Indianapolis to pay rent on 30 units to help reduce homelessness

Later this year, the city of Indianapolis will pay rent on some 30 units to get individuals and families off the street and into an apartment.

The pilot program will use something called master leasing, which involves the city working directly with landlords to pay rent and cover any damages incurred by otherwise unhoused residents.

That allows homeless people to get into a unit without having to wait the months or years it might otherwise take to get a housing voucher and find a landlord willing to take it.

Across the city, Indianapolis has over 1,700 people identified as homeless with over 300 living in what’s called “unsheltered homelessness” ––- meaning they are living in their car or on the street.

Rodney Stockment, the senior strategy director for homelessness with the city of Indianapolis, said the city will put roughly $500,000 in opioid settlement funds into the pilot over the next year.

“It's very difficult for people with barriers to housing to get housed,” he said. “Even if they have a voucher. And so, the idea of this is to lower the barriers by having a master lease.”

Part of the problem, according to Stockment, is that even if people are able to get access to a housing voucher and they have an existing eviction on their record, landlords might be unwilling to take it.

That can leave people unable to find stable housing.

“Another idea of master leasing is you bypass all that by having a third party hold the lease,” Stockment said.

Indianapolis isn’t the first city to use master leasing as a way to help the city’s unhoused homeless population. Cities like Milwaukee have used master leasing as part of a strategy to reduce unsheltered homelessness.

Critics have argued Indianapolis isn’t moving fast enough to create new housing in order to get people housed, often pointing to cities like Milwaukee as an example of what works.

Stockment said the city is adopting master leasing because it knows housing can’t be created fast enough.

“Things are taking terribly long to develop new projects,” he said. “So, we wanted a way to get units online faster, which is kind of the impetus of the master leasing program.”

The 30 units expected to start leasing in November will be prioritized for families and the unsheltered homeless.

The program is starting with 30 units but officials hope to ramp up to 60 units within the next two years.

Contact Health Reporter Ben Thorp at bthorp@wfyi.org.