FAMILY PROMISE OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS, INC.

Family Promise provides the same strength-based case management common in most shelters, thought with the highest permanent housing rate for 2018 among family homeless shelters. Family Promise is unique because it allocated more than $85,000 per year on direct financial support for families. Families do not call shelter penniless; they call shelter when in debt. Realizing this, Family Promise meets that need by matching savings and investing in families to shorten their shelter stay and incentivize work. The Family Assistance Fund ($85,000+) has paid for work boots, a replacement car battery needed to get to work, bus passes, cell phones, birth certificates, and most importantly, first month's rent when a security deposit is saved. For AfterCare, that same fund can be used to prevent an eviction when a family suffers a situation (e.g., illness, downsizing, etc.) that could lead to another episode of homelessness.

Family Promise has three full-time professional staff to work with families in the shelter and follow-up program, and part-time staff to help run the Day Center where families have laundry, showers, mail boxes, a computer lab, access to a visiting nurse practitioner, homework tutoring, and more. The organization more importantly rests on the support of 60 congregations and 1,500 volunteers who host the families in the evenings 365 days per year. They provide supplies, funding, and hospitality.

Every quarter the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP) in Indianapolis publishes an outcomes report with data pulled from the homelessness database that all shelters use to track client information. The report contains metrics like clients served, number housed, length of stay, and clients returning to a shelter within two years. Family Promise seeks to maintain a 70% housing rate, a 45-day length of stay, and 85% housing retention rate while serving 200 total clients each year (including children).

Family Promise of Greater Indianapolis' Board of Directors approved a FY2020-2022 strategic plan. It can be found at www.fpgi.org. It includes the creation of a Landlord Mitigation Fund to decrease the average length of stay to 30 days by 2023. It includes the rental of an apartment to use as an emergency shelter to expand the organization's capacity. Last, it calls for advocacy for policy changes to reduce the eviction crisis that has led Indianapolis to have the second most evictions of any city in the United States.