By Sarah Melotte for The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Eric Galatas for Colorado News Connection for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

Migrants to Pitkin County added a quarter billion dollars to the county's Adjusted Gross Income in 2020. Pitkin's recreation economy is thriving, but what does that mean for middle- and low-income families?

Outdoor enthusiasts from all over the world visit rural Pitkin County for year-round recreation. Skiers and snowboarders flock to Aspen's world-famous slopes in the winter and the summer months bring even more opportunities for outdoor adventure. Tourists engage in hiking, tubing, rafting, kayaking, fishing, and camping in the Rocky Mountains that tower over the rural town.

From 1998-2019, industries related to travel and tourism increased 12% in Pitkin County. Some reports cite the benefits that recreation bring to a rural economy, such as economic diversification and the migration of young workers into the area. A 2018 Pew Trust analysis found that a recreation county in Montana had more high-paying full-time employment and a 29% increase in jobs from 2000 to 2015 all due to recreation. Recreation-dependent counties, which are defined by the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) as having a certain share of their economy dependent on recreation related industries, also have lower persistent poverty levels. But the effects of recreation are complex and vary county to county.

Recreation Can Dislocate Residents

Recreation can cause dislocation, which occurs when people who can no longer afford to live in an area move, according to a recent Daily Yonder analysis.

A 2005 ERS report stated that although recreation can attract permanent residents and produce a diverse economy, it can also introduce seasonal, low- wage and low- skilled jobs while simultaneously increasing housing prices. Aspen, one of Pitkin County's resort towns, was named the most expensive neighborhood in the country in 2020.

Over 900 households migrated to Pitkin County in 2020, resulting in a net gain of $283 million in Adjusted Growth Income, when factoring in the income lost when people left the county.

The migration of high-income residents and rising costs of living, combined with the share of homes intended for seasonal use, increases housing competition in rural recreation counties. Workers from outside the county could be commuting into Pitkin County for a variety of reasons, but often it is because of an increased cost of living, said Megan Lawson, Ph.D., of Headwaters Economics in an interview.

"In non-metro counties, as the net migration rate increases by 10%, the share of wages spent on mortgages increases by 7%" Lawson wrote in a 2020 housing analysis on rural recreation communities. As Pitkin County grew 1.2% in the last decade, households struggling to pay rent increased by 3.7%.

A five-year estimate of the American Community Survey (ACS) released in 2015 found that 3,219 workers commuted to Pitkin County from Eagle County, while 4,201 workers commuted from Garfield County. ACS 5-year estimates are data collected over a 60 month period and describe the average of that period. The population in Pitkin County 16 years and older during the same collection period was about 14,911, meaning that the number of commuters into Pitkin was equal to about half the population that was of age to work.

Pitkin County has more employees that commute from outside the county than the state average. The average percentage of people who work outside their county of residence in Colorado is 22%. But only 11% of Pitkin County residents commuted outside the county for work.

Pitkin County has a lower percentage of people who commute outside the county to work than the state average, suggesting that Pitkin County has a higher share of employees that come from outside the county than other Colorado counties.

Possible Solutions

While recreation is often touted as a cure for rural poverty and economic stagnation, locals can find themselves pushed out of their homes to make space for new development. Experts suggest there are solutions to the problem. Constructing new housing priced for low-income families can reduce the burden of competition for those experiencing housing insecurity, for example.

Other solutions include revising zoning policies that regulate the supply of housing for low - income households, giving tax credits for more densely developed housing units, removing square footage requirements for units, and eliminating impact fees (fees developers pay a local government for infrastructure offsets) for affordable housing.

These solutions can be hard sells because people who own homes in a neighborhood of single family units often resist affordable housing developments, citing fears of urbanization and decreasing home values, among other things. Community development specialists suggest that circumventing a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitude is easier than fighting it. Purchasing buildings for units that accept housing vouchers (instead of constructing new ones) is one approach, says former director of The National Housing Trust Michael Bodaken in an interview with Shelter Force. Some states also enact Fair Share laws that require municipalities to provide enough affordable housing for middle and low income residents or risk losing zoning and permitting privileges.

Local housing authorities and non-profits can organize to provide affordable housing as well. The Aspen/Pitkin County Housing Authority (APCHA) provides Pitkin County workers affordable housing by offering deed-restricted units - units that must be sold or rented to qualified individuals at an affordable price. Residents may be eligible for the bidding lottery if they have worked in Pitkin County for at least four years. APCHA also allows employers to buy affordable units to rent or sell to their full-time employees. Their interactive map shows units organized by APCHA for interested participants.

