Cities across the Midwest have embraced a new way of addressing unsheltered homelessness by helping swiftly connect people with services and housing opportunities.
Tulsa’s unsheltered population fell 31% between 2025 and 2026, and the city reports no remaining major encampments downtown. Indianapolis moved more than 220 people from the street into housing since last summer. Cleveland has housed more than 200 people since 2024, enough to convince its city council to extend its program another two years.
The efforts are adaptations of the Direct-to-Housing model, developed by Houston-based Clutch Consulting in 2022 to help its home city reduce its unsheltered homeless population. The model streamlines pathways to housing by surging services like street-based medical care, outreach, and case management to a particular encampment for between four and six weeks. People engaged with the program are then placed into temporary housing with rental subsidies for up to a year while they find a more permanent solution.
On the back end, Clutch Consulting also works with city departments, management districts, and property owners to ensure encampments remain permanently closed after people are in housing. That includes maintaining “presence or patrol” in a specific area to immediately engage people who experience unsheltered homelessness, and redirect them out of the area, explains Mandy Chapman Semple, a consultant at Clutch and Houston’s first Special Assistant to the Mayor for Homeless Initiatives.
“The whole point is we’re not going to allow a new encampment to become established in this environment,” Semple tells Next City. “We’re going to intervene immediately, and we’re going to force a re-direction because if those individuals remain there, those individuals can’t get the help and the support they need.”
