Rooster Crows

Get A Home

July 23, 2025

An amusing conversation struck a chord.  The social media post read “Get a home and you won’t be homeless” It’s a constant nagging conversation generated in many hometown social media groups.  Homelessness has made its presence known throughout the United States.  Our solution need to address the root problem. It’s an easy problem to solve. 

Those who are willing to work and provide for themselves are the homeless. Those who are on the street due to their beliefs are Spontaneous Opportunist, panhandlers.  There will always be beggars which gives those in government positions the incentive to provide a program to solve a problem, otherwise known as a way to raise taxes.  Beggars do not deserve our attention nor should we keep providing millions in tax dollars to government programs specifically geared toward panhandlers.

An anonymous person sat down and talked with us about their dire situation with a young child and two adults living in a car barely able to feed themselves.  They told us they visit the food banks, apply for low income housing, and use as many sources as possible to find work that will provide enough to pay rent.

The problem: jobs are paying $15 hour and rent is $1200 for a two bedroom apartment.  That’s $2400 before taxes with about $1900 bring home.  That leaves $700 for food, car payment, gas, school clothes, incidentals, and utilities for the month.  So the second parent takes a job at $15.00 hr. with another car payment, gas, and child care @ $15 hr. You see where this is going.

But how do we stop it?  We stop telling our government to give our pocket money to wealthy property owners to buy and develop more property.  It’s really that simple.  Billions of our tax dollars are used for building relationships between Indiana politicians and wealthy in-state and out-of-state investors and to then turn around and tell us its for our own benefit which rarely, if ever, true.  Data centers, for example, hire very few jobs for citizens. 30-50 at one plant for highly skilled individuals, not your average Joe.  But, those same data centers receive billions upon billions in tax incentives.

Don’t understand tax incentives?  Pretend like this is your family.  Dad is the government.  The First Family is You.  The Second Family is “Developer/Investor”:  Dad controls the family money. All of it.  Dad spends all of the family money on his “second family” that no ones really knows anything about and leaves the 1^st family high and dry for rent money.  Well Dad didn’t use the money to benefit the 1^st family like he had agreed but the rent money has to come from somewhere.  So Dad takes out a loan to pay the rent for the 1^st family.  That new loan payment comes from the 1^st family budget because the 2^nd family doesn’t even have an income other than money from the 1^st family. So little Johnny goes without new shoes this month and little Suzy will have to wait to get that new pair of glasses.  Things keep getting worse as the second family demands more and more from the 1^st family eventually leaving them broke and homeless. This is how Economic Development works.

The 2023 legislative session that was surely marked as a success by former governor Holcomb who now works at Doral Renewables following a $1 Billion tax incentive deal under his supervision. The adoption of House Enrolled Act (HEA) 1001, the former governor’s agenda bill, created a new $500 million deal closing fund, created a new site acquisition fund for shovel ready development, megadeals over $5 billion will receive additional resources, and throws away an additional $500 million in the national READI program that has already accessed $8.5 Billion in quality of place investments throughout the state. This is money out of your pocket.  Money that could be used for supporting small business start-up or just plain and simply putting more money in your pocket through less taxes.

We need to stop giving government the Okay to dish out tax dollars to well connected developers through economic development that entices them to buy properties and sit on them until the squeeze is felt by the population.  When that squeeze is enough, they raise the stakes.  They provide those properties to the population at enormous prices in order to raise the rent for their lower income rentals.  Economic Development $$$ given to developers causes an increased ripple effect on rent prices.  It’s a Rental Scheme.

When those developers build high priced rentals without having to pay the tax, you make up the difference in out-of-pocket tax dollars.  The infrastructure built to support those buildings, the use of town assets, and enough pressure on the economy to causes a rise in lower income rentals across the board Costs Money, Your money.  Not only are you paying for those developers to build, you are paying for them to use your resources.  You are paying them to raise your rent.

Legislation has created problems in its own right.  Tighter regulations prevent many people from renting out property which, again, raises costs through the supply and demand method which increases the effect of the economic development rental scheme.  Legislation that was created by real estate moguls to perpetuate high rentals and property value.  Tighter regulations are to the benefit of rich apartment holders.

We don’t have a homeless problem in reality.  We have a legislation problem

Don’t just treat the symptoms. Find the cause to prevent the problem. In this case, Economic Development needs to stop.  We need to support our friends and family in building their business, small business.

Nagging about economic Development,

Kimberly Mann

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