundraising for various efforts.

So if you know if your neighborhoods want to donate goods set for moving kits or funds to help us with those moving kits, uh we're also uh accepting volunteers that can help us put those movement kits together for as we get our neighbors moved into their new homes.

Um and then we are trying, so as we close our camps, we need to clean them, and it can be very expensive to pay outside groups to do that.

So if there's a camp in your neighborhood, and if we were able to close it, if we you know work together to organize cleanups of those areas to make sure that we can restore those to their proper that area to the its proper uh use, we would definitely want to work with you to do those things.

Um everything that's shared today you can find on chipindy.org as it relates to streets to home indie, and then as I said, the winter contingency and eviction data can be found on the Office of Public Health and Safety's website.

Okay, questions.

So you mentioned the legislative environment.

You as a C3, a 51 C3.

Can you work on it?

Or is somebody who has C4 doing that, or who I will say both and so um statewide, there is a uh advocacy organization through Prosperity Indiana called the Hoosia Housing Needs Coalition, and Prosperity Indiana is the kind of backbone agency that supports that advocacy coalition, and it's made up of a lot of different organizations working together to uh impact state policy to inform and educate and impact state policy.

Um so we are members of the Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition, and that is a statewide coalition.

Um, and anyone can join it.

You all could join that coalition as well.

Um I think right now it has about 4,000 members across the state.

Um at a 501c3, we are restricted in the kinds of activities that we can do, but we can do what's considered advocacy.

Um, and so we have, and and CHIP in particular, um, has been working at the State House now for the last three years, and we've been doing it from a place of meeting with legislators, helping educate them on the issue, helping them understand the impact of the kinds of policies that they're looking at and what that will actually do to the people that we're trying to serve.

So we were heavily engaged on Senate Bill 285, and unfortunately, it did not turn out the way that we had hoped it would.

Um we had a lot of conversations with legislators this year, um, and we'll plan to continue working with them as we go into a budget year next year of how do we then get state resources to help address this issue in the right ways and the most effective ways, because we firmly believe that involving people in the criminal justice system who are homeless is not the right approach.

Landlords in the legislature.

Is anybody putting out voter guides or like I mean, I would just say that is our duty as citizens, and through the electoral process, um it's not something I don't think the advocacy organizations can affect who gets elected to serve in these roles.

Um, I mean, the the one I would be most familiar is prosperity Indiana through the House Hoosia Housing Needs Coalition.

Yeah.

I I just want to add, I think while the outcome was not what we wanted from with the legislation, we our advocacy, both the city and CHIPS, I think helped to make the bill soften the bill a little bit.

Um, you know, we have because of that advocacy, this the legislator who offered it is really interested in touring some of the facilities that we've talked about today, um, getting a broader understanding of what we're trying to do, and really the the work that Streets to Home accomplished before the session uh was critical to that legislator making some different decisions on the bill.

Um things that um one is the the numbers are staying steady, but the efforts that we've put forward could have kept them steady.

Are you um can you in any way estimate what the housing pressure was maybe from invention rates or or some other metric that to know that instead of going up you kept them level to be able to assess something that didn't happen?

I know that's hard.

No, no, that's that's a good question because I think that's what a lot of people don't understand when they say, you know, gosh, it it was 1800 people on a single night and 25, it was 1700 and 24, we haven't released 26 yet.

You know, we're not making a difference, and the fact is we are we're effectively managing it, which doesn't feel successful in a lot of ways, but what that means is that inflow people coming into homelessness is basically like outpacing people leaving homelessness, right?

So we are actually rehousing a lot of people every year, but more people, new people are coming in.

That's why your question is we gotta work more upstream becomes so critical.

Um we've got to stop people at the front door, and that's gonna what that's gonna be what makes the the biggest difference in seeing those numbers start to go down.

So we've got to stop the inflow into homelessness so that it doesn't outpace the number of people exiting homelessness.

I will say part of what we've also struggled with the last year or so is the pathways and the resources to help people exit homelessness have changed.

So while we're bringing and activating more resources now through streets to home, our access to housing vouchers through the Indianapolis housing agency have stopped.

Okay, they have turned off our access to housing vouchers, um, which is a federal problem, just to be clear.

That's not a problem.

It's a federal and our housing agencies and receivership.

Our Indianapolis housing agencies and receivership, and and so that has been a huge challenge for us because we have worked very hard over the last several years with the Indianapolis Housing Agency to get what's called a homeless preference added to the housing choice voucher program, which means there's a set of vouchers specifically allocated for people experiencing homelessness to be able to exit homelessness.

That was huge.

That was a huge resource and really helps address the affordability issue because that provides a subsidy that people take with them to any apartment, right?

It's not project specific.

And we had worked and gotten to a place where we were getting about 30 housing choice vouchers a month with a homeless preference.

That means we can exit at least 30 people a month out of homelessness with a housing voucher.

That was huge, and as of the beginning of last year, that essentially got indefinitely paused, and so we have not had access to those housing vouchers, which is also then impacting exits out of homelessness with that subsidy.

Yeah, and there's going to be in come July when folks start losing their SNAP and their Medicaid benefits, it will further impact their ability to pay price.

That's where you know, because it it feels you know, when you're just taking in news items, national news items that the pressures are growing on people and their ability just to make it day-to-day.

But um, what's uh how do you pick an encampment to target?

How are you how are you what criteria are you using to go from one to the next?

