- So thanks for joining us today. For those I haven't met yet, my name's Tatiana Wheeler. I'm Associate
- Director of Heading Home of South Central Indiana. I have the honor and privilege of working with Mary
- Morgan and the rest of the team at Heading Home. Today's session is gonna be focused on moving from
- challenges to opportunities, okay? As Mary stated in her opening remarks, we know what the challenges
- are. So it may seem silly for me to ask you
- in this exact moment to look at your table and choose a pink sticky note to write down one specific
- challenge you're facing in advancing housing stability in your work. So this could be if you're in a
- job, in a role where you are directly working to advance housing stability or if you're a volunteer
- or if you're in the faith community and your congregation and house of worship is trying to figure out
- ways to be a part of the solution. What are current challenges you're facing?
- And don't worry, we're not gonna stay there. This is just the beginning. We're gonna talk about opportunities
- later in the presentation. But once you've identified what that challenge is, something that's been
- ruminating in your mind, I want you to go to this back wall and categorize where that challenge fits.
- Whether it's a challenge that's systemic, one that's personal, one that's related to your organization
- specifically, one that's related to policy, or one that's related to funding.
- Once you've identified what that is, go post it on the back wall. And we'll go ahead and get started.
- And I hope you know this session is going to be highly interactive. So you will get out as much as you
- put in. So I hope you're excited to have fun, to think creatively, and to think differently. OK. You've
- got to be a little subtle with it. And please specifically use the pink stickies.
- the other colors at your table will be for another activity.
- And as much as you can, spread out the pink because we're going to be responding with opportunities
- in a different color later. I don't think so.
- All righty, thanks everybody. We'll continue on with the presentation.
- So I'm gonna talk a little bit more about heading home's work briefly just for those who are unfamiliar
- with our organization and the focus of our work. I'll go into a little bit more depth than Mary did
- this morning. I'll be talking about the power of perspective and we'll be going through some activities
- to reframe our perspectives. You have an opportunity to learn from one another, those at your table,
- those across the room, and then we'll reflect over next steps. Sound good? Are we excited? Where's the energy?
- All righty, so for those who are unfamiliar with heading home, really, our organization became
- an organization because of a strategic plan that was created back in 2014. So back when I think I was
- in eighth grade, there are providers across this region who were developing the strategic plan to make
- homelessness rare, brief, and non-repeating. In other words, working to end homelessness.
- In 2020, on the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, stakeholders got together to discuss how housing needs
- had exasperated across the community around the pandemic. And they determined ways to pivot that plan
- to shifting and focusing on more solutions. They realized that that plan that they made in 2014 was
- insufficient, mostly because they were asking
- service providers who are focused on crisis management to also do that macro system level work. And
- for those who are service providers in the room, you know that that was not just a daunting task, it
- was an impossible task. And in 2021, the plan was updated with the addition of staff with heading home
- with Mary Morgan and I in 2021. And our team has now expanded to a team of 13 in 2025 and 2026,
- which is huge, remarkable. We celebrate that.
- So since 2021 and 2022, where our operations really began, we've been working to advance housing stability
- across the sixth county region with the ultimate goal, again, to make homelessness rare before non-repeating.
- But in the past four years, we've had to shift our perspective. For those who are part of this work,
- you know the work can be challenging, right? The work can be defeating. It can be
- It can be heavy to carry. I mean, I'm not working directly with people experiencing homelessness, but
- those on our team and those across our region who are, are walking with people who are experiencing
- tragedy, right? Homelessness, housing instability, poverty. I was in here listening to the Thriving
- Connections panel. It is a traumatic experience. And I just want to thank every service provider in
- the room for a second for walking with people through tragedy and helping them in their journeys of
- stability and finding their paths back home. Can we give it up for the service providers in the room?
- Thank you for your continued yes. Thank you for continuing to show up. I try to tell our team often
- and those across our region that the world's a better place every day you show up. So thank you for
- showing up, especially today for this housing summit.
- A little bit more about heading home, Mary shared that we like to think of ourselves as a supportive
- backbone of our region's homeless response system. So what that looks like is heading home is advancing
- ways to improve our homeless response system. We're coordinating crisis services. We have weekly shelter
- check-in calls. We have, I don't know if it's bi-weekly at this point, or monthly calls with our
- Service providers focus on different aspects of our system, so those who are doing street outreach,
- those who are providing permanent supportive housing, those doing what's called rapid rehousing, so
- different financial assistance programs. We also have someone now dedicated focused on landlord engagement
- and unit acquisition, right, because landlords literally hold the keys to housing. Ha ha, so funny, right?
