The Howard family is trying to flee anti-trans legislation in Texas, but is struggling to sell their house.
Peoria resident Katie Gallagher couldn’t compete with other, more aggressive buyers.
Bloomington-Normal native Deanna Theobald can’t find houses available long enough to put in an offer.
Anakin Fox and Syd Sterling are currently experiencing homelessness while struggling to secure a rental property.
These are the reasons why some people can't call Bloomington-Normal home. It’s becoming a common theme.
While each situation is unique, they represent a growing number of people unable to move to or continue living in the community, a section of the population whose attempts to create lives in Bloomington-Normal are being thwarted by an out-of-control market for both renters and buyers.
Nothing about this situation is new. It’s been a recurring narrative over the past few years because little has changed. New homes are being built, but nowhere near fast enough to keep up with demand.
Patrick Hoban, CEO of the Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council, said it’s getting worse. With the introduction of Rivian, the area went from being around 4,000 units short on housing to more than 8,000 units short.
The McLean County Regional Planning Commission recently launched the Housing Needs Survey, which will remain open through Nov. 27. It is anonymous and is meant to inform the state-funded Regional Housing Recovery Plan.
There's national recognition, too. In the Summer 2023 Wall Street Journal/Realtor.com Emerging Housing Markets Index, Bloomington ranked fourth. Just before that in the Spring 2023 Index, it ranked second. Both times, the median home listing price was over $330,000.
Average rent seems impossible to calculate. Zillow says it’s around $1,300. Apartments.com says it’s less than $900. Rent.com says it’s somewhere between $890 and just over $2,500.
The people being affected
It’s even harder to determine a reliable source of renter information when people like Fox and Sterling are biting on listings left and right only to be told later that units aren’t available after all.
“Those listings are rarely even accurate,” said Fox, who uses she/they pronouns.
Sterling, who uses he/they pronouns, added that for people who make minimum wage, like he and fiancé Fox, meeting income demands is tricky. Oftentimes, they’ll hear that the landlord or property management company requires monthly income to be four times the rent.
“It's not like a $600 place or something,” Sterling explained. “These places were also, you know, one bedroom, two bedroom. They're not big.”
Both make minimum wage. They’re “hustling,” Fox said.
“We do side gigs, we donate plasma, we do anything we can to make it,” Sterling added.
The couple said they are lucky to have a roof over their heads at all.
“If it wasn't for our friend,” Sterling said about the person who’s currently housing them, “we would have been in the car now.”
Beth and Wes Howard said they need to get out of Texas. One of their children is transgender, and the state banned gender-affirming care for minors as of September.
What the couple didn’t realize when they put their Denton home on the market was how long it would take to sell. The listing has been up for months. Meanwhile, the Bloomington-Normal market is still going strong.
“We're finding houses we like up there ... that we aren't in a position to put an offer on that get snatched up,” Wes Howard said.
The difference in market strength makes it hard for people like the Howards to get in on the action.
Stress and frustration mount
While the Howards wait in limbo, their stress grows.
At this point, the family is living under the anti-trans legislation that they were trying so hard to escape.
“We had wanted to be gone before those laws went into effect, and now, you know, we have to come up with a plan,” Wes Howard said.
Wes Howard said he is confronted daily with the reminder that he’s leaving behind the community his family has lived in for generations.
“I want to rip the band-aid off, but the housing market has not allowed me to rip the band-aid off,” he said. “Instead, I'm sitting here and looking at all this stuff and thinking about all this stuff and just slowly stewing.”
Wife Beth Howard said she feels like she can’t plan ahead for fear of disappointment.
“Do we look and fall in love with something and not be able to do anything about it? Or do we not look and then not be prepared?” she said are the questions they ask themselves. “We've had this sort of constant battle internally.”
For people who have preexisting mental health conditions like Fox and Sterling, the added stress of a tumultuous renting market compounds.
“It's not something that's like, irrelevant. It's do or die,” Fox said. “Like I need a place to stay. And so I feel like having that weight on your shoulders … it all compresses together and becomes one big problem.”
Longtime Bloomington-Normal resident Katie Gallagher was driven out of the area altogether. After constantly getting outbid by people offering large down payments on the houses she was interested in, she gave up on finding a place in her hometown. She’s now in Peoria.
“It was really stressful to find a home in a market that was so aggressive, especially with investment buyers,” Gallagher said.
She’s still part of the community — her job is in Bloomington-Normal — which has made the transition to Peoria “really hard.” Gallagher said it’s been better for her finances, though.
“Even with the increase in costs between gas and car maintenance, I am still saving money by not living in Bloomington-Normal anymore and by purchasing a home outside of the city,” she said.
Another local, Deanna Theobald, said she and her family have been trying to move back to Bloomington-Normal on and off for years now. The market has never been the same as what it was when they left, and now they’re not sure when or if they’ll be able to return.
“It's hard just to reconcile that dream or that goal that hey, the market just is horrible right now and the economy and just the world is just different than when I grew up,” Theobald said.
Why Bloomington-Normal
For people like Theobald, it’s not about a new job at Rivian — a large draw for much of the population recently — or Ferrero, or State Farm. It’s not about employment at all. Theobald, for example, works remote.
Settling down in Bloomington-Normal is about being around family and friends, and in a familiar place.
“It was never the plan to be here this long,” Theobald said about Colorado. “We're just so far away, and I think it's just more that we want to move back home and just feeling like we can't."
Theobald and her husband can also get support raising their kids.
Fox and Sterling are dead set on staying in Bloomington-Normal for the same reason: a built-in support system. They said they’ve considered places like Springfield or Lexington, with considerably cheaper rents, but Fox’s family is here.