Yeah, there are a lot of factors at play, and there's kind of a group that meets weekly to really determine kind of what priorities are.

Um, when we started, we started thinking, frankly, by smaller encampments to test out some of the practices and and do some piloting of this, and then the goal was to move to larger and larger encampments as we've gone through the initiative.

So we look at location, we look at again feasibility of closure and whose property it is, because not to come make it more complex, but to get to closure, then we have to know is this city property and then the city can manage closer, is it parks property?

Is it state property?

Is it private property?

So kind of who owns the property um is part of that factor too, to know if we can even work in those spaces or if we need to bring different people to the table.

Um we look at public safety risks.

Certain encampments are safety risks for the people trying to survive there because I mean, if you're close to the river and flooding is happening, like what's the risk to the folks living there, and does that risk change sometimes that changes?

Hey, we need to work in this area because there's significant safety risk to the people living there in the encampment.

Um we look at again safety risks within neighborhoods sometimes.

Um so there are kind of a multitude of factors that we look at and how to move to various places, but with the commitment we will get to all of the encampments.

Um I also want to clarify it's not only encampments, we are also working in downtown spaces.

So those aren't geographic camps, they're more like one person here, two people there.

Um and so we're also working in what we're calling zones, which are like downtown areas.

So those could refill.

So we're working hard with downtown Indy Alliance to not have them refill.

So we've done some retraining of their ambassadors, there are dedicated um street outreach teams specific to the downtown district.

Um and so as we've housed people out of downtown, there's a whole process for if it if new people come that they are immediately engaged, they are offered then um shelter and transport to shelter and then informed that there we are working to get to be a city where nobody is sleeping outside.

So we've also yeah, with that assessment and our subvention center.

Yes, so we've set aside beds in the assistant intervention center to be able to offer that shelter option to anyone who might back though.

Um it's only 24 beds.

There's 60 beds, there's 30 on two different units, so 30 were continuing to be utilized for what the AIC's mission is, and the other 30 are right now for the emergency but any of those areas we've we permanently closed these camps to future camping, so you cannot go back.

Uh and that provides that allows for IEP the ability to uh ask folks to move along.

Well, how much of a wrong?

Okay, I should bite my tongue and not say anything.

But maybe I'm having a skill time sitting here thinking there are always two sides to every story.

Have you talked to the landowners, the the the people who are evicting these people?

Why are you evicting them?

It's not just because they don't have the money.

I my husband and I own property that we like to say was for the working poor.

We worked with them and let them make their deposits two or in two or three installs.

We worked with them on many angles, but it's a cultural problem.

Mrs.

Hayes, I can't make my payment this month because my check is not coming in the mail on a time.

Well, did it ever occur to you to keep your first check of the month and hold it to pay your rent?

They would have TV, TVs that were three times the size that we could afford.

They smoked, so they were spending a lot of money on cigarettes, those were choices that they made, and if we needed to pay our mortgage with the rent money, we were not a charity, and I'm not ashamed to say we were not a chair renting.

So, as President Obama once said actions have consequences, and many of these people who have been evicted have made choices, and and they've made actions which bring consequences.

But nobody talks about the land the owner of the property.

I don't hear anything said about how are we working with them to handle these problem people?

Many of them are problems.

Well, the the I think that that's they're that's not exactly their purview, but um I I would just say as a human being that there should be enough housing stock where even if it's not working out in your establishment or your your house, uh your rental housing, um, that there are other opportunities where they could.

So why should those owners have to put up with a cultural problem?

Well, I mean, it's a cultural problem.

I think you're you're uh this is my opinion.

I I think you're broadening from your experience broadening, um, but again, it's not this one step removed from what these folks are trying to do, which is help people get back into housing.

And I will say there are two things, and we did not speak on these today, so I do want to speak on them.

So, as we work to get people back into housing, one of the first things that case managers are doing within the first two weeks of getting in is working with tenants on how to be a good tenant.

What are the responsibilities of your lease?

What are the responsibilities of being in this complex?

Um, because those are learned things.

Those are learned things that not everybody has had the opportunity to learn.

So that is part of the support services and walking alongside folks as they're coming into housing and and being renters is what does it mean to be a good renter, and what are your rights as a renter?

Like learning all of those things.

We have also worked as of 2021 to partner with our door affordable housing because landlords are a critical part of this work.

We want to be working with landlords and understanding what are the barriers, what do we need to be doing to partner effectively together to set up what we call a housing acquisition team.

So there is a team at our door affordable housing that sole focus is to foster landlord relationships, to work with landlords, to kind of talk about some of the rental assistance programs, the people that we're working with and serving to mitigate issues between tenants and landlords as they come up to ideally prevent it from escalating into uh an eviction, or if it's just not working out, to work then with the landlord and the tenant to say, okay, let's find a different housing situation then.

If this is not going to work between the landlord and the tenant.

Um, they've worked hard to figure out you know what landlord incentives might be to help bring more landlords to the table, um, to set up some risk mitigation funding for landlords if something happens to a unit.

Um so there is, and I think we need to continue strengthening a lot of work that should be done with landlords because landlords are essential to this working and to understanding what we are all trying to achieve together.

Um, I'm sorry we didn't talk about the role of landlords because there's an important role there, and we have work to set up a team who is solely focused on engaging landlords, pop brokering those relationships, mitigating some of the challenges that come up, you know, between landlords and tenants, because it it takes us all to do this right and well, and to your point, um if we had enough choices across the continuum of housing, um this would be a different situation.

