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Vop Osili said he believes “the issue of housing is too important for a mayor to operate at a distance.”
The Democratic mayoral candidate released an affordable housing strategy Thursday titled the Home Plan. If he’s elected, Osili said, he would bring the director of the long-troubled Indianapolis Housing Agency into the mayor’s cabinet and create more than 5,000 affordable housing units.
The proposal to move the IHA director “by itself creates accountability,” said Osili, who has served on the City-County Council since 2011, including as president from 2018 until the first week of this year.
Dysfunction at the Indianapolis Housing Agency spurred a joint takeover by federal officials and the city of Indianapolis in 2024. Two years later, the feds tapped South Carolina public housing executive Yvonda Bean to lead the IHA. The agency has sold several properties under Bean’s leadership, but remains in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development receivership with residents still reporting substandard conditions.
Osili said having the federally funded government housing agency that administers essential housing vouchers in direct contact with the administration would create more collaboration and focus on housing and homelessness.
His housing plan comes at an estimated cost of $10 million per year, according to Osili’s campaign. He said housing is an essential part of quality of life in Indianapolis, and thus would be a major focus for his administration.
Osili faces several other Democrats in a May primary, including State Sen. Andrea Hunley and Department of Public Works Administrator David Bride. Current Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett may also run for reelection, a decision he says he will make in November.
What else is in the plan?
In collaboration with HUD, Osili’s plan calls for securing at least 3,000 additional Housing Choice Vouchers, also known as Section 8 vouchers. The program allows qualified low-income renters to live in private properties with monthly payments that are no more than 30% of their monthly income.
IHA currently houses 8,000 Indianapolis families with the Section 8 program, according to its website. Osili said peer cities like Columbus and Cincinnati in Ohio receive far more vouchers than the city of Indianapolis.
“It’s one way of us getting parity again,” Osili said of the proposal. “Now, obviously, we have to show that we can manage our own housing agency, but it’s an attainable goal.”
The second key pillar to Osili’s housing plan is to create a workforce housing voucher program for families with monthly incomes that exceed the limits of the Section 8 program, but for whom housing remains unaffordable.
Finally, Osili set a goal of bringing online 5,000 units of affordable housing. He said he would do so by providing gap financing to community development corporations and nonprofits already working to create affordable housing and speeding up the pace of review and permitting.
That work would leverage public, corporate and philanthropic resources through the Indianapolis Housing Trust Fund, according to a release from the Osili campaign.
The gap is widening between wages and the cost of rent, Osili said, while the cost of construction also continues to rise. He said that makes it more difficult for neighborhood organizations and community development corporations to build housing for lower-income Indianapolis residents.
He said his commitment to gap financing would alleviate some of that challenge to deliver the units needed.
“Where there are gaps, we need to be working together to fill them,” he said.
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You’re going to need to fire at least half of the “leaders” at DMD, including little miss sunshine at the top.
The housing units are needed in proximity to low income jobs … which are located where economic growth is occurring, i.e. Hamilton, Hendricks, Boone, Johnson and Hancock Counties. Good luck with that.
I stopped reading after “Federally funded.”
Let’s see, the Federal Government is $40 trillion in debt yet more spending is proposed.
What he’s really saying is he wants to tax us more! More wealth transfers! more Government! Screw personal responsibility. Yeh!
The plan as drafted requires about $10mil per year to function. A single Patriot missile costs up to $5mil. You should do more reading, you might learn something that would make your whining about taxes a bit more impactful
You know that debt is being turbo charged by Republicans cutting taxes for the wealthy and big corporations, along with defunding the tax police (IRS).
The funny thing about defunding the IRS is that on a skeleton crew budget, all they have time for is the really easy stuff. That means audits for guys like you that have all of their income reported on 1099’s and made a mistake when they filed their taxes so simple a computer program caught the error.
A new voucher program just means landlords will reset rents even higher to account for that. Also, the idea that there are a bunch of competent non-profits or CDCs out there that just need some gap funding and there’d be a big jump in affordable housing is a myth. Most development talent is in the private sector because they can pay for it.
+1
Landlords don’t determine rates when accepting vouchers. IHA does.
At least become educated on the subject before sharing an option.
IHA has a lot of issues, that isn’t one of them
I was on the board of a CDC for nearly 10 years. They run on the edge of solvency. It’s a hard job.
On top of that, people forget the stuff that works. Fall Creek Place, came out of the ground with just $4 million in Federal Funding. It was successful beyond anything anybody could have imagined. It gave close to 100 low income families a chance to get in on the ground floor of home ownership. It was so successful at creating new housing, that now any low income families are priced out of the area. The only mistake I think the project made was not including enough clusters of high density rentals at key locations. Where vouchers could be used. Not all Federal Spending is bad and nail all CDCs are incompetent. The King Park CDC did what every successful CDC should do, it dissolved/merged itself out of existence.
Serving on the Council since 2011, including as leader for 7 years, why haven’t you come up with ideas to address the afforable housing problem before now? Typical career politician?
The truth is funny!
That kind of visionary thinking should come from the Mayor or in this case a Mayoral candidate..
You’re a day late and a dollar short VOP!
Since the original public and ‘affordable’ housing began in the 1930’s and thru today, we the government have never maintained what we built. Not enough funding for maintenance and not enough knowledge or experience of those put in charge to manage or maintain it!
Government owned and managed housing have all become either total failures or become run down dens of abuse and crime.
As 21 R stated, the private sector can make it happen and manage it correctly, in most cases.
Prolonging the welfare state mentality and the entitlement mentality just continues the missed opportunities to move forward with a better solution. The original Gene B Glick company built and managed more Section 8 housing than any developer in the country, and they continue today. They maintain, manage, repair, remodel and resolve issues. The government, especially our own Indy Housing Agency, has never been able to do that.
Why isn’t the private sector “making it happen and managing it correctly” already? We currently only have about 33 affordable units for every 100 extremely low income households. Seems like prime opportunity for the private sector to have already taken advantage of if they had any intention to?
Michael – they’re just simply bad at it.
I live and breath this world and the average owner of LIHTC properties outsources it all and makes their money up front with the tax credits….
Lot of these properties are turning over right now as the 15 year lockup expires and they’re restarting PILOT programs and development on a lot of affordable housing again in 2027.
It’s not perfect but it’s 100x better than the IHA owned properties
You’re wrong. See my post about Fall Creek Place.