Indy reverses course on Fountain Square homeless camp, will house residents before shutdown
The Office of Public Health and Safety announced Aug. 15 that residents who still live at or recently left the homeless camp along Leonard Street will be housed through Streets to Home Indy, a new city-backed initiative to place more than 300 people known to be living on the streets into apartments by next June. At each camp, the process is expected to take four to six weeks.
'We appreciate everyone's patience — we needed to ensure the best outcomes for our unhoused and housed neighbors, acting with compassion and diligence to find the right solution," OPHS Director Andrew Merkley said in a written statement Aug. 15. "I'm grateful that Streets to Home Indy is able to find housing for these individuals and permanently close this camp."
With the decision, Merkley is in effect doing what critics urged him to do during a contentious town hall held days after his July 25 decision to close the camp by Aug. 11. Instead of pushing people from one tent encampment to another, advocates for people who are homeless say service providers should offer people stable housing and case management.
But Merkley also faced intense pressure to shut down the camp from Fountain Square homeowners and business leaders, who said that taxpaying residents should not have to live steps away from the trash, human waste and drug and alcohol consumption that they say occurred at the site.
Merkley ultimately chose to close the camp after someone who seemingly did not live there reportedly fired a gunshot near a camp resident's tent the morning of July 25, according to police. He also cited alleged animal abuse at the camp in June and the site's dangerous proximity to the road as part of why it had become an imminent public safety threat.
A change in the city's approach became evident earlier this week, however, when Aug. 11 came and went but nine people still apparently lived at the camp the next morning. Even camp residents were confused, with some having left before the deadline and others staying after they learned that the city would not push them away.
Merkley said Aug. 13 that because the suspects in the alleged shooting and animal abuse were arrested, he felt that the largest public safety threats had been mitigated. He emphasized that no new residents will be allowed to live at the camp.
Homelessness: What Trump's attack on 'Housing First' means for Indy's effort to end chronic and street homelessness
In defense of the July 25 order to close the camp, Merkley had said that Streets to Home Indy wasn't prepared to take on a site as large as Leonard Street, where more than two dozen tents sat as of late July.
But now the program, led by service providers like the Coalitition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention and Horizon House, has closed an initial camp at an undisclosed location and housed 10 people who were living there. Leaders say they won't often publicly share which site they're working at because they don't want homeless people to flock there in search of housing.
Social workers will move to house everyone who was living at Leonard Street, based on a list of names they collected in recent weeks.
"This is exactly what Streets to Home Indy is designed to do — address encampments through housing solutions, not displacement," CHIP CEO Chelsea Haring-Cozzi said in a statement. "With growing capacity, we are ready to meet the moment and connect those at Leonard Street to stable housing."
While the program works to house residents, the city is paying local nonprofit Keys2Work to clean up litter at the site. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department will continue to patrol the area and respond to crime reports. After everyone is housed or offered housing, the city will clean up and permanently close the camp.
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