- Thanks for those who laughed at my petty joke. We're also leading public relations, right? We understand
- that housing stability takes the community having a shared understanding and us collectively having
- a shared narrative about what's being done to strengthen housing security. Additionally, one of my most
- favorite things is that we get to support the people doing this work through cross-agency trainings.
- So this could look like
- providing trainings for agencies across our system, things like housing problem solving, which we just
- did a training in partnership with the National Alliance on Homelessness back in March. And we had over
- 70 providers across our system show up for that. And that's helping people divert and prevent homelessness
- from ever occurring, right? That's something to celebrate is that we don't want people to experience
- homelessness. We want to divert and prevent a housing crisis from ever occurring.
- Conditionally I've already shared where our strategy lead we have a couple different strategic plans
- out out in the world in the in the interweb our biggest one being our heading home plan, which was our
- Inaugural strategic plan as well as the housing action plan, which is specific to Monroe County We're
- also working with partners in Morgan County to develop strategic plan
- plans there as well. We have a data dashboard on our main website as well. Prior to Heading Home's existence,
- there was a lot of misconceptions about how many people were just experiencing homelessness across our
- region. And so through a partnership with a national organization called Built for Zero, we've made
- a data dashboard to make that data public and transparent to people. If you look at the data dashboard
- today, you'll see that 2026 data is missing. We are in process of reconstructing
- the website to the data dashboard to have even more data. And so we hope to have that within this quarter
- back to being up to date. And as Mary shared, we have regional initiatives. We run a Lawrence County
- Housing Task Force. I sit on the board of Wellspring, which is a family shelter and permanent supportive
- housing program in Morgan County.
- And we do a lot of other things. But that's not necessarily why we're here today. I just have to give
- you that rundown. I'm going to keep going in our slide deck. To one of our biggest initiatives, which
- is the newest, which is why Heading Home has expanded from a team of two to a team of 13, is that in
- 2025, Heading Home, in partnership with the Community Foundation of Bloomington and rural county, received
- a Lilly Endowment grant that has transformed Heading Home's services and programs to
- help individuals and households experiencing unsheltered homelessness, and as well as divert people
- and prevent people from ever experiencing homelessness to begin with. This is a five-year grant, and
- now includes six street outreach workers. Thanks for the claps. And now includes six street outreach
- workers who are embedded at partner agencies, three diversion and prevention case managers. Again, we
- have a landlord engagement. Well, Mayor Hamburg, Strategic Partnerships Director, is focused on landlord
- engagement and unit acquisition.
- Aaron Reynolds Nyland is the one overseeing our frontline staff. And this five-year grant also includes
- a housing stability income supplement pilot program, which is not run through Heading Home, but actually
- run through SCAP. It also includes endowment matching funds. And the most transformational, aside from
- the people, of course, is flexible funding.
- for unification for those who have supports in other communities, housing stability, so moving people
- from the streets into stable housing, and risk reduction funds. So again, preventing and diverting people
- from ever experiencing homelessness. Transformational. We're so thankful for our team. If you are a
- part of the Heading Home team, can you give a wave in the room? I just wanna shout you out. Thank you
- to your work.
- Now, if you're interested in learning more about heading home, please grab your phones. If you have
- a smartphone, if you do nothing else in this presentation, scan this QR code. Look at our 2025 impact
- report. It'll give you more in-depth information about some of our ongoing initiatives and projects
- and even opportunities for you to continue to be a part of the solution and partner with heading home
- on some of these. Everyone who scanned it got it. I'll give you a second.
- All righty. Now this is an image. I want you to look at every color. Identify on the count of your hands
- how many colors you see. OK. Can someone shout out, what do you see? What stands out in this image to
- you? Someone said sky. OK, what else?
- Sample gates. Who else sees anything else? What was it? Athletics? Oh, legs. Okay. Flowers. What else
- do you see? A person. Anyone see anything else in this image? Trees. Anything else? It's not a trick question.