Rural recreation communities confronting the prospect of affordability issues may plan ahead to protect their long-term residents. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies provides information on how communities can create incentives for affordable housing.

Methods

Recreation-dependent counties are defined using a weighted index that considers three components - 1) jobs; 2) earnings in entertainment, recreation, accommodations, food/drink, and real estate; and 3) the percentage of housing set aside exclusively for seasonal use. Recreation counties are counties with a weighted index one standard deviation or more above the mean.

The tourism data was compiled and organized by Headwaters Economics, which provides a free tool to download socioeconomic data by county. Data sources include Census Bureau, American Community Survey annual and 5-year estimates, and Zillow housing data. To review their full methods, download a report.

Sarah Melotte wrote this article for The Daily Yonder.


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By Jordan P. Hickey for The Arkansas Advocate.
Broadcast version by Freda Ross for Arkansas News Service reporting for The Arkansas Advocate-Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation-Public News Service Collaboration.

On Easter Sunday, Elizabeth Buckeye reclined on a blue sectional in her new second-floor apartment just north of Northwest Arkansas National Airport. Amid cardboard boxes and large plastic containers stacked two and three high, the Bentonville school teacher took time out from her second job to talk with a reporter.

Instead of unpacking after her move, Buckeye spent the first several hours of the holiday delivering groceries through Walmart's Spark app. Shortly after the interview, she left her new apartment to make more deliveries.

She would have much preferred to spend her day off with two of her closest childhood friends or maybe just taking it easy with her cat, Jingle Bell, for a change. But that just wasn't feasible. There were too many expenses, too many bills, not enough money coming in.

On top of everything, Buckeye - an English teacher with five years of experience and a master's degree working for one of the highest-paid public school districts in the state - still had to teach tomorrow.

Another teacher interviewed for this story said he doesn't think about the future because of the constraints of the cost of living. Still another, a first-year teacher from central Illinois, resigned and moved back home after being unable to find a place to live that fit her budget.

"Everybody needs housing - it's just that teachers are kind of like a politically salient canary in the coal mine," said Sam Slaton, an instructor at the independent Thaden School in Bentonville. "You know, if the teachers are hurting, it kind of feels indicative of a broader systemic issue that is certainly affecting more people."

Indeed, teachers and other school employees represent the dilemma posed by the success of Northwest Arkansas' growth: They can't afford to live where they work, even with salaries that put them above a survival budget threshold identified by researchers who study what's called the ALICE population, which stands for asset-limited, income-constrained and employed. The ALICE population includes households that earn above the federal poverty level but struggle to afford the basics where they live.

Data from United for ALICE, the group that coined the acronym, shows that an employed single person in Benton County needs to earn more than $30,960 a year to move beyond the household survival budget threshold. But with rapidly escalating housing costs, even teachers who earn more than $50,000 - the new minimum starting salary created by the LEARNS Act - can find themselves treading water.

Local leaders recognize the problem and have tried to help. The NWA Council launched a workforce housing center in March 2021. In Fayetteville, the city council was recently pressured to declare a housing crisis.

Costs of both renting and buying throughout the northwest corridor are frequently described in aeronautical terms like soaring and skyrocketing. (The actual figures, particularly in Bentonville, where the median listing home price has gone from $450,000 in fall 2021 to $599,900 in July 2024, according to Realtor.com, indicate that perhaps the hyperbole is warranted.)

According to a recent analysis of rent data from the Washington Post, rent prices in Benton County have risen 34.6 percent since 2019.

What's also clear is that, barring a popped bubble, that trend isn't likely to break anytime soon, with census data showing that 36 people a day are now moving to the area, and a projected population of 1 million by 2050.

At the July 17, 2023, Bentonville School Board Meeting, Superintendent Debbie Jones revealed that the district had been feeling the pressure of the housing market since 2021, when several prospective out-of-state employees had accepted offers, looked for housing, then quit before the school year started. It became clear the district needed to find another path forward.

To that end, Jones explained, the district had discussed the matter with the Excellerate Foundation, a grant-making organization that has focused on housing issues in the region. The foundation offered a potential solution: Have the district donate nine acres of land adjacent to Bentonville High School, and Excellerate would pull together $25 million to build 100 multifamily and single-family rental homes, 40 of which would be set aside for Bentonville Schools employees.

Although the project met with some skepticism over the next several months - particularly during a January legislative meeting in Little Rock - the district eventually secured the approval of the Arkansas Attorney General's office and the Bentonville Planning Commission. All that remained was getting the Bentonville City Council to agree to a zoning change. Only seven zoning requests of 178 had been denied in the past two years: six at the city-planning level, but only one by the city council.