And I question about that, the post-housing efforts that you do.

So someone who you said you put someone in a uh in their own home and they close the door and they say, okay, I'm housed, I'm good.

Yeah.

But really, they to your point, they haven't learned how to manage their finances as well as they need maybe need to.

They don't know if they need to know how to live in a shared space with other people and all that.

So for those people who are helping them out, are they individuals who are part of your organization or are they volunteers in the community?

No, these are paid that's a great question.

So we believe in housing first in that it is very hard to work somebody with somebody when they're trying to survive outside, and they are in survival mode.

So you house them first because the minute you're in a place of safety and stability, you can start to say, okay, now I need to work on these other things.

So everyone we're housing is paired with what we call an intensive housing case manager.

These are paid professionals at organizations we contract with Horizon House, Damian Center, Urban League, Intecare, Adult and Child, and and so there's a whole model of the kind of case management they're providing.

They're meeting with people weekly and working on things like what does it mean to be a good tenant?

Let's make sure you know the terms of your lease, let's start working on getting you connected to income supports or educational supports, employment, let's work on getting you connected to behavioral health supports.

That is the job of the case manager, and they are paid professionals that work in a very specific kind of service service model.

The whole point is housing stability.

It's not housing only.

How do we get you in and then make sure that there's enough support to stabilize?

Okay, so what happens to the client who refuses to accept this train?

What happens to you?

We don't see that happen.

I mean, not a lot.

So part of the the training of case managers is something called assertive engagement, meaning I'm gonna keep coming every single week.

And maybe the first week the person's like, I don't know, you I don't trust you, I don't want to talk to you.

They're gonna keep coming back every single week.

And what we often see is after a few weeks that trust develops, that relationship develops, and then people realize, okay, you are actually here to walk with me, to walk alongside me and to support me.

You're not here to judge me, you're not here to get me.

Um, but it takes some trust building.

It doesn't happen overnight, but case managers keep coming back until that trust is built, and what we find is people engage then once they realize, okay, this is real, um that trust is built, and and they're more willing to then engage in those services.

I guess the reason I'm asking about a volunteer efforts and community support is like if someone came to Nora, yeah, why the and they they weren't from Nora, they were from the east side.

They didn't, you know, I grew up on the east side of Indianapolis, and Nora is different.

Yeah, it's a different environment.

If you grew up over there, and you came to Nora, you wouldn't you would you'd say, oh yeah, there's a Kroger, oh yeah, there's an Aldi, but you wouldn't necessarily know, oh, well, how am I going to manage my life in this kind of suburban, you know, green, green space versus where I may have spent my childhood, you know, and do you have community ambassadors like clergy or other people who can support you, especially if a case manager is not from Nora.

You know, they're from Greenwood.

Well, what someone from Greenwood can travel to Indianapolis, but they may not know Nora the way the somebody who's a Nora volunteer would have how do you integrate that?

That's a great question, and and you know, I'll speak in in a little bit of how it should be.

Um, but this is a question I can take back to case managers into the agency's doing case management.

So, you know, part of the the work of not housing, not just housing somebody but getting support is also that community integration.

Then you really to be successful, not only do you like good tenant and all that, but like you should then integrate into the community around you because that's going to be the long-term support system, right?

Yeah.

And so, you know, ideally what case managers are working on, and I'm happy to go back and and see in practice, is then where are the local churches?

What's the local community center in this catchment area, and how do we start connecting you with those places for that more community-based integration?

And I will say, like, through streets to home in particular, the activation of the faith community has blown my mind.

The the church community, so the Greater Indianapolis Multi-Faith Alliance, the there's a North Side Congregations for Housing Group, have gotten heavily engaged in streets to home.

They're putting together moving hits for people with notes basically saying our church is here if you want to engage further.

We're here to support you, we're here as a community resource.

That opens up a whole other set of, I think, supports.

And that is the ideal.

I mean, the ideal situation is that it's not a community, uh, it's not a case manager that forever is walking alongside somebody.

It's somebody is now housed in a community and they are now connecting with their local church, with their neighborhood association, with the community center in that area.

And that is what takes somebody from just getting housed to thriving to integration.

Um that's really what we want to be seeing.

Um, and so I really appreciate your question to say, hey, if people are moving into the Nora area, I want them to know about us.

I want them to know how to connect with us.

I want them to get more involved in the local neighborhood association.

Um, and so that's something I can absolutely take back to case managers and saying, how as you're housing people in this neighborhood, how are you getting them connected to the local churches, to the neighborhood groups, to the community center because that's essential.

Yeah, you drop somebody off on an island and they're by themselves, then they're going to feel they're less likely to, I think, to succeed than if they feel like a connection to the people around them.

100%.

So 100%.

That's the perception.

Yeah.

It's been a while since I looked at the census data, so I'm not sure how outdated my searches are.

Um when I looked I don't know, it was I don't think it was 2020, but I went 2010.

Um there were there's a huge ring around Indianapolis Center of really high levels of poverty.

I think the number I remember was 30% of the children don't have enough food.

Um when I looked at the numbers, there were there were folks who had two and three jobs and were still trying to make it.

Um given that since that time, the price of a brand new home, a starter home, and all of us do zoning in our areas.

A starter home now is running 350,000 dollars, um, and that affects other homes and rents, and I mean it's all part of a package.

