The Housing Equity for Infant Health Initiative is available for eligible women in Marion County. (Flickr)
After officially kicking off in April, an Indiana University collaboration will house 100 women experiencing pregnancy while homeless over the next five years.
Jack Turman, Jr., director of the Housing Equity for Infant Health Initiative and professor of pediatrics, said the program would help keep mothers and babies healthy to improve birth outcomes and reduce eviction trauma. The program is based in Indianapolis, a city with some of the most eviction filings in the nation and infant mortality rates nearly twice as high as the state average in some areas.
“We have enrolled and successfully housed six women who are pregnant, and we’ve been really successful in getting them housed within 25 days and that’s because of our amazing partnerships that we have,” Turman said. “The moms are doing very well.”
The program is funded by a $2.4 million, five-year grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration within the U.S. Department of Health.
Expecting mothers experiencing homelessness face more health risks
Turman said the Housing Equity for Infant Health Initiative’s first intervention, “Healthy Beginnings at Home,” provides 24 months of rental assistance, housing navigation services and case management to pregnant women in Marion County experiencing housing insecurity.
The women currently enrolled are going through the case management program, and leaders are currently looking to enroll three more women in the pipeline.
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The initiative is held within the School of Medicine’s Grassroots Maternal and Childhood Health Initiative. The initiative began in part from his team listening to women in Indiana communities with poor birth outcomes.
The women said the No. 1 barrier to good maternal and child health was access to housing.
“It doesn’t matter where in the state we went, from densely populated Indianapolis neighborhoods, to rural communities across the state,” Turman said. “Women very quickly and very strongly voiced the need for safe, secure, affordable quality housing for moms and their babies.”
Indiana’s statewide infant mortality rate is about 6.7 deaths per 1000 live births — higher than the national average. In parts of Marion County, where the initiative takes place, the rate jumps to 12.1.
The impact of homelessness on mothers and children is well documented. According to the National Partnership for Women and Families, homelessness significantly impacts the health of the mother and the child before and after birth, costing more money over time and suffering from more birth complications.
CareSource Medicaid originally worked with the Healthy Beginnings at Home project in an Ohio pilot program, and reached out to Turman’s team after it was tried and tested with positive results.
“This is really exciting because we are one of the few states in the union that's doing this and going to be able to show the important impact that a housing intervention has on improving the birth outcomes of our families, at least starting here, in Indianapolis,” Turman said. “My dream is to grow it all over the state.”
Housing women in need in Marion County
Women in Marion County who are at least 18-years-old, a CareSource Medicaid member and in her first or second trimester qualify for the program. Women get connected to the program through their Medicaid caseworker and then find housing through partners like RDOOR and Home Now Indy, Housing Program Director Breya Birdsong said.
The first cohort of women were housed between seven and 25 days, Birdsong said.
Birdsong says three teams help women through the process of finding a rental and staying housed. Behind the scenes, RDOOR and Home Now Indy make sure the women’s paperwork, payments and compliance files are in order while an acquisition team gets to work.
“That’s the team that’s going out making those relationships with landlords so that we have access to affordable units and our clients have choice,” Birdsong said. “It’s very important that they have housing choice and that they feel like they have access to a good set of units.”
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Beyond improving birth outcomes for the mother and baby, Birdsong said she wants to make sure struggling women know they have community support through Healthy Beginnings at Home and stabilize their lives by finding homes and employment.
“That self-sufficiency is also a really big piece that we like to tackle,” Birdsong said. “This program also allows us to face the system-wide issue of family homelessness.”
RDOOR also worked with property management company Birge & Held to secure housing for the initiative. Birge & Held said in a statement it pledged $100,000 to support efforts in connecting Hoosiers with long-term housing solutions.
“No matter where you are in your journey, whether it be your first apartment, starting a family or downsizing, you deserve a secure space to come home to,” Andrew Held, President and COO of Birge & Held, said. “Being able to partner with someone who is supporting those who are just starting their journey is important to us.”
Preventing evictions for families
The Indiana Justice Project, a nonprofit law and policy organization, heads the initiative’s second intervention: the “Health-Justice Intervention.”
Executive Director Adam Mueller said the IJP has advocated for communities facing obstacles like poor housing conditions, evictions and lack of access to healthcare. The IJP identified ways to bring a legal lens into the Housing Justice for Infant Health Initiative after working with Turman and his team.
“We don’t think that moms and babies should be evicted in Indiana, and so from there, we sort of think about, ‘How do we get to that point,’” Mueller said.
The “Health-Justice Intervention” provides a “know- your- rights” education program for mothers, Mueller said. This teaches women how to navigate rental and eviction processes.
“We’re trying to empower folks that are facing insecurity to know what their rights are when it comes to poor housing conditions, if they’re facing evictions, understanding the rights in the process,” Mueller said.
According to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, Indianapolis leads in the state in evictions filed, and Indiana is ranked third in the country for eviction filings since the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The initiative also works on court advocacy. Mueller said this strategy helps leaders in the initiative understand the mechanics of eviction processes and identify ways the courts and policymakers can make systemic change.
Since the initiative began, Mueller and the IJP worked with colleges like Notre Dame to demonstrate how Indiana falls short in eviction laws and IU to provide research on the harms of eviction trauma in families for law professionals.
“It’s been a busy year. A lot of it’s been about building the scaffolding for this project and building the framework,” Mueller said. “We’ve been collaborating with a lot of different entities focused on housing, and some of those collaborations have been really helpful to move the project forward.”