But at the Feb. 13 council meeting, a range of voices spoke, both for and against. One resident gave a brief timeline of Project Arrow, another affordable-housing initiative that had come before the council but eventually fizzled. Another resident said he didn't want any HUD housing (Excellerate CEO Jeff Webster explained that wasn't the case). Several identified themselves as parents of students in the district. Superintendent Jones said the workforce needs went beyond teachers.

No teachers spoke at the meeting. But that doesn't mean they weren't paying attention.

"When you hear the board proposing and saying, 'Hey, we have this plan, we have this grant, all we need is the City of Bentonville to do this,' you're like, 'Oh my gosh, y'all get it," Buckeye said on Easter. "You are fighting for us. Like, yes. And then for the City of Bentonville to be like, no thanks - it's really upsetting that the city doesn't see what the board and the district see for teachers and stuff like that."

Around the time of the Bentonville City Council meeting, Buckeye had been looking for a new apartment. In early 2023, she heard that the rent on her apartment - a 700-square-foot one bedroom five minutes from Bentonville High School that came to roughly $1,300 per month after trash and pet rent - was going to be increased by $100 per month.

That might not seem like a lot, but Buckeye knew she wouldn't be able to make it work. Even with the extra money she made delivering groceries after school and on weekends, she was drowning in expenses - $500 for a lease on a Toyota Corolla (her credit had cratered during COVID), car insurance, gas, food, cell phone, various debts, etc. - she was already stretched too thin. There was nothing left. There was less than nothing.

Although her new apartment was $300 cheaper per month than her old place, expenses associated with the move - putting a deposit down, paying the first month's rent, paying $700 to move, covering whatever she still needed to pay on the old place - had put a serious strain on her finances. Sitting on an incomplete blue sectional sofa, which she was still paying off at $30/month, Buckeye explained that she'd spent her entire spring break, 12 hours a day, delivering groceries to cover the cost of the move.

Her new apartment wasn't as centrally located as her previous place - at 9:30 p.m. the previous night, she and Jingle Bell had been rattled by the planes flying low overhead - but it would allow her, hopefully in time, to feel as though she wasn't on the verge of financial disrepair.

Maybe she'd even be able to open a savings account.

To be clear, not every teacher in Bentonville is struggling. Although all of the teachers at Bentonville Schools and the independent Thaden School interviewed for this story said affordable housing is very much a hot-button issue in teacher break rooms, it appears that the educators who struggle most are those with single-incomes and those who have relocated to the area in the past year or two.

What's also clear is that, for teachers who are renting - and who are hopeful for upward mobility - having a rent locked in doesn't necessarily equal financial security.

"I don't really think of the future a lot," said Justin Wilkinson, who teaches English at Bentonville High School, rents at the same complex as Buckeye, and also delivers groceries to help make ends meet. "When I do try to think of the future, it's more of just a hope rather than a practical idea ... It's more about, 'What do I need to do these next two weeks to make sure that I stay in the positive of my bank account before April 15 when I get paid again?' Three years have gone by up here and it's been like that every single month."

Still, Wilkinson noted, he's got it better than others.

"If I was graduating in May, and got a job offer for August of 2024 to start the school year, I would not accept it," Wilkinson said. "And that is not because of Bentonville Schools or anything. That is just strictly because if I saw the pricing up here, I know that I wouldn't be able to afford it."

In December 2022, three days after graduating from Illinois State University with her bachelor's degree in English Education, Katelyn Maxwell moved to Bentonville. She didn't know anyone in the area, nor did she have any career prospects, but she'd heard from family members living in Mountain Home that Northwest Arkansas was a good place to be.

Although Maxwell knew it was going to be hard to land a full-time teaching job midway through the school year, she figured it would be easier to get one if she was on the ground. Within a few weeks of arriving, she found work as a substitute teacher, and a few months later took a job as a long-term fourth-grade teacher in Rogers.

It didn't take long before she realized that her income teaching wouldn't come close to covering her rent - nearly $1,400 per month for a studio in a newly built complex near downtown Bentonville - so she picked up a second and third job as a server and a babysitter, respectively. As a result, she found herself teaching from 7 a.m.-3 p.m., working as a server from 4-10 p.m., and then babysitting on weekends.

"I was here," she said, "but I was never able to actually enjoy Northwest Arkansas because I was working every single day, all day."

In August 2023, she interviewed for an English instructor position at Bentonville High School for the 2023-24 school year. That weekend, she got an offer, and started teacher workdays the following week.