Um, how on earth are people making it?

Uh that's I that's in Indiana sucks when it comes to minimum wage and that sort of stuff, a fair wage, a living wage is not even contemplated.

So how are you?

How are you able in any way to help with the job market for these folks?

As I heard some is I think it was Jim mentioned daycare.

It's a huge problem for any family, um, and trying to decide whether you know someone's gonna stay home with the kids because it's more finance the numbers work out better.

Um what avenues do you have open to you to help these folks getting into jobs?

And you mentioned promotions and that's how are you trying to facilitate?

I can speak to uh one program in particular called Pathway to Employment that the city's been operating since 2019.

Um utilizes parking meter revenue to uh pay individuals uh we're at $18 an hour now.

Um individuals who are unhoused to get their feet on the ground with a job, and then we're again surrounding them with um supportive services to help get them rehomed.

And that program has been very successful.

Uh those individuals that are in that that are working as part of Pathway to Employment are getting new credentials, um, CDLs, things that will help them to continue to move up, and many of them get transitioned onto the DPW team at the city.

So they're able to continue to grow their careers that way.

That's that's just one example.

Uh we obviously work with employee Indy to help uh get young people engaged in in the workforce and um you know I I aside from that I don't feel like so you'll have to go on down.

I mean, I think you you're raising an issue that is a bigger issue than we're able to address because it's a policy issue.

I mean, the minimum wage has not changed in Indiana in how how long?

I mean, decades and decades, right?

It's still 735, I think.

Seven and a quarter.

Seven and a quarter, seven twenty-five.

Um so I mean, that is a a major factor is that people could work full-time at minimum wage or even double minimum wage, frankly, and still not earn what I refer to as a housing wage because housing rates have just continued to do this, and wages have just done this, right?

Wages are not keeping up with housing costs.

So that we know is a contributing factor, and if we're not going to address that, then what that means is we have to keep figuring out how to bring more rental subsidy to the table to make up the difference, because there's a big gap in what people can make and what they're being asked to pay in rent, mortgage, whatever it is.

It's not going up together, it's housing prices and wages.

And so if that is the reality, and what changes it is policy.

We need policy change, um, or we need you know, big corporate leaders that are saying we're willing to increase wages and we challenge others to follow suit, right?

So that people can afford to live.

Um, but if that doesn't happen, what that means is we've got to make up the gap in some form of a housing subsidy, and and that's essentially what we're doing right now and trying to advocate for, and that's the really I mean that's part of the the unfortunate part of not having access to vouchers because housing vouchers were the best mechanism or tool for helping with that subsidy piece.

That's all being debated at the federal level right now, too.

So you know, the administration just put out his first iteration of a 27 budget, trying to cut things like housing vouchers.

This requires advocacy of all of us to be reaching out to our legislators and saying, hey, do you understand what's going to happen?

If you cut these kind of subsidy programs, you will drive more people into homelessness because we can't, people cannot make enough to afford where rents are going.

I got an idea.

Yeah.

Because I'm an idea kind of guy.

You talk about the incentives for the landlords.

I know when it comes to property taxes, that if you have a not-for-profit, say in a piece of commercial property, you don't have to pay tax, you don't have to be real estate property tax on that part, that percentage of the property that is to it to a not-for-profit.

An adjust an advocacy program might be to say to the landlords, if you are going to accept this number or this group of people or percentage, perhaps you give them a property tax abatement on the percentage or as to that.

So rather than having to subsidize it, you're giving them an incentive, so they are they are making money, but it's not, it's the fact that the city's not getting money rather than having to pay out money.

Just an idea to the city will still get the money from the way property taxes work.

So it but to evade basically a rent or uh small time rent or is an interesting point.

Yeah, well, that's that's the point that if you know if you have X percentage of your property is for these people that qualify for from the city that the city helps them puts them in there, then you get a certain amount of abatement of property tax.

Yeah, just enough to find.

Yeah, but companies get abatements, so why not smaller people?

Right.

Picture yourself in the landlord's position.

The tenant has been trained, these are the things that the lease requires, cleanliness, so on and so forth, and you have a tenant, no matter how much training they've had, doesn't do that.

What does the landlord do?

What am I supposed to do if they're destroying my property and they won't follow the law, the regulations, I have no choice but to event.

So when you talk about the eviction rate, it's not just money, it's people, it's the cultural thing I keep saying.

It's people who say, Yeah, I'll keep it clean, or can I plant flowers?

I love to plant flowers.

Oh, sure, we'd love to have you plant flowers.

What do they do?

They kill everything that's already there.

So what am I supposed to do?

You should evict them.

Well, you should evict the absolutely.

But now you're making you make evictions like that's the problem.

It is the problem.

Well, it is because the problem in rents is the non-payment of rent is the reason why people who's the sucker that gets the bad tenant.

Well, I think that there's um, I think we're painting with a broad brush.

Um, I appreciate your perspective, but there are a lot of folks who have we don't know what everybody's dealing with or where they come from and what their background is, and so what is clean cleanliness to one person is not clean, is this not the same version of the cleanliness to another.

But as the landlord and the business owner, you are welcome to evict folks who based on of course if it's with the state law.

When you talk about this, it makes it sound like eviction is a big part of the problem.

So it is so I would like to say both hand.

I am not hear me say, I am not saying that there are not cases where people should absolutely be evicted, and landlords have to, you're running a business, you have to run a business, and you have to make sure that your business is a viable business.

