If asked to picture an unhoused individual, most would describe the following image: a large city, with a downtown sidewalk, a highway underpass, and a tent in an alleyway. Homelessness is not limited to more urban areas, nor does it always look like this common image. Here in La Porte County, we find that it is often a family doubling up with relatives after a rent increase they couldn’t absorb. Or a worker sleeping in a car in a parking lot, a neighbor who lost housing and is too embarrassed to seek help, camping in a wooded area. This month, we are focusing on what being unhoused in our area really looks like, the issues our unhoused population faces, and the challenges we face in getting guests sustainably housed.
Nationally, on a single night in January 2025, the most recent count found 745,652 people experiencing homelessness across the United States, a 27% jump from the 2013 record. Indiana is not insulated from that trend. In the state’s Balance of State region, the 91 counties outside Indianapolis’s Marion County identified 4,860 people experiencing homelessness, with about a quarter unsheltered, meaning they were sleeping outside, in cars, or in places not meant for human habitation. Over the past six years, the region’s total homeless population has grown roughly 25%, while the number of people with no shelter at all has more than doubled. An important note about these figures is that this is not a comprehensive count of families who are doubling up, those who evade being counted by circumstance, such as living in a vehicle but not being parked when the count happens or sheltering in a warm spot unknown to volunteers counting. Also of note, the PIT count is completed annually in January, a time when those living on the streets are often hunkered down away from the cold and can be difficult to find and count.
Affordable Housing Is Out Of Reach For Those Most At Risk
Ask anyone who works in this field what the single biggest cause of homelessness is, and the answer is almost always the same: there simply isn’t enough housing that low-income people can afford. The National Alliance to End Homelessness backs up this statement, stating that the lack of deeply affordable housing is the primary cause of homelessness in America.
Indiana is worse than that national average. Prosperity Indiana stated that The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes found that the state has just 35 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income households, and that the state needs roughly 137,000+ more affordable homes to close the gap. When housing that cheap doesn’t exist, the households at the very bottom of the income ladder are left one car repair, one medical bill, or one missed shift away from losing their home, as we discussed in last month’s series. In a rural county like ours, new affordable units are slow to be built; that squeeze is especially tight.
A Strained Safety Net
When someone in our region does lose housing, the options for immediate help are limited. La Porte County sits in Region 1 of Indiana’s Balance of State Continuum of Care, alongside Jasper, Newton, Porter, Pulaski, and Starke counties. Across that entire six-county area, overnight emergency shelter is scarce; we are the only overnight emergency shelter serving Region 1 that welcomes men, women, and women with children. That means the difference between a warm, safe night indoors and a night exposed to the elements can come down to a single facility’s bed count. While there are other shelters in this region, most have an intake process that can take time and are not able to help in a true emergency. The one exception to this statement is in a domestic violence situation where the local domestic violence shelter can provide emergency shelter for those experiencing domestic violence.
The strain shows up in the data. On the night of the 2025 count, sheltered programs in Region 1 served more than 400 people, even as the number of people going entirely unsheltered has climbed across the state. When shelter capacity is thin, and the need is rising, people fall through, not because no one is trying, but because the math doesn’t work. This is a common issue in rural areas such as ours.
A Record Of Homelessness
As of July 1, 2026, Indiana has a new public camping law on the books. Under Senate Enrolled Act 285, camping, sleeping, or setting up long-term shelter on public land is now a Class C misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. The law requires a warning first, and charges apply only if a person remains within 300 feet of that spot 48 hours later; prosecution is waived where no shelter or treatment bed exists within five miles. Supporters frame it as a way to connect people with services and protect public spaces. Opponents, including the ACLU of Indiana and groups that serve homeless veterans, argue you cannot cite your way out of a housing shortage.
Whatever one thinks of the law’s intent, there’s a practical consequence that hits our work directly: it creates a criminal record. A misdemeanor conviction, or even a citation history, follows a person onto the background checks and tenant-screening reports that landlords run before handing over a lease. Housing advocates have long documented that a criminal or eviction record is one of the most reliable ways to get turned away from housing. So, a person who becomes unhoused because they couldn’t find affordable housing can now pick up a record for being unhoused, which in turn makes the affordable housing they need even harder to secure.
Rural Geography and Travel Barriers
La Porte County is not one place; it is cities and small towns stitched together by a lot of rural miles. That geography matters more than people realize. Services such as shelters, case management, food assistance, health care, and the offices where you apply for benefits tend to cluster in La Porte and Michigan City. Fixed-route public transportation clusters there too, leaving the county’s rural townships with little to no regular transit. For someone without a reliable car, a resource that exists twenty miles away might as well not exist at all.
Additional Issues
Housing and geography don’t act alone. In the 2025 state count, the most commonly reported barriers among people experiencing homelessness were mental health challenges, cited by about 26% of respondents, and substance use disorder, cited by about 19%. These needs are far harder to address when the nearest treatment provider is a long drive away.
Homelessness also touches the young: more than one in five people counted were 24 or younger. In addition, because so much rural homelessness is hidden, people doubled up, couch-surfing, or living somewhere a survey team will never find them, as we mentioned earlier. Every number in this post almost certainly undercounts the real need. We’ll dig into exactly why counting the unhoused is so difficult later in this series.
What’s Ahead This Month
This post is the wide-angle view. Over the next several weeks, we’ll zoom in on the pieces that deserve their own conversation: how rural homelessness differs from the urban picture most people carry in their heads; why counting the unhoused is so hard and what that means for funding and policy; the common paths into homelessness for people in northern Indiana; and how Indiana is responding at the state level; the policies, the programs, and the gaps that remain. Our goal isn’t to overwhelm anyone with statistics. It’s to help illustrate the issue clearly, because a community that understands the problem is one that can be part of the solution.
Sources
National Alliance to End Homelessness — “State of Homelessness” (2024 Point-in-Time data). https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/
Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority (IHCDA) — “2025 Indiana Balance of State State of Homelessness”. https://www.in.gov/ihcda/indiana-balance-of-state-continuum-of-care/files/2025-IN-BoS-State-of-Homelessness-Slides.pdf
IHCDA — Indiana Balance of State Continuum of Care, Regional Structure (Region 1 counties). https://www.in.gov/ihcda/indiana-balance-of-state-continuum-of-care/regional-structure/
National Low Income Housing Coalition — “2026 Indiana Housing Profile” / The Gap. https://nlihc.org/housing-needs-by-state/indiana
Indiana Capital Chronicle — “Public camping ban and other laws go into effect July 1” (Senate Enrolled Act 285). https://indianacapitalchronicle.com/2026/06/25/public-camping-ban-national-guard-military-police-and-other-laws-go-into-effect-july-1/
ACLU of Indiana — “Criminalizing Homelessness (SB 285)”. https://www.aclu-in.org/legislation/criminalizing-homelessness-various/
The Thurgood Marshall Institute (LDF) — “Barred from Housing: Criminal History Restrictions in Tenant Screening.” https://tminstituteldf.org/criminal-background-checks-housing-barrier/
