Catalyst Rescue Mission in Jefferonville. News and Tribune file photo
SOUTHERN INDIANA — Local organizations and advocates are seeing growing issues with homelessness in Southern Indiana.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its 2024 Point-in-Time (PIT) count report on Dec. 27. The national data show an 18% increase in the number of people reported as experiencing homelessness on a single night compared to 2023. In Clark County, the annual PIT count for Southern Indiana included 143 unhoused individuals on Jan. 24, 2024, compared to 165 in 2023, according to data from the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority.
The report shows 68 unhoused individuals in Floyd County compared to 58 in 2023.
However, Catalyst Rescue Mission President Jim Moon said the PIT count is not an accurate depiction of homelessness in Southern Indiana, and it misses many people in the community.
“It’s a one-day-a-year number, and it doesn’t always adequately reflect what’s really happening because it doesn’t take into account the hotel stayers, it doesn’t account the couch surfers,” he said. “It only takes a snapshot of what they can find in that given day.”
The Jeffersonville homeless shelter has seen greater needs in the community as it served an additional 200 people in the past year.
The average daily census went from 83 to nearly 100, he said. Roughly 90% of those served are from Clark and Floyd counties.
Many struggled after the pandemic’s eviction moratoriums were lifted and COVID-19 relief funds were no longer available, Moon said. These challenges have been exacerbated by the shortage of affordable housing.
“There’s less affordable housing in the marketplace, and we’re building more apartments that cost $1,300 a month to rent,” he said. “So the basic service folks who pour your coffee, make your drive-through experience better — they don’t have a place to live, so they are pushed to shelters like ours.”
Barb Anderson, executive director of Haven House Services, said the PIT count is “simply an indicator,” but the data is “not a realistic account.”
On cold nights, unhoused individuals might be staying in places where they will be missed by the count.
“It’s the coldest night of the year and empathy’s bigger, and people may not be on the street who would normally be on the street,” Anderson said.
“We miss those folks in the sense that you’re not going to reduce serving them but you’re not going to be getting money to serve them because they were not there at that point in time.”
Anderson said many of the unhoused people she serves are employed.
“We’re seeing an increase in the number of working poor families, and that I think is across the board,” she said. “Their jobs pay, but they don’t pay enough to support the rent levels that are in the area. You’re not going to find a one-bedroom under $900 a month. Very few are available.”
Nomad Church Collective, an outreach ministry, works with many homeless in the community, including those living on the street and in local encampments.
Pastors Matt Fleenor and Preston Searcy not only serve the unhoused through Nomad, but they also chair the street outreach committee for the Homeless Coalition of Southern Indiana.
Fleenor said they are seeing many of the same individuals, but he is also noticing more people becoming newly homeless, including younger people.
“We’re seeing people that have just hit hard times that are finding themselves in these situations, and they’re looking for help,” he said. “They’re people who haven’t been chronically homeless.”
Fleenor said while there has been an influx of younger unhoused people, he is also seeing more resources allocated in the community and partnerships between local organizations to address the issue.
“This is a big problem, but what we’ve been seeing is a lot of people who have been able to receive that help, and they’ve been willing to pursue it,” he said.
Jeffersonville has a larger population of homeless individuals, and the needs are often more visible there due to Catalyst Rescue Mission and the Jeffersonville Community Kitchen, Searcy said. In New Albany, he feels that the homeless population is often more “unseen.” Searcy said there are many complex factors involved in the homelessness issue, including mental illness, drugs and affordable housing. “ T he r e ’s no t enough affordable housing, and those are real things that need to be addressed,” he said. “But also the availability of drugs in the community is astronomical.”
“People are dealing with something that’s so deep and painful, and especially if they have a tremendous loss of family and meaningful relationships, the best they know how to handle what they’re going through is to soothe those things, whether it’s drugs or alcohol or whatever it is.”
Searcy said to address the issue, it is important for communities to “take care of the people who fall through the cracks,” including people who can’t get into public housing.
“Yeah, we want homeowners to be in neighborhoods that have been missing homeowners,” he said. “Yeah, we want communities to be thriving economically, but we can’t just leave out the people who can’t fit into that paradigm.”
The community must be willing to talk about the issue and show care for those experiencing homelessness, according to Searcy.
“It has to be a multi-faceted, complex, evolving approach that starts with, we’re a city that cares for our poor, and to own that they’re our poor, and we need to care for them,” he said.
Fleenor said there is a shared responsibility to address the issue.
“I think we all have a responsibility and a role from the government to the local organizations to businesses to churches all the way down to each individual in a community to find it within ourselves to be compassionate and caring for those who are walking a different path than we are,” he said.
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