People of Housing Security

A series to highlight people working to make homelessness
rare, brief, and non-repeating

Throughout South Central Indiana, many individuals and agencies are working hard to strengthen housing security. They provide emergency shelter, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing and other supportive services that transform the lives of our neighbors experiencing homelessness or at risk of losing their homes. 

On October 20, 2022, Heading Home hosted a regional celebration to recognize the success stories of these agencies, their staff and the people they serve. At the celebration, a different kind of joy filled the room as we heard stories of changed lives. We celebrated families who were reunited. We celebrated people who were chronically homeless and became housed. We celebrated those who felt inspired by these stories to make a difference in their communities. We celebrated a future that didn’t seem as bleak as before. We celebrated being together as a community. 

To keep the spirit of celebration alive, Heading Home is launching a multimedia project called People of Housing Security. This project is similar to the Humans of New York and People of IU but is focused on people in the field of housing security who are working in South Central Indiana. Starting this month, we’ll be publishing a new blog post and corresponding video each week on our website at HeadingHomeIndiana.org and on Heading Home’s Instagram andFacebook pages.

The goal of People of Housing Security is two-fold. The first goal is to recognize the hard work being done by individuals in the community to strengthen housing security. Direct service providers have difficult roles and carry heavy responsibilities. We hope to share their stories to raise awareness of their hard work and to thank them for their service. 

The second goal of People of Housing Security is to help the wider community learn about the homeless response system and the broader work of housing security. We often hear the misconception that little to nothing is being done to decrease homelessness. We hope to dispel that perception by highlighting the hard work that’s happening every day.

We hope that People of Housing Security helps educate our community about all the work underway to make homelessness rare, brief and non-repeating. Strengthening housing security is a puzzle and every person in our community is part of the solution.