The Prosecutor Who Is Housing People
I want to give a shout out to author Matt Impink for this piece in New America’s new blog series, The Rooftop: Innovative Ideas to Solve the Housing Crisis, and Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears for taking on this difficult but critical experiment.
At a time when the city of Indianapolis is experiencing a true housing crisis, few if any city leaders are stepping up to acknowledge, let alone address the crisis. In a recent Indiana Capital Chronicle article, ‘It is a crisis’: Mayors share how grappling with housing has shaped their jobs, author Robbie Sequeira states, “In U.S. cities big and small, mayors are finding their tenures shaped by housing shortages, and efforts to build more homes, so that people of any income can afford a place to live.” And yet in our own city with one of the highest eviction rates in the country, tied for fifth place in private equity investment in rentals ownership, dangerously low vacancy levels, and a failed housing authority, our own mayor rarely, if ever even talks about housing.
No program is a silver bullet, but acknowledgment of the problem and experimenting with ways to address it are benchmarks of courageous leadership. Data from other cities are clear that justice impacted people are more likely to end up homeless because of the additional barriers they face to secure housing. The data is also clear that when individuals can address and clear those barriers, they are successful, contributing members of society and rarely reoffend. It’s an obvious win-win; someone gets the chance to get their life back and our community gets a new contributor to the common good rather than someone so desperate they see their only option is crime. “The program is designed to serve people that have enough income to sustain rent but could use assistance with furniture, security deposits, or paying back rent from past evictions. Over the past year, the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office referred 33 defendants and victims for assistance, as its internal records show. Other community-based organizations and the county’s probation office began making many more referrals to the program as well.”
Housing is the number one social determinant of health. There is no physical health, mental health, security, or social well-being without secure housing. We need more willingness to address the systemic issues that contribute to housing insecurity and more compassionate efforts to deal with the barriers that sustain a system that serves to hurt rather than help.