So I am not saying there are not circumstances where eviction is absolutely still and snow.

So we work, I mean other pathways.

But at the same time, the rate, the quickness of evictions in the state are a problem, and a lot of evictions are driven by non-paying a rent.

I don't know why you say it's quick.

I've been through eviction, and it is not quick.

We have to let them stay there for a certain layout time after they've been notified.

Then you have to go to the judge, and you have to be scheduled with the judge, and the judge is busy, so you get scheduled two months down the ride.

And all the time that tenant is staying in my property and continuing to destroy it.

It's not as easy.

I just don't think that I think your goal is worthy.

I don't disagree with that.

But I don't think there's enough attention given to the problems of the owner.

The landlord.

I don't know.

I don't know how or who is going to be able to break that circle.

Okay.

Can we do one more question?

Because uh we do have another to do here that involves Nora.

So are is there are there other questions?

Other points, Jim?

Contact information for the order.

Yeah, what's the easiest way to get that to you?

I mean, you have it, right?

Contact information.

Kathy would channel 16, right?

Oh, oh, I see.

Okay.

So you can contact us at Chip Indy.

Um, you can either go to our website at www.chipindy.org.

Um, all of our contact information is on that website under the about us, so you can find my email, my phone number, and any of our team's contact information.

Yeah, and for folks listening, you can call the mayor's action center with any concerns related to homelessness or uh uh I and PD's homeless unit, and uh you can email us at ophs.housing at indie.gov if you have concerns about camps or other items.

For three one law.

Yep, three more.

Well, thank you very much, and thanks for all you're doing.

Can't take some strong will and a big heart to uh continue doing what you're doing every day.

So thank you, and thank you for the discussion today.

It's a complex issue, and it's not something that's gonna get solved overnight.

So we got to keep talking to each other, we've got to keep figuring out how do we work together, we've got to stay persistent, um, and so just appreciate the opportunity.

Okay, thank you for doing the efforts.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay, so let's see.

I um according to Kathy's uh agenda looks like is chip scheduled to come back again next month.

Not that I'm just like if we need to Kathy with contact.

Oh, I'm not the I'm reading might be reading this wrong, but okay, but just appreciate you coming today.

Okay.

Next um May 16th, Dr.

Virginia King, who's with the Marion County Health Department, and uh she will come and talk again every time she uh comes, it's something fascinating and important.

So I expect that that will be the case again next month.

So, but now we have let's see from um the uh neighborhood SOS, the sharing our strength uh initiative.

We have the Nora North Side Community Council and Ms.

Matt's going to be presenting today.

No, he's he's with me.

Oh, okay.

The two of you are presenting today.

Okay.

If you guys want to come up then, sure.

You can sit or stand.

In standing.

Okay.

Sure.

Are you going first?

Ruth?

Yeah.

Do you want to introduce yourself in case there are one or two people who don't know who you are?

Okay.

Good morning.

You're all brave to be here on the rain.

I'm greeting you as Ruth Hayes, Nora Northside Community Council, President Ameritus, and a founding member of this important organization.

As you can see, I'm old school.

There are no digital power points, but instead I have some written notes.

The notes are important since my upstairs hard drive is sometimes slow.

Can you hear back there?

Yes.

We come to you today not to ask your help with a specific problem, but rather to shout the alarm, Paul Reverse style, than another city administrative department, D Pew, in addition to everyone's favorite MDC, has revealed a pattern of little concern or respect for the well-being of our neighborhoods.

And this is all done in quasi-secrecy and nobly, notably without response to our protest from the department director or the mayor.

We offer the latest example.

Our enlightenment of this pattern of disrespect hit us hard on April 2nd when we learned that DBW planners working in conjunction with a small special interest lobby and made plans for the development, redevelopment of 86th Street in Central Nora at the Monon Trail.

The plan as outlined to us could lead to the devastation of two vital commercial nodes and cause drivers to have to drive extra miles to get to and from those nodes with no mention of resultant negative impacts on the city's much ballyhood sustainability policy.

Our learning of the details of this plan on August April 2nd gave us extremely short notice to react since construction was to start on April 14th.

And we learned that only then, thanks to the effort of our counselor Brianne Delaney.

At our April 2nd meeting, the DW, the DPW representative said that he had met with the community, and everybody was supportive of the plan.

This is patently false.

Bless his heart.

And interestingly, we have even yet not been given a copy of the design designed reconstruction plan for review or discussion.

We don't even really know what they're talking about.

So Matt's going to follow through and talk about what the devastation would be if the plan is the construction is done.

And I'm the current Nora Northside Community Council president.

What I'd like to talk about is what has happened or not happened.

1967.

Okay, I was going to I say five decades.

I was going to say five decades, actually, it's six six decades.

And we're known around the community and to the city.

We don't understand why or how DPW had no clue and didn't make it a priority to talk to our community group, which has its ear to the community and to its constituents in the community of Nora.

Much like a zoning case case, a project that impacts like this would have notice given to all of the people and businesses that would be affected.

None of that notice was given.

Normally they would send out a notice or like an MDC case to say, okay, here's something that's coming in that affects you that somewhere next to your property.

Much like that, something that affects traffic and these businesses that are these nodes that are in on 86th Street in Nora are greatly affected and will be greatly affected financially.

