Housing Coalition Says Stability Strategy Needed
The Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition announced the release of a new policy brief in which it recommends a housing stability strategy to overcome Indiana's disproportionate outcomes in COVID's second year.
Two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for housing stability relief continues to far outpace the aid reaching Hoosier households who have been disproportionately affected by evictions and housing instability. To overcome emergency rental assistance (ERA) outcomes that place Indiana behind most neighbors and disproportionately disadvantage Black and brown Hoosiers and low-income families with children, Indiana policymakers must be all-in on an “all of the above” housing stability strategy.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Treasury, EvictionLab, and National Equity Atlas reveals that low rates of emergency rental assistance distribution, poor demographic data reporting, and inequitable results combined with ongoing high eviction filing rates across the state will leave Hoosier households vulnerable without such a strategy.
Hoosier Housing Needs Coalition (HHNC) was formed by members of Indiana’s housing security advocacy community in April 2020 to support advocacy and education related to housing and homelessness prevention in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Staffed by Prosperity Indiana, an IPA member, through advocacy and coalition building grants from the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Central Indiana Community Foundation, HHNC convenes partners from across Indiana to advocate for immediate, medium- and long-term housing stability policy solutions and conduct education and research to achieve federal, state, and local policies for an equitable response and recovery to the pandemic and beyond.
The HHNC Steering Committee is comprised of members from AARP Indiana, the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention (CHIP), Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana, Family Promise of Greater Indianapolis, Hoosier Action, Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Indiana Community Action Poverty Institute – INCAA, Indiana University McKinney School of Law, Prosperity Indiana, The Ross Foundation, and United Way of Central Indiana.