- A steering wheel? OK. Out of curiosity, anyone when they're a child or now in your adulthood, just look
- at the clouds and see different shapes? Yeah, this is kind of like what this activity is. For those
- who said sample gates, you're right. It was sample gates. So look at the gates and look at the image.
- Gates, image. So those who didn't see sample gates, do you see it now?
- Yeah. But wasn't it interesting that people saw different things? Some were parts of the picture that
- were obviously a part of the image. Others, like a steering wheel, no shade, were not a part of the
- image. But it's interesting how each of us saw something maybe just a little bit different, a little
- more specific. And in this presentation, I want to talk about the power of perspective. We understand
- that the housing crisis is complex.
- But yet, I want to encourage you that it is not unsolvable. If you're interested in learning more about
- communities across the nation who are proving that homelessness is solvable, I want you to go to Built for Zero.
- or communitiesolutions.org, and read their blogs. There are a lot of communities, over 50 communities
- across Indiana, or across Indiana, across the United States who have proved that homelessness is solvable.
- And so while I want to acknowledge the real challenges that you identified at the start of this presentation,
- I want to tell you that the challenge you're focused on right now is not the end of the story. Can anyone
- maybe testify by raising your hand that there is a challenge that you faced either in your professional
- or personal life at some point
- that you thought, I don't know how I'm ever gonna get through this. I don't know if I'm ever gonna see
- the light at the end of the tunnel. Wave them big, wave them high. And can you say that that challenge
- that you thought was so insurmountable is no longer there, right? You've overcome it. Can you wave your
- hand really high and big in the sky to show, hey, challenges are just opportunities to think about things
- differently. A problem is just something you haven't solved yet.
- Again, it's not the end of the story. And so I want us to remember that if we just stop by naming what's
- the challenge, what's going wrong across our system, just naming the barriers, that we're going to get
- stuck there if we stay there. And so I'm hoping in this presentation that we help you find momentum
- in whatever you're facing. So again, I want to acknowledge that there are real challenges.
- As already been stated, limited affordable housing, rising costs, funding constraints, policy and zoning
- barriers, fragmented systems, services, community perceptions. Mary had mentioned the infamous and negative
- power of stigma. These are the things we're facing, but again, not the end of the story. Because again,
- what if these challenges were just signals for opportunities? Opportunities to rethink what's not working?
- Opportunities to lead with optimism in the face of defeat. Opportunities, again, to create outcomes
- and programs that change people's lives. Opportunities to expand who has access to safe and stable housing,
- which is the foundation, I believe, of any home, of any family. Can I get some snaps? If you're thinking
- some of these things are possible, if you're with me, just snap throughout the presentation so I know
- you're not sleeping. But again,
- These challenges are opportunities that require a different lens. So for those who wear glasses in the
- house, how often do your glasses get dirty? Someone said often. No, I appreciate that honesty. That
- helps with my metaphor I'm about to say. Thank you. My husband wears glasses, and I feel like he's cleaning
- them maybe with a little bit of OCD very often.
- I'm not a glasses wearer, so I don't understand totally. But I think sometimes our perspectives get
- as blurred as that first image I showed you, whether we wear glasses or not. Sometimes we can become
- jaded about life, about our professional and personal lives to the point that things, you can't even
- make sense of what's happening in your life or where are there opportunities to move forward or where
- are there opportunities for deeper collaboration
- Anyone? You with me? You can raise your hand that that's not just me up here. You've been there. You've
- had moments where things just feel ambiguous. Honestly, I feel like in 2026, my life has felt like a
- big blurred picture of sample gates. But what I found is that the questions we ask ourselves shape the
- solutions that we see. If we focus strictly on problems, all we're going to see are limitations.
- But opportunities focus on possibilities. If you get nothing else, I hope you get that. Opportunities
- focus on possibilities. Perspective, shifting it creates momentum. It's still the same reality. You
- still may have the same challenge, but with a different lens, you can have a different outcome. That's
- what shifts people from making system changes is the lens that they see. And so I guess I'm trying to
- say is that maybe it's about time we get that lens white, we get that cloth,
- that we may see more clearly. See more clearly the people around us as people before they're ever filling
- any position in our communities. See the problems more clearly as opportunities, again, yet to be unsolved.
- So to give a couple examples related to housing, we hear there's not enough affordable housing. True.