Although her salary of $51,924 dollars was considerably more than what she'd been making as a substitute teacher, server, and babysitter, she soon realized that her rent was still stretching her salary to the breaking point - and that she still needed to lean considerably on her credit card.

When her apartment management announced that they'd be hiking her rent by $100 per month, much like Buckeye, she realized she wouldn't be able to make it work - having quit her part-time jobs to focus on teaching. So she started looking for a new place that would better fit her budget. She couldn't find anything.

"There's so much money in this town, and it sounds so beautiful when you read about it or you hear about it," she said. "But I think that it hits a little bit differently when you necessarily aren't in the same tax bracket as everyone else."

In December, as her lease came to an end, Maxwell still hadn't found a place to live.

After couch surfing for a few months while unsuccessfully looking for housing that might fit her budget, she finally caught a break: A fellow teacher had a spare bedroom where she could stay while she was looking for a new place to live. After a month and a half, as the school year was drawing to a close, she heard about a girl in Fayetteville who was looking for a roommate. It seemed promising - but the apartment complex declined her application, saying she didn't make enough money to cover her half of the monthly $2,080 rent. If she had a cosigner, they explained, she could have it, but Maxwell didn't have anyone who was financially able to do so.

When she got the final decision from the apartment complex, she'd already been back home in central Illinois to celebrate her birthday. She'd already been telling her friends that she was done playing the waiting game when it came to housing. She decided to stay. She told Bentonville Schools that she had to quit, and she got a new job with a school 15 minutes from her mom's house.

It was the first time in the better part of seven months, Maxwell said, that she'd felt some semblance of stability.

Shortly before the Bentonville City Council voted 4-3 not to rezone the property for the Excellerate project, Alderman Bill Burckart said something that served as a reminder that the matter of housing in Northwest Arkansas goes well beyond teachers.

"We have a workforce in this building that - 80% of them - don't even live here," he said. "Ask the police department, they'll tell you. Ask the firemen, they'll tell you they can't live here."

The comment alluded to the notion that for every teacher who's been discussed at board meetings, city council meetings, and the like, there are bus drivers, maintenance workers, instructional aides, cafeteria workers, all of whom make less than licensed teachers, who are feeling the housing pressure even more.

Although Bentonville Public Schools doesn't keep tabs on how people are faring financially, Superintendent Jones said the reality is that the future of the growing district hinges upon finding the 140 new teachers that are hired each year - whether that's through local pipelines or finding people to relocate here.

What's not sustainable, she said, is having people live in other places that are not Bentonville.

"This is the district view," the superintendent said. "All we know is that when people don't live in our community - for example, they live in Fayetteville, and several do - and they start to have young families ... the family has sports and dance and all that, then the worker is tempted to look for something closer to home.

"From the district's point of view, we want to sustain their employment with us, and it's always a challenge when they live out of our borders."

In late May, Elizabeth Buckeye was at a childhood friend's place, attempting to detach her toddler-aged "nephew" from a broom. Once things were settled with the broom and a number of other grabbable objects, she explained that things had been better. Even though she still needed to deliver quite a few groceries on the side, that extra financial cushion would allow her to go out to eat, take a vacation, or put away money for a just-in-case emergency fund.

"I have a cat and he is like 12 years old and if anything happened, like, right now, I have no idea what I would do," Buckeye said. A few months later, the worst indeed happened: Buckeye found herself with a $500 vet bill after her cat had an emergency.

"I'm 32 years old," Buckeye said, "I should not be having to call my dad and be like, hey, like, Please help me."

Asked whether she'd heard about the Excellerate Foundation's recent groundbreaking ceremony for McAuley Place, a $35 million workforce housing development with 120 apartments and 40 single family cottages, Buckeye said she'd received an invitation to attend the ceremony. But because it fell on a Monday morning, she had been unable to make it. She still had to teach.

Last week, Excellerate announced that McAuley Place - which is supported with about $17 million in state and federal funds, $10 million from philanthropy and $8 million from permanent financing - would receive an additional $13.8M in federal tax credits and state loans, along with a $4.9 million grant from the Walton Family Foundation.

Although she was excited about the prospect of affordable housing, Buckeye said she was "cautiously optimistic." It seemed like a great project, to be sure. But she expressed concern about a few of the finer details she'd noticed. The apartments were great - but with the school board's recent decision to bump the minimum teacher salary to $54,416 for the 2024-2025 school year (which, Buckeye made a point of stressing, was very much appreciated), she worried that she'd be over the maximum allowed income for the apartments.

