Mike Wolanin | The Republic United Way of Bartholomew County President Mark Stewart welcomes guests to the United Way of Bartholomew County annual meeting at The Commons in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, June 20, 2023.
Columbus officials have approved United Way of Bartholomew County’s homelessness initiative.
The Board of Public Works and Safety unanimously voted to approve a contract with United Way for the initiative after Columbus City Council voted to free up $133,300 in American Rescue Plan funds for it on April 16.
The agreement is for 15 months, lasting from April 24 to July 24, 2025.
United Way’s proposal lays out four strategies, accompanied by various activities to support them.
The four strategies in United Way’s proposal include:
- Bring the community together for a shared understanding
- Implement modifications to the social-service delivery system to better serve those who are homeless
- Provide targeted recommendations on homeless related services
- Robust communication with key stakeholders and general public
The agreement sets forth “an aspirational vision” for the community to reach a state of “functional zero,” meaning more people will be escaping homelessness each month than those who become homeless.
United Way of Bartholomew County President Mark Stewart also said that “a key component of the shared vision would be where homelessness is rare, it is brief, and that it’s non-recurring.”
The first three months will chiefly be spent addressing the first strategy through a public workshop in the first month and gathering various input from key stakeholders like the homeless population themselves, various city branches, Columbus Regional Health, non-profits, advocacy groups and the general public.
The second month will see the implementation of a homeless response team “composed of service providers that meet weekly to remove barriers and provide support to house people who are currently homeless or at risk of being homeless in the next 14 days,” according to the proposal United Way put together. Service providers composing the team include Brighter Days, Salvation Army, Sans Souci, Su Casa, and others.
Part of the initiative will consist of making sure the many organizations working to address homelessness are on the same page and don’t have policies that conflict with each other.
“We have a lot of people in our community that are currently working in silos on this particular issues of homelessness,” Stewart said. “Our goal would be to get a shared community agenda of what we might hope to accomplish and measure a few things together as a community that makes sure that the different services that are available in the community are aligned with each other.”
Stewart said the social delivery system, which basically refers to the means by which social programs are provided to those that need them, is “quite fragmented” at the moment.
United Way was able to identify the number of people that are homeless but sheltered, whether that be an emergency shelter such as Brighter Days or through Turning Point or Horizon House. Stewart told the City Council on April 2 that number is around 70 people.
“That we have a good handle on, what is more unclear is the number of people who are unhoused, those who may be chronically homeless,” Stewart said.
Stewart said the city’s social delivery system is already pretty well equipped to help those who are episodically homeless, which he said makes up a vast majority of those who experience homelessness. This is someone who may have had a setback and found themselves homeless for a short period of time, but were able to seek shelter and then get back on their feet.
The larger challenge, Stewart said, would be to address the growing number of people who are chronically homeless.
“How can we redesign the social service delivery system to better address those folks?” Stewart asked.
When first introducing the proposal at the beginning of the month, Stewart said the number of people who are unsheltered on any given night is “above 30,” although he cautioned the figure was a conservative estimate.
Columbus Mayor Mary Ferdon said that she’s heard from other mayors just how pervasive homelessness has become, not only across the state but in the nation at large.
“I think we’re a step ahead of the game, just stepping forward and saying, ‘Hey, we have an idea, what can we do?’ Ferdon said. “As we’ve talked, every community is different, but I think that we will be able to probably come up with something that might be a model to other communities.”
Executive Director of Administration Eric Frey said after the 15 months is up, they hope to implement what United Way comes to recommend as part of their third overall strategy “whether that’s projects or policy changes.”
Ferdon added there will be consistent updates on the initiative as it goes along.