- Now to get curious about it, asking open-ended questions,
- Okay, well how might we unlock new housing models or underutilized services and spaces? Who can we bring
- in to talk about opportunities for development, talk about opportunities for redevelopment? You see,
- there's a thing about stating a problem and there's a thing about being curious, and curiosity I think
- is where we unlock solutions. Another example, systems are fragmented. I hear often in our work that
- no one's working together, and I feel like the people who say that are the people who may be not
- aren't in those meetings, aren't in those Zoom rooms, a part of those discussions. But then maybe you
- can ask, well, who is getting together? Where can stronger coordination take place to improve outcomes?
- Community resistance exists, right? The not in my backyard perspectives. Well, how can we build understanding
- and shared ownership that each of us have a part to play in the greater solutions to advance housing
- stability?
- So you see what I'm saying is that there's a power in identifying a challenge or a problem. There's
- more power in getting curious about solutions and getting curious about bringing other people into the
- spaces. So looking in any room you walk into and saying, whose perspective is missing from this conversation?
- Often it's people with lived experience. And heading home would love your feedback and opportunities
- to collaborate further. You'll hear a panel of people with lived experience over lunch.
- is ways we can do that in more meaningful ways across our region and across our system. So when I was
- putting this presentation together, I started to think, I have my own biases and perspectives on what
- I should talk about related to perspectives. I was like, well, let me look into what psychology and
- sociology says.
- What am I trying to say, guys? My words are getting so tongue-tied. Psychology shows us that the brain
- is constantly filtering information and trying to make meaning of that information. We know, though,
- that through cognitive bias, that we often favor information that confirms we already believe. Anyone
- can testify to that? OK, thank you.
- But sometimes we can be stubborn. We can be closed-minded if we're honest. And I think it's important
- for us to acknowledge that elephant in the room if we really do want to move things forward in our systems.
- You know, two people can look at the same situation and walk away with very different perspectives.
- Anyone been in meetings like that? Very different. You thought next steps were one thing. Someone else
- thought next steps were another. And then before you know it, either you're bickering or you're confused,
- and there's just ambiguity.
- To give an example of this, and those who've seen this image before, don't be so quick to shout it out.
- I want to give people who've never seen this image before a second to look at it. But the fact is, two
- people can see two different things. Look at one image, see two different things. So look at this image
- for a second. And you can shout out what you see.
- Two people kissing a vase. Someone said two vases. Anybody see anything else? A chalice. Raise your
- hand if you saw a vase. Raise your hand if you saw two people. Yeah, if you saw it, it confirmed it.
- But you see, we all had different perspectives of what we saw when we first saw this image.
- That didn't change the image. It was our perspective of how our minds interpreted reality. Keep that
- in mind. For sociology, it emphasizes that how we see the world is greatly influenced by three things,
- our culture, our institutions, and our lived experience. And where we stand shapes what we see. The
- panel I heard earlier shared how people of different socioeconomic
- statuses, if you even want to call it that, have different experiences, right, based on their needs,
- based on how their resources potentially may be more constrained than other demographics of people.
- Our cultures, our backgrounds, whether or not we're part of a faith community. I thought that was music
- for a second. I was like, things are about to get funky, but no, just some AC. It gets to keep us cool.
- whether or not we are part of a faith community, whether or not we grew up in a small family,
- a big family, all of these things, whether we grew up in a city or in the rural communities, all these
- things shape the way that we see the world and the way we show up in the world. But the solution in
- changing how we solve problems is merging these two ideas between psychology and sociology. Again, psychology
- shows us that our perspectives shape how we think
- Sociology shows us that our perspective is shaped by the world around us. But if we can learn to shift
- our perspectives individually and collectively, we can change just not how we see problems, but how
- we solve them. And I think that some of the things I'm saying to you may not be rocket science or anything
- totally new, but I do hope it gives you pause at least to think about your perspective and your viewpoints
- on things.
- So to practically move from challenges to opportunities, I want you to revisit those pink sticky notes
- of different challenges people put up in the room. I want you to grab a blue or other colored sticky
- note, so not a pink sticky note. And I want you to review those challenges. And beside the challenge,
- I want you to write down a solution, an idea, a theory of change. Maybe this is something that you've
- experienced
- or have a skill set you've grown and developed, or maybe it's something that you've learned from another
- community. I want us to take a moment to think through solutions for our fellow community members. I'll
- give you five minutes to do that. We'll revisit. All righty, we're gonna move on to the next activity.
