13-05-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
'Hold us to the fire': How new Indianapolis Housing Agency CEO plans to fix troubled office
For the past two years, if one of the roughly 20,000 low-income residents served by the Indianapolis Housing Agency needed to ask a question, they had to send an email or go to one of the IHA offices. The public housing authority's phones didn't work.
Ensuring that the people the agency existed to serve had a seamless way to reach administrators apparently did not fall high on the priority list.
So buying new phones was one of CEO Yvonda Bean's first tasks after she was hired Feb. 17 to lead the IHA. She also decided to buy all new computers to replace the "antiquated" equipment employees had been using, along with new software after the IHA fell victim to ransomware attacks twice in recent years.
"I can't speak to why something hadn't been done in the past. I can only speak to what has been done," Bean said when asked why prior leaders didn't fix the shoddy equipment. "We had the resources to be able to address the phone situation, and so that's what we did."
Such fundamental first steps show how steep a hill Bean must climb after decades of financial mismanagement created poor living conditions in the federally funded agency's thousands of subsidized housing units. The dysfunction led the Department of Housing and Urban Development to make the rare decision to take control of IHA last year in partnership with the city of Indianapolis, following a HUD investigation that found IHA 'failed to meet its obligation to provide decent, safe and sanitary housing to Indianapolis residents."
"We are having to essentially start from scratch, in terms of rebuilding," Bean said on May 12 while announcing a plan to reform IHA's systems and assess its dilapidated housing stock by January 2026, the end of her first year on the job.
Bean, who previously led housing authorities in Columbia, South Carolina, and Lafayette, Louisiana, said she plans to update the Indianapolis agency's outdated technology, sell off seven dilapidated multi-family properties, and house more residents through the IHA's underused Housing Choice Voucher (Section 8) program, in which the agency pays 70% of low-income tenants' rents to private landlords.
HUD's recent investigation found that IHA's voucher program was in such disarray that about 1,500 of 9,000 available vouchers went unused and many participating landlords were not being paid. In addition, administrators were improperly using HUD vouchers funding to cover other agency expenses.
Most of those landlords waiting for IHA money have now been paid, Bean said.
Facing a backlog of maintenance needs on its 16 listed communities, the IHA will try to sell seven properties to private developers in the next two months — Hawthorne Place, Blackburn Terrace, Twin Hills, Laurelwood, Rowney Terrace, 16 Park and Beechwood Gardens. Developers would have to maintain the properties as low-income housing as part of any sale, Bean said.
Bean said she will look to what other public housing authorities across the country have done to improve the situation in Indianapolis. Most agencies have shifted from trying to repair the aging properties they own to finding more landlords to partake in their housing voucher programs. Others have started nonprofit spinoffs to build new low-income units.
The Trump administration's plans to cut funding for low-income housing, however, could force housing agencies to try to make limited dollars go even further, she said.
"There used to be funds and resources for bricks and mortar, through a number of different initiatives that housing authorities could access," Bean said. "Those programs are no more... Traditional public housing is no more."
Through IHA's development nonprofit — Insight Development Corp., founded in 1999 — Bean hopes to eventually build new multi-family units with a blend of funding sources. The most common way for developers to fund such housing now is through low-income housing tax credits, a federal program administered by state agencies such as the Indianapolis Housing and Community Development Authority. During Bean's time in Columbia, more than $100 million in new development occurred under her watch.
Indianapolis housing issues: As Indy housing agency faces financial crisis, residents suffered the brunt of its neglect
In Lafayette, Bean guided the local housing authority from the same "troubled" HUD designation that IHA currently faces to a place of stability. Within 18 months, HUD relinquished control of that city's agency to a board of managers appointed by local government leaders.
She aims to replicate that outcome in Indianapolis, but it will take years. Even though some colleagues advised her against publicly sharing her steps to do so, Bean felt it was crucial that IHA make itself accountable to the community.
"When I initially mentioned that I wanted to unveil a 12-month action plan, I was dissuaded to some degree because it was suggested that by releasing this publicly ... people will hold us to the fire for being able to deliver on these things," Bean said.
"That is exactly why," she added, "it was important for me to do this."
