This past July, Prosperity Indiana and the National Low Income Housing Coalition released the 2024 “Out of Reach” study for the state of Indiana.
Executive Director of Prosperity Indiana Aspen Clemons said the study “is meant to clarify two things: How much most Hoosiers are making and how much it costs to live comfortably in our state.”
The study lists the state’s most common occupations, each of those occupations’ median wage, and the wage required to comfortably afford a two-bedroom home at fair market rates.
Statewide, that two-bedroom “housing wage” was put at $22.07 an hour. For the Indy metro area, it was $25.95 an hour.
However, among Indiana’s 20 most common occupations, only six (indicated in the graph) pay a median wage that meets or exceeds the state’s $22.07 an hour housing wage; that’s down from ten occupations in last year’s study. Only four of the 20 most common jobs meet or exceed the Indy Metro housing wage of $25.95 an hour. (Find the full study online at nlihc.org/oor/state/in).
The social impact of that mass low-wage economy is felt in every Indiana community—even our most affluent. At Women’s Fund of Central Indiana, we recognize the need to highlight the outsized impact this dynamic has on women, especially women of color.
THE WAGES OF LOW-INCOME LABOR
Two of the study’s top Hoosier occupations—fast food labor and retail—are some of the only industries where women make up a majority of the workforce. Black women, specifically, are employed at disproportionate rates in these and other low-paid industries.
Consequently, Black women are also more likely to work full-time at or near the minimum wage—$7.25 an hour in Indiana. While many hospitality jobs pay above minimum wage, we should also acknowledge that minimum wage isn’t what it used to be. The current average wage for Indiana fast-food workers ($13.68 an hour) is actually below the minimum wage of 1968 (today, worth about $14.39 an hour when adjusted for inflation).
Plus, while some may not think of those positions as representing lifelong careers, low-wage job sectors make up a core part of the state’s economy in two important ways.
First, they employ more Hoosiers than other job sectors. Behind freight/stock movers, fast-food labor is Indiana’s most common occupation. And the state’s largest single employer of any kind, public or private, is Walmart, paying an average of $14.38 an hour in Indiana.
Second, and just as important, is the reason these low-wage job sectors employ so many Hoosiers: They support broader economic strategies.
Let’s use Indianapolis as an example—the state’s largest city and the economic engine for our region.
Over the last 50 years, a significant part of the city has been built around sports and convention tourism. To succeed, that requires hospitality and service staff for hundreds of restaurants, hotels, and shops—not to mention large-capacity sports venues, the Indianapolis International Airport and the Indiana Convention Center.
According to Visit Indy, the tourism economy supports 82,900 “full-time equivalent” hospitality positions in Indianapolis. It also produces an estimated $1.26 billion in tax receipts each year, including $725 million in state and local government taxes.
Women—especially women from under-represented communities—play an outsized role in the often low-wage labor that facilitates that revenue.
As leaders expand the Indiana Convention Center, add several downtown hotels, and lobby for a potential major league soccer team, the region’s need for hospitality and service labor will continue.
What kind of homes will the women working these jobs be able to afford?
After considering the results of the “Out of Reach” study and speaking with those working in Hoosier housing affordability, we believe that mass low-wage employment combined with public policy that neglects basic needs contributes to housing that is scarce, substandard, and unstable, especially for women of color.
SCARCE
Amy Nelson is the executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana (FHCCI). She points to housing scarcity as a major contributor to the growing affordability gap.
“We have a very low vacancy rate within Central Indiana,” she says. “There are not enough housing units available, especially affordable ones.”
The result?
“People are forced to stay in substandard housing because they can’t move elsewhere—either because of affordability or a lack of available options.”
One potential cause for scarcity was mentioned frequently in our conversation: the current real estate investment market, especially investment groups without any in-state offices.
Armed with a pool of cash, no requests for home inspection and quick turnarounds, these groups are known to contact current homeowners before a home is even listed, reducing available stock and raising the floor on affordability.
“It’s dangerous,” Aspen Clemons at Prosperity Indiana said. “Any progress we’re making toward addressing the affordability gap is severely hindered by the unregulated market for out-of-state investors buying up properties.”
FHCCI estimates that 27,000 single-family rental properties in Marion County are now owned by corporate investor groups. About half of those are owned by out-of-state investors.
Building new homes is one obvious way to alleviate high demand and reduce costs. But can added homes be made affordable to those working the state’s most common occupations? A lower profit margin and just as many zoning restrictions can make affordable housing construction nearly prohibitive.
Both Prosperity Indiana and FHCCI point to a need for better development incentives to produce more affordable housing.
SUBSTANDARD
There is more to consider beyond an increase in the stock of homes. The condition of those homes, for one, must meet a basic standard.
“Landlords [in low-income areas] don’t have to keep [units] up because there are so many low-income consumers in the market who need a home,” Clemons said. “[Renters] will settle for things that may be unsafe because there may be nowhere else they can go.”
Ideally, frequent code violations and regular inspections would prevent both the renting of unsafe units and the exploitation of vulnerable communities.
Clemons, again: “In Indiana, there’s a level of preemption aimed at city and county government, preventing them from doing things like requiring landlords to do annual inspections of their units… Cities in Indiana aren’t allowed to require that.”