- If I can get your attention, thanks for participating and being a part of the solution and helping people
- identify solutions.
- If I can get your attention. If you can hear me, can you snap? Thank you. All righty, now at your tables,
- we are going to reframe the original challenge that you brought into this room, brought into your mind
- this morning. And instead of focusing on what's not working,
- We're instead going to look at where we can build and where we can find opportunity. So we're going
- to quite literally take the challenge of whatever challenge you presented on that back wall, bring it
- back to memory, and we're going to reframe it as an opportunity and asking yourselves these questions.
- What can we build on? Specifically, if it's an existing program, a partnership, whether this is a new program,
- a pilot or an ongoing one? What are relationships you can capitalize on? Where are their successes?
- You know, Mary mentioned that there's an importance in celebrating even the smallest of wins. What can
- we connect? People, systems, resources, what can we try differently? Again, related to new approaches,
- small experiences, experiences, experiments, LOL.
- And then I would like you to name one to two action steps that you can take within the next 30 days
- and within the next quarter in trying to implement this new opportunity you identify. Does that make
- sense? We're taking the original challenge and we're flipping the script and changing it into an opportunity.
- I'll give you about five minutes to do that.
- Alrighty folks, we're closing in on the five minute mark. I'm gonna ask if there's anyone, any brave
- volunteer that was able to capitalize on this methodology of flipping the script on challenges and perceiving
- them as opportunities, have one that they'd like to share with the group. Looking for a brave volunteer.
- Even if it's in progress,
- Right, we're not looking for perfection. Thanks, Jess. So I'm Jessica Heye. I work for the Bloomington
- Housing Authority. And I manage the Landlord Risk Mitigation Fund. And a partnership that I have been
- very excited to explore and expand on is Mary Hamrick.
- with heading home and her position connecting landlords to service providers and just trying to expand
- affordable housing opportunities in the region. And that partnership just would go along great with
- my program, right? That she can help me get in contact with landlords and can help spread word about
- my program to landlords who might not already be aware of us and just to help expand our reach and just
- to build those relationships.
- Thanks, Jess. Yeah, give it up for Jessica Craig. Doing great work at the BHA. Any other brave soul
- want to share briefly? I'll try to remember the part I didn't get written down. I'd love to see some
- sort of partnership with landlords and housing providers
- and heading home, and center stone home providers, rapid rehousing, all of those, and city council and
- other lawmakers about the requirements for someone to start renting. Because the requirements include
- often three times the monthly rent, a credit period,
- Credit check is okay, but if the person can pay, they can pay. And also to abolish the across the board
- using felonies, past felonies as a reason to exclude that person or that family because they need to
- be considered on a one by one basis and see what's happening now. Thank you.
- So for the opportunities that you have now identified in your mind, no longer just challenges,
- but opportunities, we're asking you to commit to doing something to move that thing forward. In the
- next 30 days and in the next quarter, on my far right, your far left, in the middle column
- of this inspiration wall, there's a green question that says, what is something you're committed to
- doing? I want you to write down whatever it is that you
- identified in this session and write it on that green light bulb during lunch. In closing, why do I
- have two mics? This is kind of funny. In closing, I'll use this one, is that I want to let you know,
- if you get nothing else, is that lasting change comes from those who focus on possibilities, not just
- problems, right? So when you come into these community spaces, as you go back to your workplaces, your
- faith communities, your business community, whatever sector you're a part of,
- whether you're just a passionate resident in this region, is to not lead with problems. Lead
- with possibilities. What if we did this? Right? Not just thinking, oh, this isn't working. That's the
- gap. This is what's wrong. We're probably already aware of the things that you're about to say.
- So lead with possibilities. And I want you to know that you're part of creating a stronger,
- not just system, but community, that you truly are a part of the solution. And as Mary said in her opening
- remarks, you hold a key. And so I hope that you find a place to plug that key into to unlock solutions
- across South Central Indiana. In closing, if you want to learn more about heading home, there's our
- website. There's my email if you have questions. With that, we'll be starting lunch just briefly.
- Please don't forget, go to the Inspiration Wall. Write down what's coming to your mind, but thanks for
- being here today.