Kevin Nestor thought he finally had some stability in his life.
The 67-year-old was picking up gigs at night strumming his guitar. He spent some of his free time playing music with friends. And after being homeless for two years, Nestor had a place of his own, an apartment in Beech Grove.
Plus, his rent was taken care of — or so he thought.
Because after an eviction notice on his upstairs apartment door and three trips to the small claims court, the little life Nestor had built for himself snapped with a banging sound on his door and his locks busted out.
It didn’t take long for the movers to take everything out of the apartment. Nestor didn’t have much.
“All my stuff was gone in five minutes,” he said.
To make matters worse, Nestor was livid when he found out where his things ended up: his landlord’s storage company.
That wasn’t the worst thing he had to endure, though.
Because without a breakdown between his landlord and the Indianapolis Housing Agency, Nestor might still be at his apartment. And so could around 20 of his neighbors.
The lapse is another example of issues that have persisted with the housing agency, made even worse by a cyberattack in January that knocked out the database that supports the Section 8 housing voucher program.
Editor’s note: This is part of a series documenting the failures of the Indianapolis Housing Agency.
“That’s an absolute systemic failure,” said Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, executive director and president of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, which coordinates volunteers to observe eviction court proceedings.
IHA is supposed to be a safety net in a city where landlords file around 2,000 evictions every month and homelessness remains stubbornly high.
Instead, a Mirror Indy investigation shows how years of mismanagement has left tenants unprotected, and in some cases homeless, at the height of the ongoing housing crisis.
Greg Stocking, IHA’s previous interim CEO who now is chief operating officer, acknowledged issues with the housing agency but said a recent takeover by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development should lead to positive change.
“The housing authority should exist as a component in our system that is running good programs, housing people, doing all those things,” he said after an IHA board meeting in June, “but also being a solid pillar in the affordable housing space.”
Still, as problems pile up at IHA, housing advocates worry the agency is jeopardizing its relationship with landlords at a time when housing authorities across the country have become increasingly reliant on private landlords to house low-income renters.
Take Nestor’s landlord, for example. Soon after buying the Beech Grove apartment building in March, Dennis Brackenridge started getting rid of renters who were receiving help through IHA’s Section 8 program.
He filed at least 21 evictions by June 7, according to court records reviewed by Mirror Indy.
“None of us thought he could pull it off,” Nestor said.
Months later, there isn’t a clear explanation for how Brackenridge was able to push Section 8 tenants out of their homes so quickly.
The damage is done, though.
At least three former residents, including Nestor, were left homeless. They’re couch surfing or living on the streets.
Read more
Broken Housing: How Indy’s public housing agency fuels a crisis
The Indianapolis Housing Agency’s failures are leading to evictions and homelessness.
IHA is ‘not functional’
Brackenridge and IHA officials disagree about who’s at fault.
After Brackenridge bought the building, he was supposed to file paperwork with IHA so that he could receive rental payments from the agency. He told Mirror Indy he would have kept Section 8 renters through the end of their leases.
Brackenridge, who also owns a horror-themed Airbnb in Fountain Square, insisted he submitted the paperwork. He said he tried getting ahold of IHA — by email, over the phone and in person — but never got a response.
Stocking told Mirror Indy in August, however, the agency initially didn’t receive the information it needed to pay Brackenridge.
As a result, it appears the contract that’s required between the housing agency and landlord was terminated. According to a HUD Section 8 guide, the contract terminates when the public housing authority doesn’t get a written agreement from the new owner.
And when the contract terminated, according to attorneys familiar with Section 8 rules, renters like Nestor were doomed.
Brackenridge said the agency’s initial lack of response left him with no choice but to get rid of the Section 8 tenants.
“The IHA program is not functional,” Brackenridge told Mirror Indy as he left eviction court in Perry Township on June 7.
And the data breach only compounded the problem, making it so IHA has had to manually process rent payments for hundreds of landlords. The agency hasn’t made payments consistently since.
By June, Brackenridge said IHA was half a year behind on rent payments at his Beech Grove apartments.
“It’s sad that the government’s making guarantees that they’re not following up on,” Brackenridge said. “That’s sad. These people are needing support, and they’re not getting it.”
But Brackenridge is far from the only landlord to run into problems with the housing agency.
‘I like to be able to sleep at night’
By the end of October, IHA was about $25,000 behind on rent to another landlord.
James Montague bought an apartment complex containing 12 units eligible for Section 8 in April. It was just a month after Brackenridge bought the Beech Grove apartments.
Montague described similar problems trying to reach IHA.
“Never heard anything back,” he told Mirror Indy.
Even after making contact with the agency, Montague said he had to file paperwork multiple times because IHA kept losing track of it. At one point, he received two payments from IHA for a total of $2,800, but he said no one could tell him what the money was for.
What’s more, Montague said in October that he wasn’t sure there was a Section 8 contract in place between him and the agency.
Without a contract, renters are put at risk.
“I could evict every one of them if I wanted to,” Montague said.
So, why didn’t he?
“I like to be able to sleep at night,” he said.
Plus, Montague said the residents are still paying their portion of the rent that IHA doesn’t cover.
“It sucks when a resident is more responsible than the government agency that’s supposed to be supporting them,” Montague said.
This month, after about six months of unpaid rent, Montague said IHA finally paid some of what he is owed: about 25%.
At the same time, Montague knows his goodwill can’t go on forever. Thousands of dollars in rent is on the line, and at this point he’s just hoping he’ll see the rest of that money someday.
And the longer IHA’s problems persist, the more housing experts worry that private landlords like Montague will decide to stop working with the agency to provide subsidized housing.
