INDIANAPOLIS – Shelters across the state are losing government money due to a massive policy shift that emphasizes permanent housing for the homeless.
The traditional shelter, or a “transitional” program that often places demands on clients such as sobriety, is increasingly losing money to programs that place people in housing with few strings attached.
The shift comes as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development emphasizes a “housing-first” approach, or rapidly putting people into homes and apartments, often with short-term rent subsidies.
The change creates a hardship in communities such as New Albany and Jeffersonville, where two agencies that provide transitional housing lost $550,000 in federal funds earlier this month.
“This is a huge, fundamental shift,” said Leslea Townsend Cronin, head of the Homeless Coalition of Southern Indiana, and social services director at St. Elizabeth Catholic Charities, which lost funding for its seven-unit shelter.
Federal officials and some advocates for ending homelessness agree that the change represents a major shift. Some programs that have received federal dollars for years are now cut off.
But federal officials and advocates defend the new emphasis as more cost-effective in reaching an ambitious goal, set by President Barack Obama six years ago, to end homelessness by 2020.
“We have this big, honking goal, and the old school way of doing things is not going to cut it,” said HUD spokesman Brian Sullivan.
Sullivan pointed to studies that show rapid placement in permanent housing - especially for families and veterans - leads to better results than transitional shelters, which can take up to two years to move people out.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness endorses the approach.
Its members say the vast majority of homeless fall into homelessness after personal crisis. Finding permanent housing quickly, with short-term assistance and without conditions, is the best and quickest way to get people on their feet, advocates said.
The government followed that path in distributing $16.3 million to agencies that serve an estimated 6,000 homeless people in Indiana.
In South Bend, for example, the YWCA lost about $146,000 in HUD money for a transitional shelter that offers extended stays and intensive social services for domestic violence victims.
But the Center for Homelessness in South Bend received an additional $181,000 to put toward finding permanent homes for the homeless.
That came after the center shifted another $170,000 out of its transitional shelter programs and into permanent housing efforts.
Sullivan said HUD has been pushing communities to adopt a housing-first approach for six years. But he conceded the department is getting more aggressive.
This year it put about 15 percent of $1.9 billion in funds for homeless services into a highly competitive pot of money that prioritized permanent housing.
Last year, it put about 2 percent of its homeless services funds into that pool.
The change has affected communities across the state.
In Indianapolis – with one the state’s largest homeless populations -- programs that provide housing and support for the homeless received $4.2 million from HUD - a 15 percent decrease from last year.
Much of that money came out of programs that offer traditional, transitional housing.
Providers of the traditional services defend their value.
Cronin, of the Homeless Coalition of Southern Indiana, said transitional housing guarantees that people receive critical services in addition to shelter.
She concedes that it’s a more costly and labor intensive approach. But she said it’s a more sustainable solution to chronic homelessness and a needed step – especially in smaller, rural communities with minimal other social services.
She’s unsure what will happen to the shelters that have lost funding.
Some organizations, like hers, are looking to private donors for support. Others may just shutter their programs while they work to develop services in line with HUD’s priorities.
“Any kind of drastic change like this is hard,” she said.