NEW ALBANY— It’s a complex question with no simple answer.
How can you end homelessness in Southern Indiana?
No one answer was given Tuesday night that will change the fact that hundreds will be sleeping under an overpass, in a shelter or on someone’s couch.
But a conversation — and a start — was the impetus for a public forum hosted by the News and Tribune and Indiana University Southeast on Tuesday night at the Ogle Center.
The forum “Facing Homelessness: A community conversation” was the follow up to a months-long series by the News and Tribune examining the aspects of homelessness in the community.
News and Tribune Publisher Bill Hanson called a dialogue on homelessness “one of the most important conversations happening in Southern Indiana at this time.”
What was discovered is that there is no easy answer, nor is there a simple preventative step that can be taken to end the plight for many in the community.
Christine Harbeson, director of Hope Southern Indiana; Kelley Curran, Jeffersonville Homelessness Task Force and planning committee member; Beth Keeney, senior vice president for Community Health Initiatives for LifeSpring Health Systems; and Leslea Townsend, social services director for St. Elizabeth Catholic Charities were on-hand to be part of a panel discussion. They were there to encourage discussion and action among those in the community in a position to help, whether it is a business or an individual.
But conversations about how to end homeless are also not new.
Part of what was unveiled Tuesday was a strategic plan to end homelessness by 2025.
Melissa Fry, director of the Applied Research and Education Center for IU Southeast, presented the plan, called Vision 2025: A Strategic Plan to End Homelessness, with the main goals of making homelessness a temporary, transitional experience marked by access to services to help people regain stability.
The development of the strategic plan, which took two years to research and develop, was born out of a task force formed by Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore several years ago, following the clearing of a homeless camp near Interstate 65 by the city’s police department with no warning to its inhabitants.
The Vision 2025 plan also included a profile of the homeless population in Clark and Floyd Counties.
According to the report, during one point in time in 2015, there were 263 homeless people in Clark and Floyd counties.
“It represents only a portion of the homeless population,” Fry said.
The number does not include those “couch surfing,” those who may be in a Louisville shelter for the night or those who were not willing to participate in the survey that determined the number of people counted.
Fry outlined several goals of the plan including: integrating services to prevent and respond to homelessness; retool the response system to homelessness; increase access to stable and affordable housing; increase economic security; and improve health and stability for those who may be at risk of becoming homeless.
The objective is to prevent homelessness and return people to homes as quickly as possible, not adding to the resources that continue to allow those who are homeless to maintain homelessness, Fry said.
Townsend said the next steps are to make sure the Homeless Coalition of Southern Indiana completes its bylaws and hires an executive director while seeking funding from Southern Indiana cities and foundations.
Between transitions in Tuesday’s forum excerpts of videos and statistics of Southern Indiana homelessness were shown to the audience.
Fry said Elizabeth Beilman, the News and Tribune reporter who led the homelessness series, was able to bring the faces of those who are homeless to the forefront.
Beilman had her own important reminder for the audience about homelessness.
“Homeless people are not so different from you and I,” she said. “They are real people with hearts, and minds, and families and histories.
“If we as a community don’t change the way we think about homelessness and homeless people, we will continue to be divided in our hearts, minds and actions.”