That being the case, we are we don't understand why they wouldn't send out notices, make it very public to have a community organization to meet with the people in the businesses and the property owners to make them understand what they potentially want to do and to take in the community's views as to what this may how this may affect them.

Doing so, having that community involvement would actually those comments would have all the stakeholders tell them about the issues involved to them so many times when they you've when you think you've solved the problem, you've created a new problem.

They didn't look into that.

Also, while considering safety is an important, there's also the welfare vitality of the area involved.

Coming up with possible mitigation should have been of the highest priority, as well as the question of whether something is going to be temporary or permanent, such as putting a circle in either on South Westfield Boulevard at 86th Street or North to reroute traffic for people if they were going to put in a median, a solid median, and take out the light, so that people could who come out of each of these businesses could either turn, could turn left, taking that out, meant the fact that these businesses, people coming east or west, are going to sit there and very possibly say, you know what?

It's too much of a problem.

I'll go somewhere else.

Here we've got companies that have come in there and have invested tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Where at Nora, what we look for is the orderly uh orderly way at which we to grow the area and to keep it vital.

This is gonna make it less vital and less attractive to keep businesses wanting to come back to locate in the Nora area.

There's ways to fix this, but they haven't engaged in community discussion to figure out how to accomplish both goals.

That being the case, they basically turned a blind eye towards the community because they think that engineers know best.

So what they also have not taken to account is future development, which is already on the board, such as a tender center that is on uh 80 that is on Westfield Boulevard, just south of 86th Street, and the redevelopment of the Walgreens property on the southeast corner of 86th and Westfield.

I have heard nothing from DPW as to how that traffic will affect all this either.

That being the case, we think that DPW has not done their due diligence in this particular case, and we think that this is a situation where this is just the the tip of the iceberg of how DPW may be conducting its business now and in the future.

Ruth?

Thank you.

Matt, I couldn't have said it better.

Well, you probably could have, but to summarize our primary reason to be here and on the TV, is to make sure you and the public are aware of the autocratic attitude and actions of DBW, which are obviously allowed by the mayor.

It should also be noted that the citizens of Hallville and other Westside communities are also dealing with similar DBW attitudes regarding the 16th Street White River Bridge closing.

I don't go that way, but I'm alarmed for those folks.

I'm alarmed for those folks.

What does DPW think they should do?

Import a ferry boat.

It's a simple solution over there.

Close, leave one lane open with automatic signals, so people at least have it's not a good uh access, but it's better than being totally closed off.

So this isn't just Norum.

This is Hallville and other areas that we may not even know about being disrespected.

I'm gonna stop there because it makes me so angry.

And the mayor does not respond to our protests.

He doesn't respond.

He could call the director of DPW and say, look, you need to work with the people.

Back in the early 70s, when Nora was just first formed, the traffic engineers thought it would just be a great idea to build a sixth lane highway when they rebuilt 86th Street to build a sixth lane highway from the west to the east borders of Washington Township.

It would have destroyed the already existing residential communities, the commercial communities, and we became quite up in arms.

And you know what saved us?

Mayor Hudnard sat down and said, all right, show me what the problem is.

He worked with us, and he told the director of DPW, stop that plan.

Let's work with the public.

They've got some good ideas.

We're not we're not getting that kind of support from the administration.

And so we came to you not to tell us how to solve our problem with the signal life, but to try to get this word out so that the general public knows how DPW is being abusive to neighborhoods.

Thank you for letting us speak.

Of course, we always welcome any suggestions or advice.

Contact information.

One sec.

Can you uh give us an idea of exactly what is being planned?

Because that's not coming through.

We don't know exactly what's being being planned.

The one thing that we do know is that they're taking out the signal on 86th Street, just east of the Monon, for there are two, I'll call them strip malls.

No, complexes.

Complexes.

Uh uh, and one on the south side, one on the north side, and this signal allows people to get in and out of those two different complexes.

Um they're blocking that.

Well, they're taking out the signal so people can't turn left, and then plus they're blocking the the street.

Well, we think that they're putting in a solid medium right there also.

Well, we don't know because they haven't shared the plans with us.

So it's not around about I was talking about one of the solutions, partial solutions could have been putting in a roundabout on Westfield, so people, if if they are put if they are putting in a solid barrier, that if someone was going, say, east on 86th Street and wanted to access the complex on the west side, they could they're they're basically saying that, well, you'll figure it out, turn left on Westfield, go up to the other entrance, which is now going to be packed, and that's gonna back up to the light and turn in that way.

Let me let me give my personal example.

I live west at Meridian, and my bank is in the North Complex.

As it stands now, if I want to go to the bank, I drive east on 86th Street, make a left turn at the signal light, and go in and do my business at the bank.

When I want to go home, I come out at the signal line and turn right and go west to my house.

With their plan taking out the signal line, I have to go miles out of my way, round about through the neighborhoods to get home, or to get to the bank.

Nobody is mentioning this wonderful sustainability policy of the city.

So the counselors, our counselor, Mr.

Laney, and Bob on the West side, have worked with the neighborhoods.

They've tried to be supportive of us, but until we have another Bill Hudna type of mayor who will get wake up to the problem and put his foot down and say to DPW, you work with the community.

Listen to them.

DPW projects are usually years somehow in the making.

No, because we've not been included.

Have you had any aura that suggests if they've been working with these folks for a year or five years or 20?

As we can tell most recently, that this has been, they may have been considering this for who knows how long.

