Sian Anderson sat in her maroon car the week before Thanksgiving with an empty stomach and an almost-empty gas tank.

The 50-year-old was parked behind a fitness center in Lawrence, the same place she’d spent most nights since early September, after being evicted from her apartment. Beside her sat Patches, the anxious but affectionate pit bull-bulldog mix who Anderson joked serves as the vehicle’s head of security.

Anderson said she was putting away rent money to save up for a move to Tennessee with a friend. But when the friend backed out, the late fees added up, and her apartment complex filed for eviction.

“Being in the car is new,” she said through the open window. “But being homeless isn’t, which sucks.”

Anderson now finds herself among the roughly 1,600 people who are homeless at any given time in Indianapolis.

In 2018, Mayor Joe Hogsett’s administration and a group of homelessness advocates set an ambitious plan to end homelessness.

Their target date? The end of this year. 

Yet as 2023 comes to a close, by many metrics, Indianapolis is falling short.

“We’re not gonna meet that goal,” said the Rev. David W. Greene Sr., who chairs the Indianapolis Continuum of Care leadership council that approved the plan five years ago. “We’re a long way from it.”

Just how far away is difficult to know. There are multiple ways to define homelessness, many of them created through bureaucratic processes to determine which people should qualify for what aid.

Most governments and advocates, though, rely on a point-in-time survey conducted every January. 

That data shows there are roughly as many homeless people in Indianapolis now as there were when the Hogsett administration and homelessness advocates unveiled their plans.

And in 2018, city officials created their own metric for success: No one who became homeless in Indianapolis would stay that way for more than 30 days.

By that measure, the city also has failed. The average length of time a person spends homeless has only grown year after year since 2018, according to data submitted to the federal government. 

Additional data maintained by the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention showed that, from January 2020 through October, the average length of time a person spent homeless in the city was as much as four times its stated goal.

Rusty Carr, director of the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development, acknowledged that the city has fallen short of its goals to end homelessness. But, he said, the goal is to solve homelessness, not just manage it.

“So,” he said, “a lot of work to be done.”

An adjusted plan is on the way

Despite not making much progress on homelessness overall in the last five years, the city has had some success.

After two years of stark increases, the number of homeless youth or young adults fell by 58% since last year. And while the overall number of homeless people has stayed roughly stable, that may be an indication that Indianapolis was able to isolate itself against some of the factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic that caused increases in homelessness elsewhere.

Since announcing the goal, the city partnered with the Central Indiana Community Foundation to launch the Housing to Recovery Fund, a pool of grant money that last year received a $2 million boost in federal funding from the city to provide wraparound services to 260 households for four years.

The city also poured close to $8 million into four housing projects last year that will add 104 units of permanent supportive housing — or housing that’s combined with services to help people maintain stability.

But it can take years to get projects off the ground, and they don’t always make it to the finish line. Developers cited neighborhood opposition in scrapping plans last year for a 40-unit supportive housing complex at 25th and Delaware streets.

Like others, Greene, who was second vice chair when the plan was approved, pointed to a lack of affordable and supportive housing as one of the obstacles.

He also said the plan became too broad and pulled everyone’s attention in different directions. Every time there’s an opportunity to pull in money through a grant — he used domestic violence as an example — Greene said the focus has to shift to meet the requirements for funding.

“We were chasing a lot of things,” Greene said.

Chelsea Haring-Cozzi, CHIP’s executive director, said a group of consultants hired by United Way of Central Indiana have evaluated the plan, and the Continuum of Care will review the findings and update the plan next year. 

“It’s not that we’re not working on stuff,” she said, “because we are.”

CHIP acknowledged the homelessness numbers were high, but the nonprofit attributed at least some of that growth to a change in how it conducted the annual survey. In short, the changes helped the nonprofit include more of the homeless population in the count.

Still, the latest survey results point to a troubling trend: The number of chronically homeless people, those who are disabled and homeless for longer periods of time, has more than doubled since last year. And the number of unsheltered individuals increased by 77%.

‘We know what the solution is’

Carr, of the city metropolitan development department, said he believes the goal of ending chronic homelessness still is realistic.

But new housing projects can move slowly, he said, especially with pandemic-related market and supply issues. The city and service providers also went into what Carr called crisis response mode as the focus shifted to keeping people safe during a public health emergency.

“We know what the solution is,” he said. “It’s intensive services and a unit of housing and rental assistance.”

Others who have championed the goal and are tasked with carrying it out said the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in slowing progress and that there isn’t enough permanent supportive housing.

“We really need to turn the corner with our production of housing,” said Rodney Stockment, the city’s senior strategy director for homelessness.

In the meantime, the city has set its sights on a new homeless shelter where people will also be able to get help with things like health care and workforce development.

Mayor Joe Hogsett recently announced the city purchased land for the development near the 1000 block of East Georgia Street just east of Interstate 70.

Anderson, meanwhile, said late last month she was close to moving back into an apartment, but she was still waiting for a nonprofit to provide some rental help.

Until then, she planned to run her car periodically throughout the night — about five minutes at a time, enough to keep her and Patches warm.