The State of Housing
in Indiana

---

Introduction

Indiana is supposed to be the affordable one. The Midwestern state where a paycheck still buys a house, where the cost of living stays low, where the housing crisis you read about on the coasts is somebody else's problem. That is the story Indiana tells about itself, and for a long time the story was mostly true.

The data tells a more complicated version.

A renter earning Indiana's minimum wage - still $7.25 an hour, the federal floor, unchanged since 2009 - would need to work 122 hours a week, every week, to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment at Fair Market Rent. - NLIHC Out of Reach 2025, Indiana In Marion County, home to Indianapolis, landlords filed roughly 25,000 evictions in a single year, one of the highest filing rates of any large county in the country, and corporate investors now own close to half of the single-family rental homes in the county. - WFYI, Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana In Bloomington and Lafayette, the two largest college towns in the state, more than three in five renter households spend over 30 percent of their income on housing. - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, Monroe and Tippecanoe counties And in Gary, a city that has lost nearly 60 percent of its population, thousands of houses sit empty and condemned while families an hour away in the Chicago commuter belt bid against each other for a shrinking supply. - HuffPost, NWI Times

I started this report because Rookd is built on a simple premise: that finding a home you can trust should not depend on luck, insider access, or the hope that the person on the other side of a Facebook listing is who they say they are. Indiana is not Colorado. It has no ski-town vacancy paradox, no resort economy hollowed out by second homes. Its housing pressure comes from a different set of forces - frozen wages against rising rents, an eviction system tilted toward filing, Wall Street landlords, university enrollment booms, factory-town boom-bust cycles, and a Rust Belt inheritance of both abandonment and renewed demand. But the math comes out the same place it does everywhere else: the people who keep these communities running are increasingly unable to afford to live in them.

This report consolidates research across 12 Indiana counties spanning the state's major metros. Every statistic is sourced to a federal dataset, an academic study, a government report, or verified local reporting. The goal is the same as it was in Colorado and Utah: present the reality of housing in Indiana with the rigor it deserves, so that the people affected - and the people in a position to help - can see the full picture.

The data speaks for itself.

---

Indiana: The Big Picture

Before examining individual counties, the statewide numbers frame the scale of the problem.

Statewide Housing and Population

Wages vs. Housing Costs

Cost-Burdened Renters and the Affordability Gap

Homelessness

A note on what these numbers establish. Indiana's statewide 2BR Fair Market Rent is far below the national average, and its homeownership rate is among the highest in the country. By the headline metrics, Indiana is affordable. But affordability is a ratio, not a price. With a minimum wage frozen at $7.25 for 16 years, the median renter household earning the lowest income in the Midwest, and 14 of the 20 largest occupations in the state paying below the wage required to afford a two-bedroom, the gap that defines a housing crisis is present here too. It just wears different clothes.

---

Indianapolis Metro

Indianapolis is the center of gravity. Marion County alone holds nearly a million people, and the nine-county Indianapolis-Carmel HUD Metro Fair Market Rent Area is the single largest rental market in the state. It is also where Indiana's two most distinctive housing stories live: one of the highest eviction-filing rates in the nation, and one of the most heavily institutionalized single-family rental markets in the country. This is the baseline against which the rest of the state is measured in this report.

---

Marion County

Principal City: Indianapolis (state capital) Population (2024 est.): 981,628 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 441,040 | Occupied: ~400,432 (90.8%) | Vacant: 40,608 (9.2%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 173,991 (43.5% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $66,346 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Marion County is the most renter-heavy major county in the state - 43.5 percent of occupied homes are rented, well above the statewide 29.4 percent. It is also the epicenter of Indiana's eviction and investor-ownership stories.

Rent Data (Indianapolis-Carmel HMFA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +55.7% ($946 to $1,473)
• The FY2023-to-FY2024 jump of +26.7% reflects a one-time HUD recalibration to post-pandemic market data; FY2025 corrected slightly downward, and FY2026 resumed climbing with a +14.8% increase to $1,473. Indianapolis-Carmel is a mandatory Small Area FMR (SAFMR) area, so voucher payment standards are set by ZIP code; the $1,473 figure is the area-wide 2BR FMR and the correct headline basis for this report. - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)

Wages vs. Housing

The Eviction Crisis

Amy Nelson, executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana, put it plainly: "We are just evicting so many people." She traces the pattern to policy as much as price: "Over the past 10 years, our Indiana General Assembly is just passing a number of laws that have all been friendly to the industry." - WFYI

Wall Street's Rental Market

The institutional concentration is not abstract. When the Fair Housing Center traced eviction filings by owner, it found the five largest out-of-state single-family-rental owners increased their filings 136 percent from 2021 to 2022, more than four times the countywide rate of increase. - WFYI / FHCCI A 2024 settlement required one large operator, Progress Residential, to pay restitution to tenants and meet stronger habitability terms. - WTHR

vs. baseline: Marion County is the baseline for this report. At 50.9 percent of renters cost-burdened and a derived 156 hours per week of minimum-wage work to afford a two-bedroom at the FY2026 Fair Market Rent, it sets a high bar that several smaller Indiana counties - especially the college towns - actually exceed.

