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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowIn last week’s editorial focused largely on Mayor Joe Hogsett’s controversies, we gave short shrift to a highly important initiative that could have as big an impact on the city as one that’s focused directly on tourism or economic development.
It’s not a new hotel or entertainment venue or riverfront development. It’s not a condo complex or soccer stadium. It’s not a tech district or university expansion.
It’s an $8.1 million push to end street homelessness—and Indianapolis needs for it to be successful.
Led by the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention, known as CHIP, the collective will implement a long-term plan called Streets to Home, which some advocates hope will create a sustainable, balanced system to serve Indianapolis’ homeless. The first step: House people living in tents and at encampments.
CHIP Executive Director Chelsea Haring-Cozzi told IBJ reporter Taylor Wooten that the initiative will ramp up in August, with the goal of housing 300 to 350 people currently in unsheltered homelessness over the next nine to 12 months.
“People are dying on our streets waiting for housing,” Haring-Cozzi told Wooten. “We know that’s not OK, and we have to do something about it.”
In addition to helping people who are homeless, the initiative could have an enormous impact on the economy downtown, where homelessness contributes to a feeling among many workers that the area isn’t safe. And it matters for tourism, too, including conventions and sports events that are a lifeblood for downtown.
Wooten writes that Indianapolis’ documented population of people living in encampments has yo-yoed—the 339 people counted while sleeping outdoors in January 2024’s annual census of the homeless population represented a slight decrease from 2023 but is 72% higher than when the same count occurred in 2022 and triple that of 2019. The 2025 numbers haven’t yet been released.
Of course, the issue isn’t just about downtown. The numbers above represent the entire city, not just downtown. Moving people into homes who are now sleeping at bus stops, in retail doorways and in parks is important throughout the city. When Indianapolis residents don’t feel safe in their neighborhoods—and again, homelessness can contribute to that impression, whether the people who are homeless are dangerous or not—they can move to surrounding counties, depriving Indianapolis of their tax revenue and other resources.
The Streets to Home initiative is meant to connect people who are homeless not just with a place to live but also support services, which will be key to the program’s success. Ultimately, Wooten writes, the intervention aims to give people access to housing quickly, increase their self-sufficiency and keep them housed.
The $8.1 million for the initiative’s Phase 1 will come from three sources: $2.7 million from federal opioid settlement funds, $2.7 million from The Indianapolis Foundation and $2.7 million to be raised from philanthropic, corporate and faith-based communities. That last piece is important.
Homelessness is a problem that businesses, nonprofits and the city should work together to solve. The future of the city depends on our success.•
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This new initiative sounds promising, but it is hard not to think of the tens of millions spent in years past and the little progress they seemed to produce.
Imagine being a homeowner who invested your life’s savings and years of sweat equity into your downtown-area residence, and then a homeless encampment springs up right by where you and your family live. Insane men with their buttocks showing now urinate in broad daylight on your street. Needles everywhere. Backpack-wearing zombies clog up every nearby underpass, eliminating normal pedestrian usage.
So you, as a homeowner, look up the organization the city has partnered with, hoping for some assistance. Good luck. Go take a gander at who these CHIP people are. The staff biographies on their website indicate a profoundly unserious organization, shot through with wokeness and navel-gazing:
“Pizza nerd.”
“they/them – Motherdad to 6 incredible humans.”
“Avid coffee-drinker.”
“Unapologetically queer.” (Multiples of this one. Good for you. It’s all about you.)
“Sometimes anxious. Professional nap taker.”
This is who is tasked with addressing the plague of bums overrunning our downtown. Great.