Places like the Bedford Warming Shelter are trying to meet the demand. The shelter offers food, laundry, showers, and case management.
David Manzenberger comes on weekdays to shower.His housing fell through last year, when his job switched from hourly to commissioned pay.
He moved then into a tent with his dogs, which he said worked for a while.
“I was actually kind of happy there at the time, until it got really cold,” he said. “And from March till October, I worked and lived out of a tent.”
He moved into a hotel briefly, before finding the garage space where he’s living now. The garage doesn’t have running water, because of damaged pipes. He worked all summer and fall to get them fixed.
“Hopefully within two weeks, I'll have my own water supply.”
Situations like Manzenberger's are increasingly common.
Indiana’s Point in Time Count in 2019 reported eight people experiencing homelessness in Lawrence County. This year’s count reported 45 people.
“I think it’s much higher,” Manzenberger said. “Because I probably know 20 people that just come here, and you know they don't all come here.”
He’s from Lawrance County and said the shelter has a wide reach in the community.
“It serves the semi-homeless, where maybe they just don't have a water, they don't have electricity, they're staying with family,” he said. “They might be disabled; they might need mental health care.”
Heather Flynn runs the Bedford Warming Shelter and its services, called SPIN (Supporting People In Need). She said situations like the ones Mazenberger described are hard to track, but very common for the rural experience of homelessness.
Bedford’s Warming Shelter is in Lawrence County. It’s one of the last resources before Jeffersonville, which is more than 70 miles away.
“Lawrence County, like most of the counties in Indiana, it's a big, big swath of land, and there's just no telling how many people are out there,” Flynn said.
The Bedford Warming Shelter moved to its current location three years ago. Since the move, Flynn has focused on getting people housed.
Flynn said they’ve placed 100 people in housing in the last three years. But even before, the need was there.
Lawrence County’s housing supply is aging, with about 20 percent built before 1940. And as of 2022, the county had about 600 fewer vacant and available homes than in 2013.
Rent is cheaper in Indiana’s rural areas, including Lawrence County. But in 2021, median income and cost of housing diverged for renters and hasn’t recovered.
According to HUD, homelessness in rural and urban areas both increased by 13 percent from 2022 to 2023.
Despite this, Greene and Owen Counties reported no people experiencing homelessness this year.
Mary Morgan is the director of Heading Home in South Central Indiana. She said federal and state government rely on these counts to gauge need. But counts require resources and people.
Her organization launched in 2021 to address housing barriers in South Central Indiana. Currently, work is focused on Monroe, Lawrence, and Morgan Counties.
“They have some resources there and some services and some willing partners,” she said.“And so, we're really trying to strengthen the resources in those countiesand then build out from there.”
Morgan said Heading Home connected individuals at Lawrence County shelters with assessments that can help them obtain federal aid or more services.
Members with Heading Home helped the Beford Men’s shelter apply for federal emergency grants and connected them with a private donor, which will help them extend their winter shelter season.
A housing task force, which includes Flynn and Lawrence County trustees, started as a way to address issues identified in Heading Home’s report. Flynn is now a part of Heading Home’s “Built for Zero” team.
Morgan said south central Indiana needs local developers to build housing on a smaller scale rather than large developments.
Without the Bedford shelter, Manzenberger said he would have to heat up water on a wooden stove and wouldonly be able to have microwave prepared food.
“When you experience some kind of lack of something, then you realize how important it is. Just like being able to take showers,” he said.
The 2024 Point-in-Time Count shows the number of individuals experiencing homelessness increased across all Continuum of Care Categories and shelter statuses. Rural areas in the U.S. had the highest increase of chronic and unsheltered homelessness.
