Homeless set to stay for Super Bowl

In the past, many Super Bowl host cities have relocated homeless people outside the city.

Michael Hurst, director for the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention, said the homeless will definitely be staying.

“The worry here is whenever there’s something that happens and a person is displaced ... with say the Super Bowl or any other event, that creates an issue because the outreach team doesn’t have access to that individual,” Hurst said.

Outreach teams are groups of people from the coalition and Indianapolis police officers, along with other agencies, that keep tabs on the homeless community members, bringing them medical supplies and checking in on them on a daily basis.

“If a person is used to staying in a certain place, the outreach folks know where those folks are,” Hurst said.

One of the main goals with these outreach teams is to get the homeless to go inside, into shelters or other facilities.

Hurst said if a person won’t go inside, it’s often because the person has a mental illness or addiction.

The key to getting them inside the shelters is to gain their confidence.

“It’s very important to build a trust relationship with those folks, and it takes a very long time,” Hurst said about the subject.

During any given night, around 100 or 200 homeless people are not housed in shelters and live on the streets or in camps throughout the city.

“For those people who don’t go inside, most of them have mental health or substance abuse issues that they’re dealing with that kind of influence their decision not to go inside,” Hurst said.

In light of the Super Bowl, Hurst said his agency met with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and explained why the homeless cannot be moved out of the city.

Although IMPD was unavailable for comment, Hurst said they happily obliged the coalition’s request.

“(It’s) one of the beauties of what this community has and does with its relationship with IMPD,” Hurst said. “IMPD officers, they have their own outreach
program.”

One other concern with the homeless population and the Super Bowl is that people may pose as homeless to make a quick buck, Hurst said.

He said there are two types of homeless: passive solicitors, who simply sit with signs and cups, and panhandlers, who actively ask passersby for money.

Hurst said the key between knowing if they’re homeless or imposters is the time of day they are seen.

“At nighttime, the people who are homeless will go into shelters, or they go into camps,” Hurst said. “So when you see people at night holding signs saying they’re homeless or walking up asking you for a quarter, chances are very, very strong that that person is not homeless.

“They’re housed. They might have some other issues going on ... but they’re not homeless.”

Hurst said IMPD will have an increased presence during the Super Bowl, which will hopefully discourage imposters while adding extra assistance to those who actually are homeless.

“That’s one of the beauties of any special event,” Hurst said. “More officers on the street is almost like having more outreach workers on the street.”