---

Hamilton County

Key Cities: Carmel, Fishers, Noblesville, Westfield Population (2024 est.): 379,704 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 144,746 | Occupied: ~137,252 (94.8%) | Vacant: 7,494 (5.2%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 32,836 (23.9% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $121,530 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Hamilton County is the affluent counterweight to Marion. Carmel and Fishers consistently rank among the wealthiest and fastest-growing suburbs in the Midwest, and the county's housing numbers reflect it: the lowest poverty rate, highest income, and highest homeownership rate of any county in this study.

Key Data

Hamilton County is where Indiana's investor-ownership backlash turned into policy. In April 2025, the Fishers City Council voted 9-0 to cap rental homes at 10 percent of a neighborhood, and Carmel introduced its own version the same period. Mayor Scott Fadness framed it as long-term stewardship of the city's neighborhoods: "It's one thing to build a great city. It's quite another thing to maintain a great city." - IBJ State lawmakers responded almost immediately by adding preemption language to House Bill 1389 to block local rental caps. - WTHR

vs. Indianapolis: Even the wealthiest county in the state has 42.3 percent of its renters cost-burdened - only 8 points below Marion. Affluence raises the floor for owners; it does little for the renters who remain.

---

The College Towns

Three of Indiana's sharpest renter-affordability squeezes are not in its biggest cities - they are in its university counties. Monroe (Indiana University), Tippecanoe (Purdue), and Delaware (Ball State) all carry large student-renter populations that compress the bottom of the rental market and push cost-burden rates above even Indianapolis. The pattern is consistent: enrollment grows, purpose-built student housing prices high, and the local workforce competes with students for what remains.

---

Monroe County

Principal City: Bloomington (Indiana University, ~47,000 students) Population (2024 est.): 140,702 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 65,657 | Occupied: ~59,236 (90.2%) | Vacant: 6,421 (9.8%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 27,269 (46.0% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $65,868 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Monroe County has the highest renter cost-burden rate in this study. With Indiana University anchoring a city of roughly 80,000 permanent residents and tens of thousands of students, 46 percent of occupied homes are rented and the market for those rentals is structurally tight.

Rent Data (Bloomington HMFA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +37.7% ($879 to $1,210), the smallest cumulative increase among the metros in this study
• Bloomington's FY2025 2BR FMR was more expensive than 84% of all FMR areas nationally; its FY2026 figure eased back slightly to $1,210. - RentData.org, HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)

Key Data

Bloomington's planning director, David Hittle, connected the city's permitting timeline directly to rent: longer approval delays mean "the more cost there is for developers," a cost passed downstream to renters and buyers. - Indiana Daily Student The poverty rate of 19.7 percent is partly a student-income artifact, but the 60.6 percent cost-burden rate is the highest in this study and reflects a real squeeze on the non-student workforce who share the same rental pool.

vs. Indianapolis: Monroe County's renter cost-burden (60.6%) runs nearly 10 points above Marion County's (50.9%), despite a lower Fair Market Rent. The difference is income: a student-heavy renter base with very little earning power competing for a limited supply.

---

Tippecanoe County

Principal Cities: Lafayette and West Lafayette (Purdue University) Population (2024 est.): 191,650 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 80,647 | Occupied: ~75,808 (94.0%) | Vacant: 4,839 (6.0%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 35,338 (46.6% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $60,636 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Tippecanoe County has the highest renter share of any county in this study - 46.6 percent - driven by Purdue's record-breaking enrollment. The university's growth has outpaced its housing.

Rent Data (Lafayette-West Lafayette HMFA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +48.4% ($837 to $1,242)
• The Lafayette-West Lafayette FY2025 2BR FMR was more expensive than 78% of all FMR areas nationally; its FY2026 figure rose to $1,242. - RentData.org, HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)

Key Data

Purdue's growth forced a structural response. For the 2025-26 year the university launched a housing lottery, prioritizing residence-hall beds for freshmen and pushing upperclassmen toward apartments, because the number of students had outgrown the number of beds. - Fox59 One Purdue senior described the downstream effect on the private market: "My place last year raised rent a lot so I had to move and that is happening with a lot of people." - Fox59

vs. Indianapolis: Like Monroe, Tippecanoe carries a higher renter cost-burden (59.3%) than Marion County, again on a lower Fair Market Rent. The two college counties are the clearest evidence in the state that affordability is about the gap between rent and income, not the rent number alone.

