Living paycheck to paycheck isn’t more unstable anywhere than when it comes to housing, whether it is working multiple jobs to stay housed or working to get back into stable housing. The cost of housing in the community, the lack of truly affordable housing, and rents that keep climbing are the perfect storm for those facing housing instability and a massive obstacle for those working towards rehousing.

The housing crisis in La Porte County has two faces. The first is the monthly squeeze: rents and home prices keep climbing faster than local paychecks, pushing working families closer to becoming unhoused. The other is quieter but just as brutal: the wall of upfront cash that stands between a family and the front door of an apartment they could otherwise afford. First month’s rent. Last month’s rent. A security deposit. Application fees. Utility deposits.

We’ve encountered this many times with guests who have a job, a plan, and a landlord willing to rent to them, and yet they’re stuck because the entry fee keeps rising faster than they can earn and save.

Face One: The Monthly Squeeze

Let’s start with what housing costs here right now:

  • According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s newly released Fair Market Rents for fiscal year 2026, a modest two-bedroom apartment in the Michigan City-La Porte area runs $1,152 a month, with a one-bedroom at $953 and a three-bedroom at $1,454.
  • Under the standard rule that housing should take no more than 30% of income, a two-bedroom requires an annual income of about $46,000, roughly $22 an hour, working full-time, every week of the year.

Now, when we look at what La Porte County earns, according to the Out of Reach report published by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Prosperity Indiana, the median renter household earns about $42,580 a year. The average renter household in La Porte County earns less income than what a modest two-bedroom now requires to rent.  

 The MIT Living Wage Calculator backs up this fact. A single adult in La Porte County needs to earn $21.44 an hour just to cover basic living costs. Indiana’s minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009. Out of Reach calculated that even before this year’s rent increases, a minimum-wage worker would have needed to work about 110 hours a week, nearly three full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental unit in our community. This means that man in our community are spending more than 30% of their income on housing. Every one of those households is one car repair, one cut shift, or one medical bill away from a housing crisis that results in becoming unhoused.

Yes, They’re Working

We know that more than half of the people in shelters like ours earn a paycheck. The problem isn’t that those who are unhoused don’t work; it’s that even consistent work is no longer enough to afford housing. More simply put, a job making minimum wage working full-time won’t make the rent.

These individuals fall under the acronym ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. These are households earning above the federal poverty level but below the actual cost of living, which means they typically qualify for no assistance at all. These are working adults who cannot afford housing in our community. The 2026 State of ALICE report from United for ALICE and Indiana United Ways found that:

  •  38% of Indiana households, more than one million families, can’t afford the basics, even though most of them work.
  •  The cost of Indiana’s six essential needs (housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, and technology) rose 61% between 2007 and 2024, while overall inflation rose 52%, according to the ALICE Report. These things families must buy got more expensive faster than everything else.

Here in La Porte County, roughly 25% to 30% of households earn above the poverty line yet below the real cost of living. These neighbors are CNAs, line cooks,  child care workers, warehouse staff, working, full time, essential, and one bad month from our doorstep.

ALICE is who often fills our beds. And ALICE is the second face of this crisis, trapped there.

Face Two: The Cash Wall at the Front Door

Here’s the part of the housing crisis almost nobody writes about, and the one we watch people experience into commonly. They’re working, they’re saving but the cost to get into a housing can be a true barrier. Let’s use a hypothetical yet very common situation: a single adult staying at NEST finds a one-bedroom apartment at $953. per month. The landlord can legally and often does ask for the following funds before handing over the keys in this scenario:

  •       First month’s rent: $953
  •       Last month’s rent: $953
  •       Security deposit (typically one month; Indiana law sets no limit on how much a landlord can charge): $953
  •       Application fees: $30–$75 per application, often paid three, four, or five times before approval as different applications are submitted.
  •       Utility deposits: electric and gas hookups frequently require deposits from applicants without recent payment history

Total to move in: roughly $3,000-$3,200.

For a worker earning $15 an hour, that’s more than an entire month of gross pay, before taxes, food, or gas to get to work. For a neighbor living on Social Security disability, it can equal three to four months of their entire income.

When deposits are tied to rent, every rent increase automatically raises the entry fee. When rent goes up $100, the cash needed to move in goes up $300 (first month, last month, and security deposit).

The Cruel Math of Exiting Homelessness

How does this translate into daily life? An individual can be approved for an apartment and still lose it because landlords in a tight market (La Porte County’s rental vacancy rate has hovered around a very low 3–6% according to local housing data) won’t hold a unit while a guest scrapes together deposits. The apartment goes to whoever has the cash today.

  •         Application fees impact the poorest applicants the hardest. Families with eviction histories or thin credit apply more often, pay more fees, and drain the very savings they need for a deposit.
  •         Losing housing means losing your deposit’s protection, too. Families forced out of a previous rental often never recover their old deposit, money that should have seeded their next move-in.

This is why we say homelessness can be expensive to exit and difficult to navigate. Most of the guests we serve aren’t failing to budget; they’re being asked to produce a lump sum that many housed, middle-income families would struggle to write a check for tomorrow.

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