Safe Park Indy Shuts Down Temporarily Due to Growth

INDIANAPOLIS – Safe Park Indy, a local program that provided overnight parking and essential services for people living out of their vehicles, is temporarily shutting down.

The director of the initiative announced the closure, citing an inability to manage the program’s rapid growth.The program, which was praised for its efforts to assist a population often overlooked in discussions about homelessness, had a constant waitlist of 400 people.

However, it only had space for a small fraction of that number, serving just five to 20 individuals at a time. Safe Park Indy provided its clients with a safe place to park and access to resources like bathrooms and phone chargers.

The organization hopes to receive support from local nonprofit’s to continue its operations in the future. The director of the initiative encourages anyone who is interested in supporting unhoused Indianapolis residents to contact Horizon House, a local social services agency.

The closure of Safe Park Indy highlights the growing issue of vehicle homelessness. It is estimated that up to 100,000 people across the United States live in their cars, and they are often not included in traditional point-in-time counts of unhoused individuals.

Safe Park Indy Shuts Down Temporarily Due to Growth  was originally published on wibc.com