With his sweatshirt hood up and hand warmers tucked in his gloves, Jason Sargent sat outside a coffee shop on a cold Monday morning in Indianapolis. Sargent, 42, has been homeless for a year, and he was describing lawmakers’ debate about how long people like him could stay on a downtown sidewalk. “It would be horrible,” Sargent said.
The debate is centered on Indiana Senate Bill 285, which Republican lawmakers have been considering as a way to address what supporters describe as a worsening homelessness problem. During a Senate committee meeting in January, Sen. Cyndi Carrasco, R-Indianapolis, described the proposal as addressing compassion concerns, saying, “It is not compassionate to allow our neighbors to die on the streets.” Opponents, however, say the bill would criminalize homelessness less than a year after Indianapolis launched Streets to Home Indy, an effort they say has housed nearly 90 people living on city streets.
Sen. Greg Taylor, D-Indianapolis, raised concerns that the bill’s enforcement approach could undercut the city’s housing work. Taylor said before senators voted down his amendment that would have explicitly protected the program, “Please don’t inhibit our progress.” The initiative he pointed to, Streets to Home Indy, pairs housing placements with services that include rent help and mental health treatment. The program aims to house roughly 300 people by this summer, according to the reporting.
Opponents described a practical timing conflict between the housing placement process and the bill’s enforcement structure. In the bill’s framework, they said, if a camping ban becomes law, people experiencing homelessness would first get a warning and then have 48 hours to leave and relocate a minimum distance of 300 feet. Supporters said those steps would make it harder for encampments to form and would be accompanied by officers providing information about resources. Critics countered that Streets to Home Indy takes, on average, 26 days to get someone housed, meaning the law’s short window could interfere before case-by-case assistance can take effect.
Carrasco said she supports Streets to Home. Through a spokesperson, she did not respond to an interview request. But Chelsea Haring-Cozzi, CEO of the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention, which leads Streets to Home, said Carrasco listened to concerns about how the ban would affect the program. After the committee meeting, Carrasco authored an amendment to make it clear that cities could continue housing efforts through a program rather than through citations or arrests, Haring-Cozzi said. “People genuinely care about this issue,” Haring-Cozzi said.
Other opponents focused on the legal and operational ripple effects they said could follow misdemeanor charges. Stephen Luce, executive director of the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he was worried about jail overcrowding and noted that Indianapolis already faces crowding concerns because of people detained for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Luce also warned that he did not want the jail system to become the endpoint for people experiencing homelessness. Another argument raised by Taylor Hughes, chief strategy officer for the Indy Chamber, was that the chamber supported the bill while also urging that the policy not create barriers to housing; Hughes said at the committee meeting that homelessness is a top issue for the chamber’s members and that concerns range from safety to worry for the well-being of people living outside. Rachael Sample, senior community leadership officer for housing and homelessness at the Indianapolis Foundation, said the threats of fines and jail time were counterproductive and pointed to the foundation’s $2.7 million commitment to Streets to Home Indy, saying, “Anything that takes focus away from housing people makes all of this work more challenging.”
The legislation’s political and legal backdrop has also drawn attention, including the role of out-of-state policy influence. The camping ban is being promoted by the Cicero Institute, a conservative think tank based in Texas. Haring-Cozzi said she did not think it would “sit well” for a Texas-based think tank to apply a “one-size-fits-all approach” in Indiana. Opponents also pointed to prior Indiana efforts in which similar proposals backed by the Cicero Institute had not passed amid concerns they were attached late in the legislative process. They also referenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places.
At the same Senate committee meeting, Paul Webster, a senior fellow at the Cicero Institute, said he believed Senate Bill 285 does not criminalize homelessness. “The bill is a compassionate measure for people living in public spaces in Indiana,” Webster said. In a separate comment to Mirror Indy, Webster addressed critics’ anger about the think tank’s involvement by saying, “I don’t think much of it.”
Senate Bill 285 passed out of the Senate largely along party lines in January and has been assigned to the House Courts and Criminal Code Committee. As of Feb. 3, the bill had not been scheduled for a hearing, according to the reporting.