Is homelessness growing? Increases in visibility more likely than more people
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In cities around the state, people have asked whether more people were falling into homelessness, saying they were seeing more of this population in public spaces.
Though difficult to answer, there likely aren’t more people who are homeless in the places this question was asked, according to some experts; an increase in visibility is what people could actually be noticing. For example, the population experiencing homelessness in Indianapolis, has decreased by 8%, though some demographics saw increases.
Community advocates and experts say this visibility increase could be attributed to fewer people using shelters as well as encampments being dispersed. Ultimately, stable housing, they say, is the solution.
Roxy Lawrence, the IU Public Policy Institute’s director of the Center for Research on Inclusion and Social Policy, speaks on how rental prices and evictions are more significant causes of homelessness than substance abuse or mental health issues.
Sheltered vs. unsheltered homelessness
Chelsea Haring-Cozzi, executive director of the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention in Indianapolis, said a trend they’ve noticed is that a significant portion of the population is sleeping outside instead of in shelters, which she said people do for a number of reasons.
In Marion County, CHIP and a number of local organizations conduct a point-in-time count of those who are homeless on one night in January. Though this year’s report saw an 8% decrease in the overall population, the number of people who weren’t staying in shelters grew 77%, including a 133% increase for Black people. The year had the most unsheltered families to date, and there was a 17% decrease in those families staying in emergency or transitional housing.
A major reason for this increase is that many shelters are privately run and are not considered low-barrier, Haring-Cozzi said. That means people who use substances may be denied access.
It also requires people to split up — something many are unwilling to do. People who want to stay with their partners may have to split into gendered shelters. Those with pets can’t bring them in. Families may not stay together, especially single fathers with children since mothers and children are often grouped together.
Also, coming out of the pandemic, Haring-Cozzi said people want to shelter differently than the traditional configuration. Many weren’t able to social distance in those places, and the pandemic exposed them to emergency temporary shelters and hotel rooms, which were more accommodating.
“People didn’t want to go back to the traditional kinds of shelter environment,” she said.
Ordinances and government intervention
Cities and towns across the country, including progressive areas, have raised and passed ordinances that are considered to be “criminalizing” homelessness. This can come in the form of banning urban camping.
“We’re starting to see more of a movement towards criminalization of homelessness,” Haring-Cozzi said. “Making people less visible doesn’t solve the issue at all. It just moves it around.”
When city officials and law enforcement sweep areas and shuffle the unhoused around the area, she said it can cause those people to become disconnected from the services they use. Ultimately, that can make it harder for a person to reach the ultimate goal of housing when they can’t reach services that make it more attainable, she said. For organizations like her own, it also makes it harder for outreach to find their patrons and make sure they are okay.
“The goal is never to make people invisible,” she said.
Roxy Lawrence, the IU Public Policy Institute’s director of the Center for Research on Inclusion and Social Policy, said people getting moved around can affect their mental health and get disconnected from their community. It can also distance people from public transport or their employment. When people don’t have resources or access to things like buses, she said they are limited to certain places that do have those things.
Cities are likely making such decisions out of frustration, according to Haring-Cozzi, however, it’s misplaced. It’s relying on law enforcement and jails to solve a problem she said is housing-reliant. Instead, the focus should be on that aspect; while new shelters and resources are great, it’s a band aid solution for the greater housing shortage, she said.
Youth homelessness lacks visibility but looms large
While some forms of homelessness are more apparent, youth homelessness has historically been difficult to estimate and tends to be more of an “invisible problem,” said Kelsie Stringham-Marquis, Outreach Indiana‘s director of community partnerships.
Last year, Outreach estimated about 7,800 young people between 14 and 24 experience homelessness in Indianapolis each year. At her shelter, she said numbers are increasing year-over-year, though she said that could be attributed to more people finding out they exist.
“That is a huge number. It can be a very shocking number,” she said.”
The lack of visibility is why many are so shocked, Stringham-Marquis said, because younger people tend to shift between different types of homelessness very quickly. In a week, she said a teen could be couch surfing, sleeping in their car or staying in a motel. Also, young people are less likely to be in homeless encampments and would rather be alone, she said. All of those factors make this demographic less visible.
“One reason it is an invisible issue has to do with the way that our young people are very resourceful, and very creative, and very conscious of their own safety,” Stringham-Marquis said. “They’re largely aware of their own vulnerability, and they make it a point to not be very visible because that’s a serious safety concern.”
Often, she said this homelessness is triggered by domestic violence, LGBTQ youth getting kicked out of their homes, and an unstable home environment such as time in the foster care system. Many are dealing with significant and very recent trauma.
“There are risks all around, and our young people are often in a very difficult position trying to navigate that and trying to figure out who is a safe person,” she said. “It’s influenced by trauma that they’ve experienced growing up that makes it hard sometimes to know who is safe and it was not.”
Risks of increased visibility
Increased visibility has risks for people who are navigating being unhoused. Haring-Cozzi said people at all levels of society suffer from mental health issues and substance abuse — whether they are housed or not. Without a permanent and safe home, she said staying on medication and receiving care become significantly difficult, and people have to deal with the ramifications of their situation publically.
When people observe homelessness, Haring-Cozzi said it also can thwart public perception of what is causing the people they see every day to be homeless. The struggles people must deal with publicly can be assumed to be the perpetrator of their situation, which isn’t necessarily true. The unhoused don’t have access to things considered to be a given, like access to bathrooms. Without such, she said they are forced to battle basic human functions in undignified ways.
“It creates a lot of stereotypes about homelessness and maybe misleading narratives that, well, those are the things that are driving homelessness,” she said. “But that’s not really the case.”
Advocates: Housing is the answer
All said the lack of housing is the primary reason people become homeless rather than the long-held assumptions of mental health or substance use as the causes. Lawrence said several studies have shown stagnated wages and skyrocketing rent is a major barrier and a predictor of who could become homeless.
People who have been evicted or have a criminal record, Lawrence said, will have an even more difficult time and are less likely to secure housing. She also said it doesn’t help Indiana tends to be a landlord-friendly state legislatively as well, making it easier for evictions to stain one’s record.
“When you have an eviction on your record, for example, it is even more difficult for you to obtain housing, which then obviously released the housing instability, and you’re at risk for experiencing homelessness,” Lawrence said. “People have mental health issues and people have substance use disorders, and those things are true. But beyond those things, the real problems that research are showing right now is rental prices, evictions.”
Diversion is a topic they each said was important to focus on — so to stop people on are one step away from being homeless from falling into it.
“We do need more housing. We do need more supportive services on the back end. But, we also need to start working upstream, especially for youth and adults,” Stringham-Marquis said. “How can we prevent that from happening to you in the first place? Because one thing that we know is that even a single night of experiencing homelessness makes someone more likely to experience homelessness again.”