But the anything that was you know totally involving anything that we've heard about, even if it was through the grapevine, within probably last six to twelve months.

You know, you and all we know is what we got through the grapevine.

And the can you imagine what these business owners in those two complexes think?

They have invested on the north one.

We have our the um anchor was a marsh grocery store.

Went out of business, sat there empty, and the owners of that complex have put it on the line themselves to find replacements.

All these um what's the legal total total line, a lot of uh individual um entrepreneurs on the south side, we had a restaurant that was violating uh health things, they had to close down the building had to be um raised, and Mr.

Something, built a new building, put new businesses in, and rescued the South Side.

Nobody told them, nobody came to them.

We would have if somebody had told us, that's our job is to get the word out, and we do a good job of that when we know what we're doing, but nobody, nobody told those object those business people who had invested so much to uplift our community that this was going to happen.

Have they actually broken any laws?

Like not giving notices that they have to give, or they don't have to.

Um I'm not a lawyer.

I'm not going to play one on TV.

The we'll find out there has been a from what I understand, the business owners have sued and gotten a uh temporary restraining order on DPW until I think next week.

Not very long.

No.

So if there is some legal law that they have violated, then I guess we'll find out.

Like when their zoning changes, I get a notice as the neighborhood.

Right.

I get a notice as the neighbor.

Right.

This, when it's DPW, is that required?

I don't know.

Um I um I'm guessing that you know that they can pretty much do what they want.

Uh but it's not just there is the there's the legal law and there's the spirit, and they've broken the spirit, and they what they've done is taken an area and people who've invested in the city and in Nora, and probably some of you someplace like Total Wine, which is a big organization, who may be thinking about putting other businesses elsewhere in the city, may sit there and say, you know what?

Maybe we'll go to Carmel.

Maybe we'll go to other places, not in Indianapolis, because we can't trust that if we go into a shopping center, that they're not going to do that to us someplace else.

Have you told the media?

Until until Bill Hudmett rises from the grave, we're in trouble.

Have you talked to any of you?

Because I've heard the 16th Street Bridge, everything.

Yes.

Um I I have not um, I don't know if somebody was at the meeting from the media that no, nobody was there.

Okay.

Um this is our media.

Yeah.

And I have notified the um, I have sent letters and notified the managing editor of the star.

Um, but we didn't know to invite the media there because here's what happened.

Matt does a great job of chairing our meetings.

I did it for 50 years.

For me, it's kind of easy, and he does it apparently easily.

But he is an independent CPA, and we're talking about the end of tax season.

So I stupidly called him and said, can I help you, Matt?

He said, Well, if you'd substitute chairing that meeting on the second, that would give me a big boost, and I said, shouldn't be any problem.

You know, I've done it for 50 years, and I walked in and I got blindsided because we had not, we had a representative from DPW scheduled to speak, but he would not respond to, and we had a whole set of business owners across the back of the room standing there wanting to say something, and wanting to explain what their problems were.

That's what we do, Nora.

We let people speak and tell us their problems.

And sometimes if we can, we try to work out a solution or a compromise or something.

And I couldn't get in all of those years of teaching classroom being a classroom teacher, controlling that, and 50 years of cheering a meeting, I absolutely lost control of that meeting because of the disrespect from the person from DPW.

And when I have explained this to the director of TPW, not even a phone call.

Mrs.

Hayes, we wouldn't want that to happen.

We're so no, I didn't get that.

No courtesies, no respect, and the mayor is absolute, absent without leave.

So we're turning to the public to let them know and hope that maybe they can get this administration going.

What happened, one of the things that happened was about a week or so before our meeting, some of the business owners caught wind of what was acting, what they were going to do.

They were physically going to physically take down the light.

And one of our board members called me and said, Do you know about this?

I said, no clue.

Hadn't heard, hadn't heard anything about them taking down the light.

So I spoke to our city county counselor who's been extremely helpful, very responsive, and she said, Well, let me talk to DPW.

She said, I can get him to come to the Nora meeting.

I said, excellent.

You know, if you can get him to someone to speak to what is happening, this will be great.

I'm sure that there'll be, I thought, open-minded, hear what the issues were, and be able to say, you know what?

Let's take let's take a pause.

Let's let's now we we need this community involvement and response to see how we can find a way to mitigate the issues that you have, and also accomplish the goals which we want.

I read a transcript of the meeting, and it was anything but that.

So I think that the owners whose livelihoods investments and investments were at risk, said this cannot stand.

And with legal counsel decided that they had to intervene.

And that's where we are today.

Who was that person?

Was that the director of BPW?

Who was that?

No, um Mr.

Stevenson.

And he and he, to the best of my knowledge, uh was is more of a spokesman for them.

Um he's not an engineer.

Yes, he is.

I looked it up.

Oh, is he?

Excuse me.

Um, I'm from the church.

Uh our security officer is sick, and so just to let you know that we locked the inference up there, so if you go out, at this point you won't be able to get back in.

Well, thank you.

Unless there's a way standing before.

Okay.

Thank you.

So it was Daniel Stevenson, I believe his name was.

Um I think I think that he was, it seemed from the from reading the the transcript that he was there more to say, here's here's what we're doing.

Not that we love it.

Yeah, yeah.

Not to say, here's our ideas.

You know, do you you know, do you have a problem with that?

What are the problems you have?

What do you want to mitigate those those uh problems?

It's like we're doing this.