IHA is jeopardizing its relationship with landlords
Already, the long-term effects of a destabilized housing agency are coming into focus.
Melissa Bell, diversion program manager for HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program, said her organization is hearing from landlords who don’t want to participate in the Section 8 program anymore.
And in at least two cases this month, Bell said people who were staying in a shelter found a landlord willing to take their vouchers. But those people lost their housing because of IHA delays.
Landlords are “fed up and uninterested,” she said.
That’s a serious problem to have for a housing agency that relies on a network of hundreds of landlords. And by making life difficult for current landlords, IHA is running the risk that it won’t be able to recruit new ones.
“Why would any landlord put up with that?” said Deborah Thrope, deputy director at the National Housing Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for tenants rights and protections for low-income homeowners.
The government should be a reliable rent payer, Thrope said, which in turn incentivizes landlords to participate in subsidized housing even though it requires jumping through more bureaucratic hoops.
But if a housing agency isn’t paying rent or answering questions, Thrope said it isn’t just individual renters who pay the consequences.
Instead, she said, the whole model of providing subsidized housing is at risk of falling part.
It’s not just whether landlords get paid on time. IHA has historically conducted costly investigations and threatened to seek criminal investigations against landlords for issues that HUD said could have been dealt with administratively.
In HUD’s 2018 audit, the agency highlighted a case where IHA threatened to refer a landlord for criminal fraud prosecution and pursue civil damages over incomplete paperwork and various housing quality standards violations.
IHA could have dealt with those housing quality issues by removing the landlord from the program, according to HUD, or by withholding payments to the landlord until the problems were fixed.
Instead, IHA alleged fraud and demanded repayment of more than $346,000, according to the audit. Another landlord in a similar situation repaid more than $809,000.
Even landlords who don’t necessarily want to flee from the program may find it difficult to stay involved if problems continue.
That’s the position Montague is in.
He said if the payment issues aren’t resolved by the time his Section 8 residents’ leases are up, he’ll likely decide to not renew them.
“I can’t operate without a timeline,” Montague said.
Still, his tenants are getting something Brackenridge’s never did: time.
Homeless again
Amidy Merry had three weeks after her eviction hearing to leave her apartment.
That wasn’t enough time.
She ended up homeless.
That was especially burdensome for the 44-year-old because she has medical equipment that needs to be plugged in to treat her asthma and chronic lung disease.
Plus, this isn’t the first time Merry has been homeless.
She lived under a bridge for three years before moving into her Beech Grove apartment.
“Who wants to lay their head on concrete?” she said in her apartment with loose clothes and boxes stacked across the floor.
But that’s what happened.
The last time Mirror Indy successfully contacted Merry in late July, she was living outside near the Indiana Convention Center downtown.
As for Nestor, his fate hasn’t changed much in the five months since he was kicked out of his apartment.
He’s been sleeping outside for the most part, camping in a southside park by railroad tracks or in the woods by the White River. He’s gone days at a time without eating.
“When you’re outside,” Nestor said, “you gotta survive.”
The good news is Nestor has a Section 8 voucher and said he has a case manager who’s helping him get into an apartment.
Nestor said he’s close to landing a unit in Beech Grove. He hopes to have a home by Christmas.
He won’t have much to his name, though. Nestor barely had any furniture at his last apartment.
After the eviction, Brackenridge took the few belongings to his storage company, and they’re probably long gone by now — either trashed or auctioned off.
Nestor said Brackenridge wanted $800, plus $11 per day, to get his things back. It wasn’t worth it.
But Nestor saved what was most important to him: his Ibanez acoustic guitar and pictures of his late wife.
How we reported this story
Indianapolis is facing a housing crisis. More evictions are filed here than almost anywhere else in the country. Rent is up nearly $400 per month compared to five years ago. Through it all, there’s supposed to be a government agency that keeps people housed.
But the Indianapolis Housing Agency is failing.
We started reporting on this story in May, when someone contacted Tyler with a news tip about a wave of evictions at an apartment complex in Beech Grove. Then came the detail that really launched this investigation: They were getting rent assistance through IHA.
Around the same time, Emily began requesting public records from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and IHA and reading IHA audits from the State Board of Accounts.
We read through contracts, state and federal laws, and more than a thousand pages of documents about IHA.
We also interviewed Section 8 tenants, landlords, attorneys, government officials and housing experts.
We went to IHA board meetings, which are lightly attended but offer a glimpse at how the agency functions, as well as eviction court and to what IHA calls a walk-in Wednesday, which is where Section 8 tenants can talk to agency workers about their problems.
We also attempted to reach every person who was on the board at the time of HUD’s takeover. The board’s chair and vice chair, Michael Allen and William Zink, respectively, did not respond to several phone messages and emails requesting an interview.
Sherry Seiwert declined to speak on the record, citing her current role working on housing issues for the Indiana Finance Authority. Esther Carter-Day, vice president and commercial real estate loan officer for Stock Yards Bank & Trust, said she was “not interested” in being interviewed.
Yolanda Cowell did not respond to interview requests. Efforts to reach Joe Whitsett, Jonelle Barlow and Bonita Davis were unsuccessful.
After it took over IHA in April, HUD removed these members of the board and replaced them with Kimberly Wize, director of HUD’s Indiana field office.
This article is the second in a series. We will continue to report on IHA and Indy’s housing crisis. If you have tips, comments or complaints, you can reach us at the contact information below.
Mirror Indy reporter Tyler Fenwick covers housing and labor. Contact him at 317-766-1406 or tyler.fenwick@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @ty_fenwick.
Reach Mirror Indy reporter Emily Hopkins at 317-790-5268 or emily.hopkins@mirrorindy.org. Follow them on most social media @indyemapolis.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
