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.