Amy Nelson with FHCCI: “Unfortunately, it has been the Indiana General Assembly that have passed laws preempting cities from having options available to combat the housing crisis.”
In 2021, the Indiana Statehouse passed a new and far-reaching law prohibiting any local ordinance from regulating the tenant-landlord relationship. This was soon after a 2020 Indianapolis tenant-protection ordinance sought to combat the city’s growing reputation as a U.S. eviction capital. Neither Governor Eric Holcomb’s veto nor the testimony of local officials could prevent the law’s passage at the statehouse.
“The only legislation that passes is what has been endorsed by the housing industry,” Nelson lamented.
Under these laws, even state agencies can have trouble bringing negligent landlords to justice.
In 2021, the Indiana Attorney General’s office lost a suit against the ownership of Nora’s Lakeside Pointe Apartments. That was despite years of complaints, documented code violations, and visibly unsafe living conditions. After their loss, the AG’s office cited “the limited authority for intervention in this matter provided by state statute”.
In February of 2022, hundreds of tenants at two Indianapolis properties temporarily lost their water service—and nearly had their buildings shuttered by the Marion County Public Health Department—after their homes’ New Jersey-based ownership repeatedly missed payments to Citizens Energy. A payment from the City of Indianapolis forestalled a mass-eviction, but the crisis reemerged that September, sending hundreds of households into upheaval. Due to a state law that forbids tenants from withholding rent from negligent landlords, renters had to keep current with payments—even as property owner negligence threatened their housing.
Eventually, Citizens Energy and the state attorney general’s office joined with the City of Indianapolis in legal action. Mayor Joe Hogsett said at the time: “It should not require a three-way
lawsuit by local government, a utility, and a state-level official to bring justice in such a clear case of landlord neglect.”
UNSTABLE
These particular cases are indicative of a more general lack of housing stability for low-income households in Central Indiana.
“Housing is a basic need,” Clemons said. “When you have a basic need whose cost outpaces wage growth, those most affected have to start rationing their income.”
Rising costs combined with low or stagnant wages too often end in eviction for Central Indiana families, especially Black families.
Research from the Eviction Lab at Princeton University showed that more than half of all eviction filings in the U.S. are against Black renters despite their making up less than 20% of the renting population. Furthermore, according to estimates from the Eviction Lab as part of the “State of Women in Central Indiana” report, 61% of evictions in Marion County are filed against women, but only 52% of Marion County renters are women.
Emily Benfer, professor at George Washington Law and a research collaborator with the Eviction Lab, has shown that the presence of a child in the home is the most common factor shared by evictions across the nation.
That makes non-White, working, single-mother households uniquely vulnerable in states with mass low-wage employment and few tenant protections.
“The data shows us that Hoosiers of color, women, and the elderly have to make [income rationing] decisions more than others,” Clemons said. “They’re deciding on things like, ‘Do I pay my rent this month or do I pay for childcare so I can go to work? Do I pay my rent this month or do I pay for my prescriptions?’”
Indiana has been home to some of the highest eviction rates in America in the years before, during and after the pandemic. From June 2023 to June 2024, Indianapolis was ranked fifth in eviction filings among thirty U.S. cities tracked by the Eviction Lab.
During that same period, Indianapolis also saw some of the highest rent increases in the nation for middle income apartments, according to Indy-based real estate data firm CoStar.
In newly developing neighborhoods, those rising values often pushed out long-time residents. That, Amy Nelson said, “just puts people further and further away from gainful employment and amenities.”
HOUSING SOLUTIONS
Good health, high educational attainment, steady employment, even escaping an abusive relationship—these all require us to have an affordable, safe and stable place to call home.
Fixing our housing crisis will require more homes, yes, but it will require specifically affordable homes for those who work some of the state’s most common, low-wage jobs.
And importantly, as Aspen Clemons said: “We can’t just build our way out of this issue… We have to work on that tenant protection piece.”
Tenants’ interests are underrepresented in federal, state and local legislatures. In Central Indiana, that dynamic joins with economic strategies built around tourism and warehousing/distribution; those strategies are fueled in part by low-wage labor.
Altogether, the occupations in the “Out of Reach” study that pay less than Indiana’s housing wage represent a fifth of Hoosier employees.
Their interests must be better represented in our communities.
Women’s Fund joins Prosperity Indiana and the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana in advocating for effective and achievable measures that could begin resolving our housing affordability crisis, including:
- Updated zoning laws that allow for more and denser housing in high-demand areas
- Allowing tenants to pay rent to third-party escrow accounts where landlords fail to address substandard housing
- Allowing cities to require regular inspection of rental units, combined with meaningful enforcement for code violations
- Mandating in-state offices for out-of-state property owner groups, thereby promoting a more active ownership and clearer accountability for violators
Finally, no discussion about a lack of affordable housing is complete without an examination of homelessness. In future issues, we will look at how Hoosier households are confronting this worst-case scenario.
Follow Prosperity Indiana and the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana for important updates
on housing in our region.
This article was published within the November 2024 issue of the Women’s Fund’s Diane magazine.
