Grant to Reduce Unsheltered Homelessness
Community Foundation of Bloomington & Monroe County secures resources to address housing crisis
The Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County has been awarded a $7.39 million grant from Lilly Endowment to reduce unsheltered homelessness in Monroe County.
With this grant, the Foundation will collaborate with Heading Home of South Central Indiana, South Central Community Action Program, agencies in the South Central Housing Network, and other local partners to advance evidence-based strategies focused on reducing Monroe County’s population of individuals and families experiencing unsheltered homelessness through increased case management, street outreach, and landlord engagement and other homelessness diversion and prevention efforts.
The grant is part of Lilly Endowment’s Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow (GIFT VIII) statewide initiative.
Funds will embed 10 case managers throughout the community within partner agencies that work most closely with unhoused individuals. These case managers will use a strengths-based Housing First approach to helping people experiencing unsheltered homelessness and households at risk of a severe housing crisis. Case managers will provide access to resources, help reduce or prevent risk agents (such as medical issues, job loss, challenges with transportation and childcare, etc.), and work with individuals and families to build success plans for long-term housing security.
Heading Home will be the coordinating entity for the housing case managers as well as other positions dedicated to this initiative.
In addition to case management, this grant will support a pilot of a Housing Stability Income Supplement Program for families at risk of losing stable housing and provide match funding to grow the Community Foundation’s Housing Security Endowment Fund to ensure long-term sustainability of efforts to address unsheltered homelessness.
“On behalf of the Foundation and our entire community, I want to share how incredibly grateful we are to Lilly Endowment for this significant grant,” said CFBMC President and CEO Tina Peterson.
“Unsheltered homelessness is a public health and safety crisis impacting not just those living on the streets but our entire community,” added Peterson. “For several years, we have been focused on this unprecedented crisis, engaging with key partners to identify intentional, evidence-based strategies and supporting the development of Heading Home to coordinate activities that strengthen housing security in our community. This grant from Lilly Endowment will help mitigate the current crisis of unsheltered individuals and enable our community to begin implementing promising long-term strategies to improve housing security in Monroe County.”
Mary Morgan, Heading Home’s executive director, added that this grant will support a comprehensive, community-wide cross-sector approach. “Key partners from local government, public safety, healthcare, and social services have all shown a deep commitment to working together to help individuals and families in crisis,” said Morgan. “We know this won’t be easy, but our coalition is optimistic that by working together we can implement systemwide changes to move people more quickly into housing with the support services they need to keep them stably housed.”