Excellerate said recently that its current target household income, based on the area's median income, is around $62,000 for the 20 cottages in the Home Ownership Mutual Equity Solutions, or HOMES program. The program enables renters to save toward a down payment on a home.

The McAuley Place cottages seem lovely, Buckeye said, but paying $1,000 for rent as well as another $1,500 per month for the HOMES program - there was just no way she could make that work. (Excellerate later clarified that HOMES cottages are $1,500 per month, not an additional $1,500 per month.) Plus, if housing prices were rising like they were, would that even be enough?

She stressed how grateful she was for the effort, but she had questions.

Had anyone sought her input on the program?

No, she said. She'd heard about it all secondhand.


Jordan P. Hickey wrote this article for The Arkansas Advocate.


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By Emily Hopkins and Tyler Fenwick for Mirror Indy.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Mirror Indy-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

Randi Atwell’s rent should have been covered. In another city, with another public housing agency, that might have happened.

But not in Indianapolis.

Atwell found herself in eviction court in July, where she was forced to answer for being behind on rent.

Armed with a thick folder of papers, the 35-year-old mother tried to explain to the judge that it wasn’t her fault. She said she always met the conditions of her lease. The Indianapolis Housing Agency was responsible for paying Atwell’s rent.

The public housing agency, though, was — and still is — several months and thousands of dollars behind on rent, according to multiple landlords, caused in part by a cybersecurity breach in January.

So Atwell’s landlord wanted to push her out of his Beech Grove apartment building. Nevermind that she had been living there for four years, since before he became her landlord.

Less than a month after acquiring the property, however, her landlord left an eviction notice on her door — along with the doors of nearly two dozen of her neighbors.

Atwell walked into eviction court and told the judge she felt caught in the middle: “Why am I a third party that’s getting the blame?”

Atwell’s landlord, Dennis Brackenridge, told Mirror Indy he tried contacting IHA but couldn’t get ahold of the agency. Greg Stocking, IHA’s interim CEO at the time, said the agency didn’t get the information it needed from Brackenridge.

Either way, the breakdown is further evidence of the housing crisis engulfing Indianapolis — a city that sees an average of more than 60 eviction filings every day.

And the one agency that is supposed to serve as a safety net — the one meant to provide safe, subsidized housing to thousands of low-income residents — is instead directly contributing to the crisis, a monthslong investigation by Mirror Indy has found.

For this investigation, Mirror Indy interviewed 10 Section 8 voucher holders, as well as landlords, housing advocates, attorneys and former IHA leaders and board members; observed three days of eviction court proceedings; and reviewed more than 1,000 pages of local, state and federal records.

What emerged is a troubling portrait of IHA. At least two decades of mismanagement. Misspent voucher dollars on staff pay and travel. Unanswered calls and emails from renters and landlords.

While many of the problems plaguing the agency appear bureaucratic, the consequences of IHA’s failures are as dramatic as they are lasting.

After facing eviction in Beech Grove, a man in his 60s was left homeless, sleeping in a southside park. A woman who has chronic health problems also became homeless.

“What an absolute perfect example of the consequences of having an under-resourced and broken housing authority,” said Melissa Bell, diversion program manager for HealthNet’s Homeless Initiative Program.

Atwell and her son, at least, didn’t end up on the streets after losing her eviction case. They’re temporarily staying with family and friends, trying to figure out how to recover from the setback.

“We are being treated like trash and like we did something wrong,” Atwell said.

Richard Monocchio, principal deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Public and Indian Housing, initially agreed to an interview but canceled after Mirror Indy sent the findings of this investigation.

A HUD spokesperson also did not answer a list of emailed questions, instead sending a statement.

IHA “had failed to provide decent, safe, and sanitary housing,” and HUD has been collaborating with the city to address “longstanding issues,” the statement read, in part. “Our priority is a safe and supportive housing environment.”

Previous attempts to reform the agency were ultimately unsuccessful. While IHA is not a city department, it’s unclear why Mayor Joe Hogsett and city-county councilors haven’t used the authority they do possess to more strongly advocate on behalf of Indianapolis residents like Atwell.

Hogsett, through a spokesperson, declined a Mirror Indy interview request for this story.

IHA’s failures grew so dire that HUD took over the agency earlier this year. It remains to be seen whether it was too late; HUD officials have been aware of problems for years, and the Hogsett administration asked them to intervene in December 2022.