---

Delaware County

Principal City: Muncie (Ball State University) Population (2024 est.): 112,951 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 51,635 | Occupied: ~46,256 (89.6%) | Vacant: 5,379 (10.4%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 15,505 (33.5% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $58,127 (lowest in this study) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Delaware County is the most affordable rental market in this study by Fair Market Rent, and also the lowest-income. Muncie has historically had ample, inexpensive student housing - the off-campus market is well-supplied - but the county's low median income still leaves half its renters cost-burdened.

Rent Data (Muncie MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +39.6% ($747 to $1,043). Muncie's FY2026 2BR FMR crossed $1,000 for the first time.

Key Data

Even where rent is cheapest in the state, half of renters are cost-burdened and nearly a third are severely cost-burdened. Muncie is the clearest illustration of Indiana's central paradox: low rents do not equal affordability when wages are lower still.

vs. Indianapolis: Muncie's 2BR FMR ($1,043) is 29 percent below Indianapolis's ($1,473), yet its severe cost-burden rate (30.6%) is higher than Marion County's (26.1%). The cheapest market in the study is not the most affordable.

---

The Rust Belt North

Northern Indiana carries the inheritance of its industrial century: aging housing stock, cities that lost population when the steel and manufacturing economy contracted, and the twin problems that come with that history. In some places - Gary above all - the crisis is abandonment, with thousands of structures empty and awaiting demolition. In others - the Lake County suburbs in the Chicago commuter belt, the RV boomtowns of Elkhart - the crisis is renewed demand against a supply that never recovered. Vacancy and scarcity coexist here, sometimes within the same county.

---

St. Joseph County

Principal City: South Bend (University of Notre Dame) Population (2024 est.): 273,744 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 118,580 | Occupied: ~107,252 (90.4%) | Vacant: 11,328 (9.6%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 33,230 (31.0% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $66,868 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

South Bend is the larger story of northern Indiana's reindustrialization push, anchored by the University of Notre Dame and a downtown that has drawn new investment. Its rental market is moderate by the standards of this study, but Notre Dame's residency rules and high-priced purpose-built housing push upperclassmen into a tight off-campus market.

Rent Data (South Bend-Mishawaka HMFA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +53.8% ($840 to $1,292). The +18.0% FY2025-to-FY2026 jump is the largest single-year increase of any metro in this study.

Key Data

vs. Indianapolis: South Bend tracks close to the statewide average on cost-burden (49.1%) and sits below Indianapolis on rent, though its FY2026 Fair Market Rent ($1,292) closed much of that gap with the single largest one-year jump in the study (+18.0%). Its housing pressure is more about quality and age of stock than raw price, a recurring northern-Indiana theme.

---

Lake County

Key Cities: Gary, Hammond, East Chicago, Merrillville, Crown Point, Schererville Population (2024 est.): 502,955 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 217,436 | Occupied: ~195,130 (89.7%) | Vacant: 22,306 (10.3%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 55,274 (28.3% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $71,493 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Lake County is the second most populous county in the state and the most internally divided. It contains both Gary - a city that has lost nearly 60 percent of its peak population, with thousands of structures awaiting demolition - and the fast-growing southern suburbs in the Chicago commuter belt, where Illinois families fleeing higher property taxes have driven prices up.

Rent Data (Gary HMFA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +43.6% ($917 to $1,317)

Key Data

Gary's vacancy is not the resort-town vacancy of the Mountain West - it is abandonment. The city has cycled through demolition blitzes, razing 35 blighted structures in the Aetna neighborhood in 2024 and returning for a second year of demolitions in 2025. - City of Gary, NWI Times Mayor Eddie Melton, after one demolition push: "I believe after we finish today, Aetna will be nearly blight free." - NWI Times

Meanwhile, in the southern half of the county, the story inverts. Pete Novak, CEO of the Northwest Indiana Realtors Association, described a market starved of supply: "We saw declining sales and increasing prices. It was pretty much the same because of low inventory." - NWI Times New South Shore Line commuter rail - the Double Track project and the 7.8-mile West Lake Corridor extension into Hammond and Dyer - is expanding Chicago commute access and, with it, demand. - Federal Transit Administration (PDF)

vs. Indianapolis: Lake County's renter cost-burden (52.3%) slightly exceeds Indianapolis's, and it does so while thousands of housing units sit vacant. It is the state's sharpest example of vacancy and scarcity occupying the same map.

---

Elkhart County

Key Cities: Elkhart, Goshen Population (2024 est.): 207,436 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 80,493 | Occupied: ~72,309 (89.8%) | Vacant: 8,184 (10.2%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 20,560 (28.4% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $68,561 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Elkhart County is the "RV Capital of the World," and its housing market moves with the recreational-vehicle business cycle. When the industry booms, Elkhart has posted some of the lowest metro unemployment rates in the country - at its tightest, under 1 percent - and worker housing becomes the binding constraint. When it busts, the whole local economy contracts with it.

Rent Data (Elkhart-Goshen MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +44.8% ($817 to $1,183). The FY2026 increase of +12.1% more than reversed the FY2025 dip, a swing in keeping with the area's boom-bust pattern.

Key Data

The boom-bust volatility is visible in the numbers: the Elkhart-Goshen jobless rate swung from a sub-2.5 percent trough to 4.4 percent in 2024 as RV demand cooled, then tightened again. - Indiana Business Research Center The Michiana Area Council of Governments documents the resulting gap between the county's median listing price and what a household earning the median income can actually afford. - MACOG Elkhart County Housing Needs Assessment

vs. Indianapolis: Elkhart's cost-burden (47.9%) sits just below the statewide rate and well below Indianapolis. Its distinguishing feature is not the level of housing cost but its instability - a rental market whipsawed by a single industry's cycle.

---

The Other Metros

Three more of Indiana's metro areas round out the picture: Fort Wayne, the state's second-largest city; Evansville, the southwestern hub on the Ohio River; and Columbus, the manufacturing town anchored by Cummins. Each shows the same underlying pattern in a different register.

---

Allen County

Principal City: Fort Wayne (second-largest city in Indiana) Population (2024 est.): 399,295 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 166,285 | Occupied: ~156,570 (94.2%) | Vacant: 9,715 (5.8%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 48,745 (31.1% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $70,737 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Fort Wayne posted one of the largest cumulative Fair Market Rent increases of any metro in this study through FY2025 - and on one of the lowest starting bases - before a sharp FY2026 correction pulled it back down.

Rent Data (Fort Wayne MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +45.1% ($767 to $1,113). Fort Wayne ran up the fastest of any metro through FY2025 (+56.3% to $1,199) before HUD's FY2026 figure corrected down 7.2% to $1,113, the largest single-year decline in this study.
• The Fort Wayne FY2025 2BR FMR was more expensive than 80% of all FMR areas nationally before the FY2026 pullback. - RentData.org

Key Data

Fort Wayne still illustrates Indiana's "costs up, wages flat" pattern, even after a single-year reversal. Its 2BR Fair Market Rent ran up 56.3 percent from FY2020 to FY2025, then HUD's FY2026 figure corrected back down 7.2 percent to $1,113 - leaving a still-large +45.1 percent gain over the full window while the state minimum wage did not move at all. The same workers who could afford the FY2020 rent on a given number of hours still need substantially more of them.

vs. Indianapolis: Fort Wayne's rent is lower and its cost-burden rate (46.4%) is below Marion County's. After leading the state in rent growth through FY2025, its FY2026 figure was one of only two in the study to fall - a reminder that HUD's annual recalibration cuts both ways.

---

Vanderburgh County

Principal City: Evansville (third-largest city in Indiana) Population (2024 est.): 180,387 - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Total Housing Units: 85,319 | Occupied: ~78,270 (91.7%) | Vacant: 7,049 (8.3%) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25002 Renter Households: 27,367 (35.0% of occupied) - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B25003 Median Household Income: $61,648 - Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year, B19013

Evansville is southwestern Indiana's economic anchor, sitting on the Ohio River at the Kentucky border. Its rental market is among the most affordable in the study, and its cost-burden rate sits just below the state average.

Rent Data (Evansville IN-KY MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +40.4% ($793 to $1,113)

Key Data

vs. Indianapolis: Evansville is a smaller, more affordable version of the statewide pattern - its FY2026 2BR Fair Market Rent of $1,113 (tied with Fort Wayne for the second-lowest in the study, behind only Muncie) sits well under Indianapolis while nearly half of its renters are cost-burdened.

---

Bartholomew County

Principal City: Columbus (Cummins Inc. headquarters) Population (2024 est.): reported in STATS Indiana's county totals - STATS Indiana / Census PEP Vintage 2024 Defining feature: Manufacturing hub; global headquarters of Cummins Inc.

Columbus punches above its size economically - it is the headquarters of Cummins, a Fortune 500 manufacturer - and its rental market is correspondingly tight for a city of its scale.

Rent Data (Columbus MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative increase FY2020-FY2026: +61.5% ($876 to $1,415), the largest in this study
• The Columbus FY2026 2BR FMR ($1,415) is the second-highest in this study, behind only Indianapolis. Its FY2025 figure already ranked above 84% of all FMR areas nationally. - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary), RentData.org

Key Data

Columbus is a reminder that a strong single-employer economy does not insulate a community from housing pressure. Its 2BR Fair Market Rent is the second-highest in the study, behind only Indianapolis, and a minimum-wage worker would need a derived 150 hours per week to afford it. (County-level ACS figures for Bartholomew were outside the core data pull; see Notes and limitations.)

vs. Indianapolis: Columbus trails Indianapolis by just $58 on Fair Market Rent ($1,415 vs $1,473) despite being a fraction of its size, and over FY2020-FY2026 its rent climbed faster than any metro in the study - the manufacturing-town squeeze in miniature.

---

Indiana Metros at a Glance

2BR FMRs in this table are HUD's published FY2026 figures, confirmed against the live HUD FY2026 documentation system (Indiana state summary). Housing wages are derived from each area's FY2026 2BR FMR using the NLIHC formula (2BR FMR x 12 / 624); the NLIHC Out of Reach 2026 per-area table (not yet released as of June 2026) will be the confirmation source. The statewide 2BR Housing Wage of $22.18/hr is cited directly from NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 and remains on the FY2025 basis until the 2026 edition publishes. All hours-per-week figures use the Indiana minimum wage of $7.25/hr.

---

Six Themes Across the Data

Across 12 counties and 10 metro Fair Market Rent areas, six patterns repeat. They are not the themes of a ski state or a coastal state - they are Indiana's own.

1. Costs Up, Wages Frozen

Indiana's minimum wage has been $7.25 an hour - the federal floor - since 2009, unchanged for 16 years. - WRTV Over the same window, Fair Market Rents rose by roughly 40 to more than 60 percent across every metro in the state. The result is the starkest version of the "hours at minimum wage" math anywhere in this research series.

The data (cumulative 2BR FMR change, FY2020-FY2026):

• Columbus: +61.5% ($876 to $1,415) - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)
• Indianapolis-Carmel: +55.7% ($946 to $1,473) - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)
• South Bend-Mishawaka: +53.8% ($840 to $1,292) - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)
• Lafayette-West Lafayette: +48.4% ($837 to $1,242) - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)
• Fort Wayne: +45.1% ($767 to $1,113, after peaking at $1,199 in FY2025) - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)

A statewide minimum-wage worker needs 122 hours a week - more than three full-time jobs - to afford a two-bedroom at Fair Market Rent. - NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 Indiana's median renter household earns $43,672, last in the Midwest, and 14 of the state's 20 largest occupations pay below the Housing Wage. - Housing4Hoosiers / Prosperity Indiana The operator hypothesis that "costs went up, wages didn't" is not just confirmed in Indiana - it is the dominant fact of the state's housing story.

2. The Eviction Machine

Marion County's eviction-filing rate is among the highest in the country. Landlords filed over 25,000 evictions in a single year, the filing rate reached 14.2 per 100 renter households, and Indianapolis ranks 6th of the 27 cities tracked by Princeton's Eviction Lab. - WFYI / Eviction Lab, Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana (PDF)

The data:

• 116,489 cumulative filings, January 2021 to September 2025 - FHCCI (PDF)
• Indiana ranks 3rd of 10 tracked states, with roughly 70,000 filings per year - WFYI / Eviction Lab
• The highest-rate neighborhood, International Marketplace, hit 38 filings per 100 renter households - FHCCI (PDF)

The Fair Housing Center ties the volume to a legislative environment it describes as industry-friendly. - WFYI An eviction filing - even one that does not end in removal - leaves a record that follows a renter into their next application. In a market without a trusted way to carry a clean rental history forward, that record becomes a permanent barrier.

3. Wall Street Bought the Block

Indianapolis is one of the most institutionally owned single-family-rental markets in the country. Investors own 48 percent of the single-family rentals in Marion County, and the largest owners are eviction-filing at rates rising far faster than the market.

The data:

• 28,131 of 58,554 Marion County single-family rentals (48%) are investor-owned - FHCCI (PDF)
• 7 companies own 1,000+ homes each; Progress Residential alone owns 2,826 - FHCCI
• The five largest out-of-state owners increased eviction filings 136% from 2021 to 2022, versus 30% countywide - WFYI / FHCCI
• Fishers capped neighborhood rentals at 10% (9-0 vote); the state moved to preempt local caps via HB 1389 - IBJ, WTHR

When the entity on the other side of a lease is a private-equity-backed portfolio managed from out of state, the renter's leverage and the renter's recourse both shrink. This is a trust problem as much as a price problem.

4. The College-Town Squeeze

Indiana's two highest renter cost-burden rates are not in its biggest city - they are in its two largest university counties. Monroe (Indiana University) and Tippecanoe (Purdue) both exceed Indianapolis, on lower Fair Market Rents, because their renter base has the least earning power and the most competition.

The data:

• Monroe County: 60.6% of renters cost-burdened, 35.8% severely - Census ACS 2020-2024, B25070
• Tippecanoe County: 59.3% cost-burdened, 30.2% severely - Census ACS 2020-2024, B25070
• Purdue hit a record 58,009 enrollment and launched a 2025 housing lottery because beds ran short - Fox59
• Bloomington median single-family sale price rose 37.6% in a year, to $375,000 - Indiana Daily Student

Students cycle through, but the workers who staff these university towns do not - and they compete in the same compressed rental pool. A portable, verified rental history matters most exactly here, where a quarter of the renter population turns over every year.

5. The Factory-Town Whipsaw

Indiana is one of the most manufacturing-dependent states in the country, and in places like Elkhart that dependence translates directly into housing volatility. The RV Capital has posted some of the lowest metro unemployment rates in the nation during booms - and then watched its jobless rate nearly double in a downturn.

The data:

• Elkhart-Goshen unemployment swung from a sub-2.5% trough to 4.4% in 2024 as RV demand cooled - Indiana Business Research Center
• 2025 national RV shipments projected near 350,000 units, the cycle that drives Elkhart's labor demand - Indiana Business Research Center
• Columbus, anchored by Cummins, carries the second-highest 2BR FMR in the study ($1,415, FY2026) and its largest cumulative increase (+61.5% since FY2020) - HUD FY2026 FMR (IN state summary)

When an entire local housing market rises and falls with one industry's order book, the speed of finding (or leaving) housing becomes an economic constraint of its own. Workers arriving for a boom need to be housed fast; the same workers need flexibility when the cycle turns.

6. The Rust Belt's Two Problems

Northern Indiana holds vacancy and scarcity at the same time. Gary has thousands of empty, condemned structures; the Lake County suburbs an hour south have a supply shortage and rising prices driven by Chicago commuters. The same county can be emptying and overheating at once.

The data:

• Gary: 4,000-5,000 structures await demolition after losing ~60% of peak population - HuffPost
• Lake County overall: 10.3% vacancy rate, yet 52.3% of renters cost-burdened - Census ACS 2020-2024, B25002 and B25070
• Northwest Indiana median home price reached $250,000 in 2024 amid low inventory - NWI Times
• New West Lake Corridor commuter rail expands Chicago access into Hammond and Dyer - Federal Transit Administration (PDF)

A vacant house in Gary is not available housing - it is condemned, uninsurable, or mid-demolition. The lesson of the Rust Belt is that raw vacancy counts mislead: what matters is housing that is safe, legal, and connected to the people who need it.

---

The Hidden Capacity: Rooms That Could Exist

The data above documents the crisis. But embedded in it is the same opportunity that surfaced in Colorado and Utah, wearing Indiana's particular clothes: there is housing capacity in these communities that could be unlocked, if the infrastructure existed to connect it safely.

Vacancy That Is Not Availability

Indiana has 260,559 vacant housing units statewide, an 8.8 percent vacancy rate. - Census ACS 2020-2024, B25002 But vacancy in Indiana is not the locked-up second-home vacancy of the Mountain West. A large share of it is the abandonment of the Rust Belt - Gary alone has thousands of structures awaiting demolition - and another share is ordinary market churn. The capacity worth unlocking is not the condemned house; it is the spare room, the legal accessory unit, the small landlord's vacant duplex unit sitting empty because listing it to a stranger feels too risky.

The Trust Gap: Why Available Rooms Stay Empty

In a state where corporate landlords run roughly half the single-family rental stock in its largest county and eviction filings run into the tens of thousands a year, the small landlord and the individual renter both operate at a trust deficit. The informal channels people actually use - Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, word of mouth - carry no verification of who is on the other side.

• A renter with a prior eviction filing, even a dismissed one, carries a scarlet letter into every new application, with no trusted way to present the full context. - FHCCI (PDF)
• A small landlord with one spare unit faces the risk of renting to someone they cannot verify - and often chooses to leave it empty instead.
• A student moving to Bloomington or West Lafayette sight-unseen sends a deposit to a landlord they have never met, in a market tight enough that scams thrive on urgency. - Indiana Daily Student

The Demand Signal

When trusted, affordable housing does appear in Indiana, the demand is immediate and overwhelming. The state is short roughly 138,137 rental homes affordable and available to its extremely low income renters, and 74 percent of those renters are severely cost-burdened. - NLIHC The Gap (Indiana) Indianapolis homelessness rose to its highest point since 2021. - Mirror Indy The demand exists. In much of the state, some of the supply exists too. What is missing is the trusted infrastructure to connect them.

---

Why This Matters

The data across these 12 counties paints a clear picture: Indiana's housing crisis is not the affordability fairytale the state's reputation suggests. It is a real crisis with a Midwestern face - frozen wages against rising rents, an eviction system that files on tens of thousands of households a year, Wall Street landlords, university towns squeezing their own workforces, factory towns whipsawed by single-industry cycles, and a Rust Belt holding vacancy and scarcity in the same hand.

The numbers point to several conclusions.

Affordability is a ratio, not a price. Indiana has some of the lowest Fair Market Rents in the country and one of the highest homeownership rates. It also has a minimum wage frozen at $7.25 for 16 years, the lowest median renter income in the Midwest, and renter cost-burden rates above 50 percent in its largest and its university counties. Low rent does not mean affordable rent when wages are lower still.

Indiana genuinely needs more affordable homes. The state is short roughly 138,137 rental homes affordable and available to its extremely low income renters, and 74 percent of those renters are severely cost-burdened. - NLIHC The Gap (Indiana) That gap is real, and closing it takes policy, investment, and construction. But construction moves slowly, and a large part of Indiana's problem is not a missing building - it is housing that already exists sitting out of reach of the people who need it: the spare room that never gets listed, the small landlord's empty duplex unit, the renter shut out by a single filing on their record.

Trust is how more of that housing comes online. When 48 percent of a county's single-family rentals are corporate-owned, when 25,000 eviction filings a year leave permanent marks on renters' records, and when the channels people use to find housing carry no verification, the scarce resource is not only affordable units - it is trust. The small landlord with one empty unit leaves it empty rather than hand it to someone they cannot verify. The renter with a dismissed filing has no trusted way to tell the whole story. Where that trust is missing, the room never gets listed and the application never gets a fair read.

Verification turns hidden capacity into housing. Verified listings, verified landlords, verified renters, and a portable rental history a renter actually controls - in a market this tilted, these are not nice-to-haves. They are what lets a hesitant owner say yes, and what lets a renter commit. The demand is already there: when trusted, affordable housing appears in Indiana it is claimed immediately, and Indianapolis homelessness has climbed to its highest point since 2021. - Mirror Indy

This is where you come in. If you rent in Indiana, the moves you make now - getting verified, building a track record a landlord can actually check, carrying a rental history that travels honestly into your next application - put you a few steps ahead in a market that rewards exactly that. And if you own a spare room or a vacant unit, the same trust that protects you is what lets you open it to a neighbor instead of leaving it empty.

That is why Rookd exists. Not to replace the affordable homes Indiana still needs to build - that takes policy and construction. But to unlock the housing that already exists, by making trust something you can prove: a way to verify that the listing is real, the landlord is legitimate, the person you are sharing a home with is who they say they are, and that a renter's history follows them honestly from one application to the next.

In Indianapolis, that means giving a renter with a dismissed eviction filing a verified record that tells the whole story. In Bloomington and West Lafayette, it means a portable rental history a graduating student can carry to the next city. In Gary, it means connecting a safe, legal unit to the family that needs it without either side gambling on a stranger. In Fort Wayne and Columbus, where rents are climbing fastest, it means transparency about what a home actually costs before the deposit changes hands.

The more trust we unlock, the more rooms come online. In a market this tilted, that is not a small thing. It is the lever.

---

Methodology and Notes

Data sources and verification

Every figure in this report draws from a federal dataset, a state agency, an academic study, a government report, or named local reporting, with an inline source on each numeric claim so any figure can be checked independently. The federal data was verified against the live federal sources: the per-metro 2BR Fair Market Rents against HUD's published FY2026 schedule and the live HUD FY2026 documentation system; the statewide housing-wage, affordability-gap, and cost-burden figures against NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 and NLIHC The Gap; and all units, vacancy, tenure, median rent, income, cost-burden, and poverty figures against the Census ACS 2020-2024 5-year release. Local journalism and narrative figures (evictions, institutional ownership, college-town rents, RV-cycle unemployment, Gary demolition, homelessness counts) are sourced to named outlets inline as a cross-check on the federal data, not a substitute for it.

Data provenance

• HUD Fair Market Rent (FY2020-FY2025): Live-fetched from RentData.org per-area, per-year pages (URLs cited inline). FY2026 2BR FMRs (the current headline figure for each metro) were taken from HUD's published FY2026 schedule and confirmed against the live HUD FY2026 documentation system (Indiana state summary). RentData.org had not yet published its FY2026 per-area pages at the time of this revision (those URLs returned HTTP 404), so the FY2026 figures cite the HUD source directly. Note: Indianapolis-Carmel is a mandatory Small Area FMR (SAFMR) area; the $1,473 figure is the area-wide 2BR FMR (the correct headline basis), while actual voucher payment standards there are set by ZIP code.
• NLIHC Out of Reach 2025: The statewide figures (2BR Housing Wage $22.18, 2BR FMR $1,153, 122 hours/week, renter households, income needed) were live-fetched from nlihc.org/oor/state/in and are internally consistent (the state 2BR FMR of $1,153 yields exactly the $22.18 housing wage via the NLIHC formula). These statewide figures remain on the FY2025 basis: NLIHC's Out of Reach 2026 edition had not been released as of June 2026. NLIHC publishes its Housing Wage at the statewide level; its per-metro Out of Reach values for FY2026 were not yet available and the older per-metro figures did not reconcile cleanly with each area's own verified FMR. So the per-metro 2BR Housing Wages in this report are derived from each area's HUD FY2026 2BR FMR using the NLIHC formula (2BR FMR x 12 / 624). They are computed figures, not quoted from NLIHC; the NLIHC Out of Reach 2026 per-area table will be the confirmation source once it publishes. Because the derived per-metro wages now sit on the FY2026 FMR basis while the statewide $22.18 remains FY2025-based, the two are not directly comparable across vintages.
• NLIHC The Gap (Indiana): Live-fetched from nlihc.org/gap/state/in: 34 affordable/available homes per 100 ELI renters, ~138,137-unit ELI shortage, 210,668 ELI renter households, 74% severely cost-burdened. Prosperity Indiana cites a closely related figure (139,318) from a slightly different cut of the same 2024 Gap dataset; the two differ only by which cut of that dataset is used.
• Census ACS: All county and statewide units, vacancy, tenure, median gross rent, median household income, cost-burden, and poverty figures are from the ACS 2020-2024 5-year release (tables B25001, B25002, B25003, B25064, B19013, B25070, B17001), retrieved via Census Reporter's ACS API. Note the vintage: this is the newest 5-year release and supersedes the ACS 2019-2023 vintage cited in the Colorado and Utah reports. Values and the 2020-2024 vintage label were confirmed against data.census.gov (table URLs cited inline use the ACSDT5Y2024 / ACSDP5Y2024 identifiers). FIPS codes: Marion 18097, Hamilton 18057, Allen 18003, Monroe 18105, Tippecanoe 18157, St. Joseph 18141, Lake 18089, Vanderburgh 18163, Elkhart 18039, Delaware 18035.
• Population: Census Population Estimates Program (PEP) Vintage 2024, via STATS Indiana. Labeled as PEP estimates, not ACS or Decennial.
• Local journalism and narrative figures (evictions, institutional ownership, college-town rents, RV-cycle unemployment, Gary demolition, NWI prices, homelessness PIT counts): sourced to named outlets and reports inline. These are the journalism cross-check, not a substitute for the federal data itself.

Notes and limitations

A few figures are deliberately scoped or held back, noted here for transparency:

1. Per-metro 2BR Housing Wages are derived, not quoted. Each is computed from the area's confirmed HUD FY2026 2BR FMR using the NLIHC formula (2BR FMR x 12 / 624). The NLIHC Out of Reach 2026 per-area table will provide the published cross-check once it releases; the statewide $22.18 Housing Wage is quoted directly from NLIHC Out of Reach 2025.
2. Bartholomew County (Columbus) ACS figures (population, units, vacancy, tenure, rent, cost-burden, poverty) were outside the core ACS pull, so the Columbus section reports HUD Fair Market Rent and the derived Housing Wage only.
3. Progress Residential settlement dollar figure is not reported here; the settlement is described by its terms (restitution and habitability obligations), not a dollar amount.
4. Homelessness point-in-time counts cited are the Indianapolis/Marion County CoC; the statewide IHCDA Balance-of-State total is not included.
5. University enrollment context (Indiana University Bloomington ~47,000; Notre Dame and Ball State) is given as approximate enrollment scale, not an exact official headcount.

Formula notes

• HUD Fair Market Rent represents the 40th percentile of area rents; actual market rents are often higher.
• FMR fiscal years begin October 1 of the prior calendar year (FY2026 applies from October 1, 2025).
• NLIHC Housing Wage = (2BR FMR x 12) / 2,080, equivalently 2BR FMR x 12 / 624 expressed against a 30%-of-income affordability standard. Hours per week at minimum wage = (Housing Wage / $7.25) x 40.
• Several Indiana metros (Indianapolis, South Bend, Gary, Evansville, Elkhart) showed a genuine FY2024-to-FY2025 decline in 2BR FMR; FY2024 was an unusually high recalibration year for many Indiana areas. In the FY2025-to-FY2026 update, two areas declined - Bloomington (-1.1%) and Fort Wayne (-7.2%) - while South Bend-Mishawaka rose the most (+18.0%). All FY2026 figures sit above HUD's floor (FY2026 cannot fall below 90% of FY2025) and are present in the live HUD data, not transcription errors.

---

Complete Source Index

Federal Data

State and Regional

Eviction and Investor Research

News and Reporting

---

This report was researched and compiled by John Cronin, founder of Rookd - a verified housing platform. Every statistic in this report includes a named source and verifiable URL. No data was fabricated. The per-metro 2BR Fair Market Rents are locked to HUD's published FY2026 figures and confirmed against the live HUD FY2026 documentation system.

Last updated: June 2026. Data covers 12 Indiana counties across the Indianapolis metro, the college towns, the Rust Belt north, and the southern and northeastern metros.