"Budget Enthusiast"
(A name given to me by the City Controller since I regularly attend the Council Meetings and 14 Budget Hearings)

Housing in South Bend

The Housing issue has a lot of components. Here are my notes  from the Housing Forum.
There are different types of housing issues. It helps to identify them:
  1. Lower-cost independent housing that individuals or families in lower income brackets (clustering around or slightly above the poverty level) can afford within the income they have available. This could range from low-cost houses (either for rent or to buy) to apartments or other “clustered” housing structures. Depending on price and availability, even homeless people with a source of income (Social Security, disability, minimum-wage and/or part-time jobs) could benefit from lower-cost housing.

  2. Zero-cost independent housing for people with zero or near-zero (substantially below poverty level) income who would nevertheless be capable of non-supervised living, meaning without outside intervention or monitoring for drug, emotional, mental or other problems. They might be Medicare or Medicaid eligible, which would address any medical problems they might have. In general, they are capable of taking care of minimal housing facilities; they just can’t afford to pay for them.

  3. Zero-cost monitored independent housing applies to people with drug, emotional, mental, criminal incarceration history/release or other problems who are poor candidates for independent housing. Monitoring need not be full time in all cases, but would require some amount of readily available staff, case workers, police or other personnel to make sure the problems that residents in this category aren’t prolonged or exacerbated due to lack of outside oversight. The Fuse apartments recently built for the homeless, while treated as independent housing, have been criticized by some activists for their lack of monitoring and supervision, thus not providing all the help needed by the residents, and perhaps even enabling the continuation of drug, alcohol or other addictions by not preventing outside actors (dealers, pimps, etc.) from interacting with them.
In 2016 the South Bend Heritage Foundation was awarded Housing Credits:
"South Bend Permanent Supportive Housing—The development will consist of 32 one-bedroom new construction units in South Bend. The target population is homeless persons with mental illness and/or chronic addictions. South Bend Heritage Foundation was awarded $654,449 in RHTCs;"
"The Low Income Housing Tax Credit program is a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit that incentivizes the investment of private equity in the development of affordable housing. State housing finance agencies administer the program with each state getting a fixed allocation of credits based on its population. IHCDA is empowered to act as the housing credit agency for the State of Indiana to administer, operate, and manage the allocation of LIHTCs, also known as the Rental Housing Tax Credit Program (RHTC), pursuant to Section 42 of the Code and IHCDA’s Qualified Allocation Plan. The Qualified Allocation Plan outlines IHCDA’s housing goals along with the threshold and scoring criteria for the program. "
Ball State University -  In-depth 15 page Housing Analysis of Indiana
Indiana Economic Digest about a 20 year study on Indiana Home Prices - "The excess in homes is largely caused by outmigration in many places. The problem is actually so acute that in 62 of Indiana’s 92 counties, the average home is worth less than it would cost to rebuild. In those counties, new speculative home construction has essentially stopped. In fact, in only 12 Indiana counties is it clearly profitable to build a new speculative home. That is why across the state, new home construction remains around half of what it was in the two decades before the Great Recession."
In nearby Goshen they have a wonderful housing program that has been successful for over almost three decades. They have even offered to train those in South Bend if we are interested. I think it's worth consideration. Below is their brochure.
I think there needs to be better analysis and more coordinated input from the Citizens, neighborhoods and developers. 
My campaign is a grassroots one. Donations are appreciated and helpful.
NOTE: My donation app is by ActBlue. Your receipts will come from them.