Madden & Clouse: Wicked problems and the people who work to solve them

Health. Housing. Food. Three essential needs, and yet, securing them is a wicked problem for many Hoosiers.

According to Columbia University, wicked problems are complex, persistent and resistant public policy problems. Wicked problems require innovative leaders and a patchwork of approaches; cue, Indiana Justice Project and its Executive Director, Adam Mueller.

IJP is a non-profit, non-partisan legal advocacy organization that focuses on health, housing and food insecurity. Mueller founded IJP four years ago following a 16-year stint at Indiana Legal Services providing direct service to low-income families. He started IJP with the goal of moving upstream to enact systems-level change, and according to Mueller, they “use every tool in their toolbox” to advance that goal.

IJP has pursued everything from thought leadership to impact litigation to promote access to healthcare.

Mueller recently published an op-ed on why Congress should extend the enhanced premium tax credits for health insurance, a key issue driving the most recent government shutdown.

Canceling the credits is estimated to increase a family of four’s healthcare expenses in Indianapolis by $265 a month. Shortly after its founding, IJP joined an amicus curiae brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County v. Talevski, where it successfully advocated to preserve Medicaid beneficiaries’ private right of action to enforce their right to access benefits.

Two primary social determinants of health are housing and food. As for housing, Mueller stressed that mothers and babies are the hardest hit by housing insecurity and over-represented in Indiana’s 70,000 yearly eviction cases.

In order to empower renters and those facing housing insecurity, IJP offers free Renters Know Your Rights Trainings to non-profit organizations, businesses and communities.

Training requests and additional tenant resources, like the Indiana Tenant Habitability Guide, can both be found on IJP’s website.

Mueller believes that well-informed residents can help hold landlords accountable to existing tenant protections and hold lawmakers accountable to common-sense policy changes.

In its effort to influence policy, alongside several partners, IJP recently issued a report on “How Indiana Courts are Fueling Our Eviction Crisis.” This report calls for court reform to slow down the eviction process and restore public confidence in the courts. Just this year, IJP’s policy advocacy efforts were met with success when Indiana amended its eviction record sealing law to allow automatic sealing in some circumstances.

The final leg of IJP’s advocacy stool is food justice. With significant SNAP benefit changes and delayed or withheld payments making headlines and with one in nine Indiana residents already facing food insecurity, IJP has stayed busy evaluating how the changes will impact Hoosiers and what IJP and other community partners can do to help.

For now, IJP is targeting administrative issues and serves as a watch dog for the regulators charged with implementing nutrition assistance programs. Leading this charge is Natalia Machicote, a full time Food Justice Fellow at IJP.

Machicote is driven by the mission, emphasizing, “food is a human right, and the need for affordable food is only increasing.

The current cuts and changes to SNAP undermine the essential role the program has had in combating hunger in our communities and supporting our local economy.” IJP’s guide to the 2025 cuts to Hoosier SNAP benefits is available on its website.

To serve these fundamental and ever-changing landscapes, IJP must strategically identify its priorities, partners and approach.

Mueller shared that IJP’s secret weapon is its open line of communication with direct legal service providers. Direct service providers encounter systems and process failures that policy advocates may not otherwise know about. Additionally, IJP partners with a number of organizations, including the National Health Law Program, Indiana University School of Medicine and Indiana Legal Services, which run the gamut of direct local service to national and interstate policy advocacy.

When discussing IJP’s partner approach to increasing access to justice, Mueller notes that its partners are all “playing the same game, just with different roles.”

While IJP targets up the chain on social justice issues, they also host a number of pro bono clinics alongside their partners and take on limited direct service clients, such as eviction sealing clinics.

This is where IJP volunteers can most readily be part of the solution to the wicked problems facing members of our community. Mueller notes that “there is a lot of chaos and uncertainty, but all lawyers have special skills.”

Volunteers who are practicing outside of their ordinary practice area can provide invaluable insights about policy abnormalities, which subject matter experts may have taken for granted.

IJP’s experience advocating for well-functioning systems serves its volunteers well, as co-author Cassidy Segura Clouse can confirm. In volunteer training, weighty legal issues are distilled into readily understandable processes and forms that ultimately make clinic attendees’ access to justice more understandable and efficient. Volunteers are covered by IJP’s malpractice insurance.

One of Mueller’s central philosophies is to “find friends where you can,” even (and perhaps particularly) where experience, discipline or political inclinations make for surprising friendships. If you are interested in working alongside or supporting IJP, please contact Adam and his team at indianajusticeproject.org.•

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Molly Madden and Cassidy Segura Clouse are associates in Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath’s Indianapolis office. Opinions expressed are those of the authors.