Get out of our way, just so you know, have you looked up online for the contracts to see what's uh there might be some uh on this boat in the past they've had contracts listed online, and by drilling down to the exact contract, you can often get the scope of what they're planning.

I mean it's not the right, you should be able to just ask.

Yeah, um, to be honest, the April 15th, I April 15th is three days old.

Well, yeah, I guess I'm gonna.

I personally have not had the time to do that.

And now that's the thing, Pat.

You have to feel that there's some reason that the common person spends the time to check all of the contracts that are online, which I can't, um, in case something is happening that I should know about.

I'm thinking since they're not being communicative, um, that might be a way for you to find out some more nuts and bolts so that that might arm you with information.

When they built the sidewalk on Westfield, those engineers called and said we'd like to work with you and talk with you about that.

And they set a meeting, I went to the meeting, we talked about it, we talked about my concerns for the walking students, blah blah blah.

And so this has just come as such a shock to us.

And quite frankly, you, you, I, and all of you have lives to live.

I cannot sit at the computer and try to find all this stuff, and I'm too old for this.

I expect I live and have always lived by the rule that I treat people the way I want them to treat me.

I've always lived by that, and that's why I think you'll find that's my reputation over all these 50 years.

And then I look at this thing at the White River Bridge, and those people are being abused.

Those people, unfortunately, they probably don't have the assets to hire an attorney like our business people do.

That's the one advantage we have because they have the money to hire an attorney.

The people in Hallville, those are my friends, those are my adopted families.

And I'm sorry, they don't have those assets.

So anyway, anyway.

Well, we have a website.

Yeah, and there is a website, and you uh you can email through the website if you wanted to contact me directly.

Um you can contact me through my uh an email.

Joycey Joycey, J-O-I-Z-E-E.

J-O-I-Z-E-E at AOL.com.

You can tell I'm originally from New Jersey.

A little.

Well, thank you both for thank you for giving us the time.

I'm sorry it was one of such complaint.

Um join the club, eh?

You know, two out of fifty years ago, Paul River, not the only one that we found out now, there were others.

Paul Revere wrote to alert, and we have asked for this time today to try to alert the public.

Well, thank you very much.

In the last minute here, um, I do want to bring up that um DPW, not DBW, sorry, DMD has reached out to folks who are on uh the contact list of registered neighborhood organizations asking if they would like to sign up for a virtual uh meeting on a draft that they've come up with for data center regulation under the zoning ordinance.

They have two at 63 at 11.

Tuesday at 6.30 or Wednesday at 11, both for an hour, which seems very short for such an important thing.

But we will see what information they give and what information they take back.

I have not seen any draft.

Um I have uh I hope that this is not their entire public outreach, and that it is just the start of a vigorous public outreach like Indianapolis neighborhoods deserve.

Um this is an important, important um issue that the residents of the county are facing with these data centers, and the regulation of them needs to be tip top and take the residents position highly into account.

So uh we'll see what happens with these uh two one hour things.

Um, and again, I hope that this is just the beginning of a vigorous public outreach.

They don't want us.

I get that impression, but I hope that this is the beginning of a vigorous public outreach because we deserve that.

The entire county deserves this is a uh data centers are a national issue that is not going away, it is only getting amplified.

And the residents need to be protected by any ordinance that comes out.

So you want to talk about not having time.

We don't.

But are we prepared to raise hell?

Yeah.

Well, um I think I think the well, I think that the council might be more open, but um at this point they haven't come forward with a moratorium for reasons I still don't quite haven't heard really.

Um haven't been expressed where I understand it.

Um but uh yeah, I think the residents the residents of Marion County are not going to be just sitting by idly if the ordinance doesn't the draft doesn't protect the the residents.

Well, I hope you get a copy of the draft.

Does it make any sense to set up some legal fund for you know the different organizations and or individuals to contribute to in case there has been case?

Let's wait till we see that.

We already have them for our individual files.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, the I'm not gonna ask for money until I see what it is.

Yeah, yeah.

Uh yeah, and um, yeah, there's a different avenue there.

There are uh protect, I know this protect Franklin Township that was quite successful.

Uh forefront of the uh data center.

Um there's a protect uh Martindale Brightwood, and and they came second.

Decatur Township has a protect the Santa Township group and we came third, but the neighborhood organizations in these areas also are are part and parcel.

So the learning curve on data centers is huge.

I mean, I've learned a lot of things in my life, and but this is you are under the gun on time when there's a zoning case before you and uh but data center, the amount of information you have to gather and sort through to make sure that you're comfortable is actually based in science and facts is huge.

Uh so the resources at this point, there are quite a number of people who have made that climb and who can give valuable information and valuable perspective to uh what should be in this ordinance.

So uh but in any case, it has begun and it at this point it is just two hours of virtual meetings, and there has been no publication of any draft as far as I know that just anybody could read if they want to.

So uh, but anyway, that will be the first step, and hopefully a very vigorous public process as I keep saying.

I'm gonna hold out the hope until it is not fulfilled.

Okay.

So give our web address for McCana.

Oh, okay.

McCannna has a Facebook page.

You can reach it through uh McCannna Indie.org if you like.

But is there anything else the folks would like to bring up?

I know that we don't have enough going on, but if there's anything, is there anything for the health department?

Okay, thank you.

Thank you for coming and joining us every month.

Appreciate that.

Okay, with that, then how about we adjourn and enjoy the marvelous weather?