Terre Haute Mayor Brandon Sakbun said that before assembling a task force to combat homelessness, he will be addressing a more immediate need — coordinating the operations of the city’s warming centers for the winter months.
“The first goal we have is getting our warming centers synchronized,” he said. “Creating a clear, ‘What triggers the opening of a center? What are the hours? Who is accepted, what items are accepted? What’s our donation capacity? Who’s communicating when these centers are open?’” Sakbun added, “One of the reasons I wanted to do a task force was to create accountability and an actionable plan.”
The mayor first proposed creating a joint homelessness task force between his administration and the Terre Haute City Council addressing the rising incidents of homelessness locally at October’s City Council meeting.
The goal would be to assist the unhoused more efficiently. Sakbun’s warming center task force includes all volunteers — Board of Public Works Director Jesse Tohill, the Human Relations Commission’s Anne-Therese Ryan, Terre Haute Redevelopment Authority Executive Director Jordan Marvel, City Councilpersons Jim Chalos, Amanda Thompson and Tammy Boland and Vigo County Commissioner Mark Clinkenbeard.
Ryan and Tohill will be the task force’s project managers, Ryan reported.
The goal, Sakbun said, is “Let’s put this together and create a concept of operations for our winter months.” The task force had its first meeting Monday, consulting with representatives for the Lugar Center, Union Health, Mental Health America, Pathways and Hamilton Center.
“We didn’t make any decisions,” Ryan said. “We recapped what’s happened in the past, what essentials we need and how to coordinate them. We’ll set up subcommittees for things like volunteerism and have another meeting in two weeks.”
“We realistically need to have a plan (for warming centers) done by the end of October, going into our winter months,” Sakbun said.
Once that’s accomplished, the homelessness task force will begin its work in November. It will likely include members from the warming center task force, as well as Terre Haute Police Department Chief Kevin Barrett, its social worker Jarom Hawker and Chris Carrera, a THPD community health worker with the social work program. Perhaps more than a committee or commission, a task force suggests ‘We mean business.’ “Here’s the problem with government,” Sakbun said.
“Frankly, you see some very intellectual folks who want to get involved with government — planning committee, zoning committee, historical committee, this commission, that commission — I don’t have time for that. “I’m the 29-year-old mayor chomping at the bit saying, ‘Hey, I want to see results within 60 days. If we take on problems, something’s going to get done.’ I’m not going to mess around with a resolution or an ordinance to create some formal structure. We’re going to do it — let’s get our show on the road.”
Sakbun said he believes Terre Haute police department handles homeless individuals with “the utmost professionalism.
“Folks do not want to admit this, but it’s the truth — homelessness becomes a police issue when organizations and government fail to address it,” he added.
“When people are failing to be accountable, it eventually steamrolls into a police issue not by choice. … They have criminals they want to apprehend, basic 911 calls they need to take care.”
Sakbun continued, “One of the reasons I’m so hellbent on addressing the homelessness problem is to help our police officers. To do that, you find a way to make their time more valuable on larger cases.”
Sakbun noted that businesses are reluctant to talk about homelessness publicly because they don’t want to be perceived as insensitive.
Tackling homelessness ultimately means taking on a number of issues, the mayor said.
“Long-term, we’ve got to work on all kinds of things,” Sakbun said. “Homelessness is a symptom of a larger problem in the Hoosier state. To be quite frank, we are turning into a low-wage state. You see it across the state with the failure to synchronize workforce development programs.
"We’re still playing checkers in the state when we need to play chess.
“We’re doing our best to control the symptoms but some of the root causes are simply out of our control,” he concluded.
Sakbun said that he would like to see “near zero” homeless locally in 10 years, but doesn’t have a precise number that would represent acceptable improvement.
“Part of the goal of the task force is to calculate what that looks like 10 years from now,” he said.
© 2025 Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc.