TAP Tenant Navigators as an essential infrastructure of care
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Dr. Patricia Basile
Tenant Navigators are a group of people who work in small claims courts to support tenants experiencing a process of eviction. In Indianapolis, the Tenant Navigators were part of the Tenant Advocacy Project (TAP), created by the City of Indianapolis in 2021 as part of tenant-assistance programs. Initially funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, this program was developed to address the increase of COVID-related evictions in Marion County. In partnership with non-profit legal service organizations and housed within the Housing Division of the Office of Public Health and Safety, the Tenant Advocacy Project (TAP) placed lawyers and Tenant Navigators in eviction courts to support and provide legal assistance to tenants going through the process of an eviction. In 2026, the City of Indianapolis partnered with the Lawrence Township Small Claims Court to merge their existing eviction diversion programs and create the "Indy Housing Stability Partnership."
The TAP Tenant Navigators
As part of a qualitative methods course I taught in the Fall 2022, students interviewed the TAP Tenant Navigators to understand their roles and approach to their jobs. Once the class ended, I continued the research project and interviewed individuals who were directly involved with the creation of TAP. Through our interviews and observations, we found that the Tenant Navigators go above and beyond to support tenants inside and beyond the spaces of eviction courts.
Tenant Navigators provided encouragement during a time of crisis for tenants, listening to their stories with care and respect and preparing tenants to talk to a lawyer for legal assistance. They challenged individualized and blaming narratives about evictions, highlighting the structural and historical nature of such types of processes for low-income renters. They listened to and empowered tenants to advocate for themselves since they were able to have conversations that just can't happen with a lawyer providing legal assistance. Their humanizing approach goes beyond the constraints of “client-facing” service relationships. They went out of their way to connect tenants to people or resources, and helped tenants go through the bureaucracies of getting access to available services. They approached evictions as a community-wide issue and attempted to weave a net of assistance for tenants.
Through these practices, the TAP Tenant Navigators were not only offering support, but also providing a space of care for tenants who were going through the difficult experiences of an eviction. Due to the widespread lack of rental assistance, the TAP Tenant Navigators did not necessarily have the power to prevent evictions for all tenants. However, they often worked with tenants and landlords to create a payment plan or find alternatives to have the eviction case dismissed. A previous evaluation of TAP done by the Indiana University Public Policy Institute found that, out of a sample of 2022 eviction filings, half of them were dismissed or avoided. Their work literally saved the court time and money. Importantly, they shaped the experiences of tenants attending the often dehumanizing spaces of the court with love and care.
Essential Infrastructure of Care
The main reason why the TAP Tenant Navigators put forward a framework of care and respect towards tenants is because of who they were: most of them are from or have deep ties to the communities they work to support and maintain together. Many have direct experience with the process of an eviction, and have personal understanding of its consequences to individuals, families, and communities. Overall, the TAP Tenant Navigators’ work weaved together relationships, their ties to communities, and connections to resources, forming an essential social and effective infrastructure of care for tenants.
An infrastructure of care is the network of people, relationships, and resources that work together to support individuals and communities through experiences and unjust systems — think of it as the human scaffolding that helps people survive and navigate challenging circumstances. In the context of eviction court, the TAP Tenant Navigators put forward this infrastructure by offering emotional support, practical help, and genuine human connection to tenants going through a dehumanizing process. Their care isn't just professional — it's deeply personal, rooted in their own identities and ties to the communities they serve, which is what makes it so powerful. At the same time, this infrastructure exists in tension: while it provides some immediate help, it is not enough since it does not address the systemic inequalities that tenants face every day and the power imbalances that exist in landlord-tenant relations in Indiana and beyond.
P.S.: This research is published as an article in an academic journal under the title “Tenant navigation as a critical infrastructure of care.” If you would like more information about this research or to have access to the academic article, please contact Dr. Patricia Basile at pdetole@iu.edu.