“It’s like a building that’s on fire and you’re seeing smoke coming out of all the windows,” said Kate Walz, associate director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project, a nonprofit that advocates for tenants’ rights and protections for low-income homeowners, “and the fire department is waiting to come and address it until it’s burned down to the ground and there’s nothing left to be done.”

How IHA fails its renters

While homelessness is the extreme result of IHA’s failures, several other renters face more routine problems that are still dangerous.

Paige Miller, for example, said she lived in a unit that had exposed mold, which can be especially harmful to children.

Miller’s daughter once got a bloody nose — a common symptom of mold exposure — that was so bad it stained the blankets and sheets on her bed.

She tried to get IHA to intervene but couldn’t get the agency’s attention.

“Every single time there was an incident, I sent an email,” Miller said. “Never got a response.”

That’s why Miller is sick of people telling her she should be thankful for rent assistance from the government. Because she’s used many words to describe how she feels about IHA — and thankful isn’t one of them.

“Honestly,” Miller said, “the most miserable I have been is being on Section 8. I was happier struggling with bills.”

By the time Miller got on the waitlist for a voucher around 2021, IHA had been struggling for more than 15 years to run its voucher program.

Some years, the agency failed to distribute all the vouchers for which it had federal funds to do so. Officials at one point estimated that IHA could house an additional 1,800 families that year with unused vouchers.

Federal officials also said in their 2018 audit report that IHA pursued costly investigations against landlords in cases that could have been dealt with administratively. In what HUD labeled as one of the most egregious examples, IHA threatened to sue a landlord and refer them for criminal proceedings over some paperwork issues and housing quality standards violations — and IHA paid for a staffer to travel out of state.

“For some reason,” HUD officials wrote, IHA’s Office of Special Investigations “felt it was necessary and appropriate to travel to the state of Massachusetts to obtain a photo of the landlord’s personal home and include it in the report.”

Those years of mismanagement found their way to Miller, who waited two years just to get a voucher. And that was only the first step. Voucher holders must find someone willing to rent to them, and they have to do it within 60 days, before their voucher expires.

In 2023, Miller moved into a big house that was split into separate units. She said the landlord showed her one unit that actually looked like it could be a home for her family.

However, when they moved in, they were in a unit that Miller described as more like an attic.

She could peel back parts of the wall to show mold and insulation. The thermostat had a lock box to prevent her from adjusting the temperature.

So Miller showed up at an IHA board meeting over the summer, standing up not just for herself but for her family.

“It’s me that has to step in,” she said. “Somebody needs to do something.”

Against the backdrop of an urgent housing crisis, “IHA lingers like an inactive ghost in the background,” said Laurin Embry, director of the Indiana Tenant Association, which educates renters and helps people facing eviction.

Miller did find some luck in a landlord who heard her story and leased a house to her near the Indiana State Fairgrounds.

Even now, though, she said IHA hasn’t paid its portion of her rent since July when she moved in, so the stress continues to linger.

“They’re not upholding their part,” Miller said, “so it’s like now I have to wake up worried.”

New leaders, same problems

It seems like everybody knows that IHA is in bad shape.

The question is: Why weren’t more people doing something about it?

Back in 2018, Hogsett said he would.

At the time, federal officials had concluded in an audit that IHA had “effectively bankrupted its own” voucher program by overspending on administrative fees.

So the mayor vowed to clean up the mess.

“To the extent that there’s been any mismanagement, misappropriation of funds, to the extent that there’s been any evidence of unethical conduct,” Hogsett said at the time, “we’ll get to the bottom of it and we’ll make the appropriate changes.”

By then, it had been more than a decade since HUD officials had determined IHA was mismanaging its voucher program. Nearly $1 million meant to fund the voucher program, according to a 2007 audit, instead went to unrelated expenses, including travel and advertising.

In defense of the agency, then-executive director Rufus “Bud” Myers said not spending those funds “would have potentially created a paralyzing effect on the operations of the agency.”

HUD told IHA to use better financial controls and required the agency to pay back the federal funds it had misspent.

But more than a decade later, officials again found evidence of mismanagement.

The 2018 audit found that IHA recordkeeping was so poor that HUD officials had a hard time determining if money was properly spent. Errors in IHA’s housing voucher tenant files, for example, were so pervasive that federal officials estimated IHA had put half a billion federal dollars over roughly a decade at risk of being spent on, for example, miscalculated rents, ineligible tenants and landlords, or units that did not meet housing quality standards.

Over the next six months following Hogsett’s pledge in 2018, city officials oversaw an overhaul of the board, and the mayor appointed a new leader — John E. Hall.

But meaningful reforms do not appear to have followed. And by the time the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the world, the agency was in no condition to withstand such a crisis.

The agency’s outdated technology and reliance on paper files made it nearly impossible to work remotely. Exposure among staff, and child care challenges, hampered their workforce.

In 2022, four years after the mayor promised to clean up the agency, IHA was on the brink of collapse, with a new interim executive director saying the agency needed $10 million to get back on track. That director turned to selling IHA properties to keep the agency afloat.

After decades of problems at IHA, local advocates and residents are questioning whether their mayor and city-county councilors will ever step in to protect some of their most vulnerable constituents.

City leaders insist they have little power to spur change.

Neither Hogsett nor anyone else from his office agreed to a Mirror Indy interview request.

In a written response to questions posed by Mirror Indy, the city spokesperson emphasized the Hogsett administration’s limited authority over a federally regulated agency. That’s one reason why the administration requested HUD take over IHA in 2022, and has since entered into an agreement with HUD with the goal to stabilize the agency.

Since 2020, the city has contributed at least $3.34 million in loans, direct cash assistance, and technology upgrades, according to the spokesperson.

In an interview, council President Vop Osili said that while the City-County Council works with constituents and IHA to resolve cases of unsafe housing conditions, it does not have any say over IHA’s finances.

“We don’t have a role in their operations,” Osili said. “We don’t have any fiscal impact or fiscal connection with HUD, and we definitely don’t have it with IHA.”

It’s true that, unlike city departments, IHA is an independent, federally funded agency that was spun out from the city’s Department of Metropolitan Development in 1994. It’s regulated not by the city, but by the federal government.

Yet for whatever steps taken by city officials since 2018, vulnerable renters continue to struggle.

And until HUD’s takeover, the mayor chose the agency’s executive director, subject to the council’s approval.

Hogsett and the council also held the power to pick most of the people who serve on IHA’s nine-member board: five by the mayor, two by the council.

And, according to city code, the council is supposed to regularly review IHA’s budget, and it has the power to call the agency’s executive director in front of the council at any time.

Rabbi Aaron Spiegel, executive director and president of the Greater Indianapolis Multifaith Alliance, organizes people to watch eviction court to ensure renters are treated fairly.

He looks back at Hogsett’s commitment in 2018 and sees a failure that can be placed squarely at the feet of city government.

“They didn’t do a damn thing,” he said.

An ‘insolvent’ housing program

In 2022, HUD launched yet another audit of IHA’s operations from January 2018 through February 2022.

What they found was disturbing: IHA records were “unusable,” and what evidence auditors could amass painted a bleak picture of the agency.

Millions of dollars of debt were unaccounted for. Its housing choice voucher program was “insolvent,” and officials found it “impossible to track” the flow of cash among more than 70 bank accounts maintained by IHA.

Officials again identified questionable spending of housing choice voucher funds. In most cases, the improper spending appeared to be caused by staff not understanding fiscal and appropriations law. In some instances, however, the spending appeared to be “intended misfeasance,” according to the audit.

Hall, who was executive director from March 2019 to January 2022, declined multiple Mirror Indy requests for an interview, citing a nondisclosure agreement he said he signed with IHA. Jennifer Chrzanowski, IHA director of administrative services, said no such agreement exists.

The full extent of IHA’s financial woes remains unclear. Federal officials found that IHA’s financial recordkeeping was so poor that they said they could not complete thorough reviews of its spending.

HUD has ordered a forensic audit of the agency.

Who else is to blame?

Although the problems at IHA have been thoroughly documented in state and federal audits, who, exactly, should be held responsible is up for debate, according to those who spoke to Mirror Indy.

Former board members and an agency leader said that they could not understand the reason for the decline. But they generally pointed fingers at Hall and the city leaders’ decision to overhaul the board.

“What I think would be the best option for you is to call the mayor’s office. They are the ones who have made the decisions,” said Christopher L. Barney, a former IHA board chair who left in February 2019. “When I left, we were humming along at a real pace, and everything seemed to be clear and clean. I don’t know what happened since then.”

Other former board members echoed Barney’s sentiments: IHA’s decline began after they had already left.

Ralph Jordan, chief operating officer of IHA from April 2016 through June 2018, said he worked aggressively to address several issues that originated long before he joined the agency. And although HUD identified more issues during his time there, he said they did not come to light until after he had left.

“If I would have still been there, we wouldn’t have had those problems,” Jordan said. “So I don’t know what happened after I left.”

Since 2022, IHA has been the victim of two cyberattacks that disrupted the agency’s ability to pay landlords.

IHA’s failure to upgrade technology and security may have increased the likelihood that the agency was vulnerable. As recently as June 2021, some IHA machines were still operating on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008. Microsoft discontinued support for those operating systems in January 2020, meaning they no longer provided security updates. It’s unclear if those computers had been updated by the time of the first cyberattack.

And, in its latest audit, HUD officials found what they called “an ongoing failure” of internal controls stretching back at least a decade related to IHA’s bank accounts. A single member of the agency’s IT department was able to execute wire transfers, change tenant data, make accounting adjustments and disburse cash without needing another employee or an IHA manager’s approval.

This “unrestricted access” for such a long time meant that it’s possible that there are falsified financial records, unsupportable cash disbursements and other violations that have yet to be discovered, HUD officials concluded.

Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office responded to questions about whether the agencies have launched criminal investigations surrounding IHA.

In April, federal officials essentially fired the existing board and replaced it with a single HUD-appointed member, Kimberly Wize, director of HUD’s Indiana field office.

Mirror Indy tried to reach every person who was on the board at the time of HUD’s takeover. In most cases, those former board members either declined or did not respond to Mirror Indy’s interview requests. Attempts to reach three of the board members were unsuccessful.

One recent board member did speak to a Mirror Indy reporter: former board member Aaron Atwell, who served from October 2020 through mid-2023. He is the chief financial officer of one of Indiana’s largest nonprofit family services agencies.

“There’s a lot of just outdated policies and procedures that we were working on trying to get updated and crafted that just, I really think, put the agency in a vulnerable position,” said Atwell, who is not related to the former Beech Grove renter Randi Atwell.

‘New day’

The newly appointed executive director of IHA made a declaration at a board meeting in September.

He and his staff were working toward “a new day at IHA,” Willie C. Howard Garrett said to an audience of IHA staffers and residents.

In February, HUD officials sent a letter to Allen, the IHA board chair: Despite HUD having provided damning findings to the agency in July 2023, IHA had “provided no evidence” that it had taken actions to correct the problems.

Just over a month later, HUD and the city announced the federal takeover of the agency. Such drastic measures are pursued rarely and only for agencies in the most dire of circumstances, legal experts told Mirror Indy.

The goal is to bring the agency into compliance with federal laws and to restore its ability to safely and reliably house thousands of low-income residents.

More than six months later, many in the city have not seen a different side of the agency.

When Mirror Indy tried asking Garrett about the agency in person, he declined to talk and said to send questions over email. Asked specifically about what happened with the renters in Beech Grove who were evicted because of IHA’s failure to pay, Garrett said he had “no additional comments at this time.”

Randi Atwell’s attempt to fight her eviction was unsuccessful. Just days after her court appearance, she was packing her belongings. She had to leave by Aug. 19.

Atwell found a 10-by-12-foot storage unit for her belongings. She and her son have been staying with her father, other family — anyone who can help them get by.

“It’s either that or my car,” she said.

In early October, as time was running out to use her voucher, Atwell underwent surgery for a hernia. She tried to get an extension to buy her more time, but IHA denied her.

It may be years before she gets another voucher.


Emily Hopkins and Tyler Fenwick wrote this article for Mirror Indy.


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Recent surveys show a majority of North Dakotans want housing that allows them to live independently as they age. But there aren't a lot of suitable options.

Two architectural design winners hope to address that problem. This week, AARP North Dakota announced the winners of the state's first Missing Middle Housing design competition. The organization worked with several partners on this initiative, noting that older adults considering downsizing are often limited to staying in their costly single-family home, or moving into an apartment-like setting for seniors.

Agatha Frisby, owner of Prairie Centre Architecture, said her winning concept tried to showcase something in between.

"It still gave people that are potentially moving into these homes some individuality and some personal space," she explained.

Frisby's design emphasizes low-maintenance needs and efficient use of daily-living space, such as doing away with hallways and corridors. Affordability was another goal for participants. Project officials say these blueprints were drawn up with Fargo in mind, but could easily be pursued by housing developers and local governments elsewhere.

There was also a category for architectural students.

Noah Boen, a fourth-year architecture student North Dakota State University, saw his design finish in first place. He said some of the smaller details, such as having a front entryway that's functional for this population, could make a big difference.

"When they're getting ready to go out the door, not many older folks have a place where they can sit down, tie their shoes, and have a bunch of storage right next to the door," he explained.

Boen added that all the ground-floor windows are the same dimensions, hopefully making the construction process easier and not too costly for developers. A $5,000 cash prize was awarded to the winning professional design entry, and the student winner received a scholarship.