Making Homelessness Rare, Brief, and Non-Repeating: A Path Forward for Monroe County

If you didn’t catch Tuesday’s County Council meeting, I don’t blame you. It was 6 hours long, detailed, and packed with information about one of our community’s most pressing challenges: homelessness. The meeting took on added urgency because the County Commissioners are currently looking to evict our neighbors from a tent camp in this cold, rainy weather—a decision that makes our conversation about long-term solutions even more critical. What follows is my proposed plan to ensure this rushed, secretive plot to evict, doesn’t happen again. 

I call it the HELPFUL approach:

Harness Community Wisdom,
Eviction Prevention,
Listen Publicly,
Prioritize Funding,
Facilitate Communication,
Urgent Action, and
Leadership

1. Harness Community Wisdom

The best solutions don’t come from the government working alone. They come from bringing together those with knowledge and/or lived experience.

Monroe County should begin with the Heading Home Plan, which provides the skeletal structure for a housing-first model. This framework acknowledges a simple truth: you can’t solve other problems in someone’s life if they don’t have a safe place to sleep at night. But a skeleton needs muscle, organs, and connective tissue to function, and that’s where our partner agencies come in.
Organizations like Hotels for Homeless, Beacon, Inc., Health Net, New Hope for Families, and others add critical structure and services to our housing-first approach. Each brings specialized expertise and resources that the government simply cannot provide on its own.

People with lived experience of homelessness provide the reality check we need. They tell us what works, what sounds good on paper but fails in practice, and what barriers we might not see from our positions of relative privilege. Their voices aren’t just welcomed—they’re essential.

Finally, county stakeholders provide institutional knowledge. The County Council serves as the fiscal and HR body, managing resources and personnel decisions. The Board of Commissioners bring their own perspectives and authority. The Sheriff and his team are out in the community regularly. 
There could be more, but together, this brain trust stands for the full spectrum of knowledge needed to address homelessness comprehensively.

2. Eviction Prevention

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. While we work to house people who are currently homeless on County property, we must also prevent more people from losing their homes in the first place.

That’s where eviction prevention comes in. First, local governments should not erode the community trust by destroying safety and security. If evictions should happen, they should not occur in inclement weather including but not limited to freezing temperatures. 

Evictions should be an instrument of last resort. Should the County consider it necessary to move forward with evictions, a transparent checklist of steps should be developed such that the process is people centered and not secretive. 

3. Listen Publicly

We must discuss our plans in public hearings where anyone can attend, ask questions, hold us accountable, and watch the video anytime.

As elected officials, our first response should always be to listen. Not to defend, not to explain away concerns, not to lecture—just to listen. The people we represent often see problems and solutions that we miss from our vantage point. Their input makes our policies better and our implementation more effective.

And here’s my personal commitment: Let it Be and always allow the Beatles. What do I mean by that? At a recent County Commissioner meeting, after a commissioner lectured attendees to be quiet and respectful, the advocates for housing started singing Let it Be. The President of Commissioners found so egregious that the President of the Commissioners recessed the meeting...twice!

We are elected by the people to listen, not lecture. 

4. Prioritize Funding

Let’s talk about money because good intentions don’t house people—resources do.
Monroe County funds, such as the Cumulative Capital Fund, should not be used solely for evictions. Funds should be seen as an opportunity for investing in the infrastructure of housing first. This isn’t about emergency shelters, though those are important. 

Budgeted funding ensures we can plan for the long term rather than lurching from crisis to crisis. It means our partner agencies can hire staff, sign leases, and build programs with confidence. It means we can make homelessness rare, brief, and non-repeating instead of just evicting people off our land so that it’s someone else’s problem. 

5. Facilitate Communication

None of this works if people don’t know about it. That’s why I’m writing this blog post, and why we’re committed to ongoing communication about our homelessness efforts.

Your government needs to communicate with people experiencing homelessness about available services. We need to communicate with the broader community about what we’re doing and why. We need to communicate with partner agencies, so everyone understands the County’s role in the larger strategy. And we need to communicate with you, the taxpayers, and voters, about how we’re investing your resources and what results we’re achieving.

6. Urgent Action 

Every day we delay, someone sleeps outside who doesn’t have to.
We have the framework. We have partners. We have people ready to do the work. What we need now is the County’s collective will to act decisively.

7. Leadership

Monroe County can make this community better through a codified housing first approach. Making homelessness rare means preventing it wherever possible. Making it brief means responding quickly when it does occur, with immediate access to shelter and rapid rehousing. Making it non-repeating means providing the support people need to keep their housing and stability for the long term.
This is ambitious. It’s complex. It requires coordination across multiple departments, budgeted funding, and a commitment to following evidence-based practices even when they challenge our assumptions and biases. But it’s also achievable.
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If you have questions, ideas, or concerns about our approach to homelessness, I want to hear from you. Remember: always allow the Beatles. Your unconventional idea might be exactly what we need.
Peter Iversen serves at the President Pro-Tempore on the Monroe County Council. You can contact his office at https://www.in.gov/counties/monroe/government/council/ or attend public hearings to share your input directly.