“It's difficult to move somewhere else — to a new city or a new town or anything — and know that if something fails, there's nothing to fall back on,” Sterling said.
Wes Howard said he and his wife put an abundance of thought into where they could make their new home. They created spreadsheets and maps.
“If you imagine a Venn diagram of all the things we could afford and all of the things that had laws friendly to the situation we found ourselves in, central Illinois was the only thing that fit into both of those lists at the same time,” Wes Howard said.
More specifically, Bloomington-Normal.
Gallagher, who is trying to build up her life in Peoria now, said she misses the community.
"Whenever people come to visit me, I love to show them that David Davis Mansion, Ewing Manor," she said. "I love to take them on the Bloomington downtown strip to show them all the shops. It is truly something I enjoy and something I've always been very proud of — to be a resident of Bloomington-Normal — and it's been hard to know that I'm no longer a part of that."
To Fox, who was born and raised in Bloomington, she said it feels almost like she’s not wanted here.
“I love Bloomington-Normal — always have, probably always will — but it’s aged me because our local government doesn’t love us back,” she said.
What’s being done to help people find homes
Normal Town Council member Kathleen Lorenz said she’s unsurprised to hear of this happening, but that “it saddens” her to know people feel this way. It also frustrates her as a community leader.
“If we are actually a deterring community, that's not good at all,” she said.
Lorenz also said it’s important to remember that there are efforts going toward helping people in the community find housing. First and foremost, people who are housing insecure.
“In all of this, the most vulnerable, the people in our community, who maybe have the fewest choices, because of limitations in, you know, financial stability, or limitations in transportation they are the ones that are so adversely impacted,” Lorenz explained.
This is why the Housing Coalition, which Lorenz is part of, introduced Housing Stability Navigator Janet Hood. Her role is housed at Mid Central Community Action, and she helps people who are between houses find permanent places to stay.
“These are working people,” she said. “They're just precariously housed, and due to situations, sometimes beyond their control, that they find themselves in need of being rehoused.”
Mid Central Community Action is not setting aside or providing places for people in the program. Hood’s role is to help them secure rentals they bring to her that are of interest to them.
“It does take several weeks. It's not something you come in in one day, and we hand you a check,” she said. “There is a process that we have.”
Hood started in the role this summer and has been able to help a handful of clients since.
Executive Director of Mid Central Community Action Tami Foley said the organization has seen an increase in people in need.
“We're seeing it more and more that people are coming in and just they have no idea where to turn because the crisis has gotten so bad,” she said.
Foley added that it feels like everyone is seeing the effects of the tumultuous market.
“They're working at Rivian. They’re the people that are walking into State Farm at an entry level,” she said.
Getting help when you’re not housing insecure
For people with stable incomes who can support themselves in a current home, the government has yet to step in. Lorenz said Normal could consider helping developers by getting land ready for them.
“That takes money, that takes willpower of a vote of a council member,” she said. “This would be very unusual to do that, but that is an idea.”
She stressed that this was very hypothetical.
Meanwhile, Tracy Patkunas of real estate company RE/MAX Rising said she can be a tool.
“It is frustrating sometimes, but what we do as Realtors is try to take as much of that stress off our clients to try to make it the best transaction that you know possible for them,” she said.
Oftentimes, this means using her network to find private listings to help people get an edge in the competitive market. Although she said the market seems to have slowed down a bit at least in comparison to last year.
Where homes may have been on the market for only a day or two in 2022, Patkunas said, they’re now on the market for a week or so. She said this is still “crazy fast” for sales.
Hot prices like $150,000 to $300,000 are the most in-demand, Patkunas adds.
“You've got to be ready to jump on it when it comes on the market,” she said.
There were around 150 homes for sale as of September, which Patkunas said is “very, very short” supply. It should be more like 450. Pricing is anywhere from $100,000 to over $400,000 and about half are in over $300,000.
On the renter side, private landlord and treasurer for the McLean County Landlord Association Ryan Curtis said things have been just as chaotic. One apartment might get 50 to 100 showing requests in a day, he said, which can be “overwhelming” to schedule as a landlord.
“That is the type of demand we're seeing here locally, and that stems all the way from two-bedroom units to four-bedroom units all the way down to studio apartments,” he said.
It’s also not uncommon in the current market to see people apply before they’ve laid eyes on the apartment. Some management companies and private landlords have even encouraged it.
Curtis said behavior like this can lead to an overabundance of applications, something he’s dealt with at times overseeing 29 properties. He said with the way things have been a landlord might get 200 applicants on a unit the day it’s posted.
“You have more [prospective tenants] to choose from than you care to have at times,” he said.
President of Young America Realty Andy Netzer said the management company has plenty of units available for their residential applicants — they deal in student housing as well. Young America listings are staying open for around 27 days on average, he added. Three to five of those days are likely dedicated to cleaning and prepping the unit.
"There really is availability out there," he said.
Netzer said they also try to be transparent with applicants about who else has applied to avoid oversaturating the selection pool.
At the landlord association, Curtis said there have been a host of people who’ve approached them with interest in becoming landlords themselves. They want to get in on what they see as a potentially lucrative business maneuver.
For landlords and tenants alike, Curtis said there isn’t enough space.
“We're just not set up for it in the local market to have this type of housing demand,” he said. “We just simply don't have the supply to keep up with the demand at this point.”
Netzer said that has to do with developers struggling as well.
"There are plenty of developers out there that are kicking the tires on projects — and some of those are public, some of those are not — all at different points," he said.
The common question, he said: "Can we feasibly bring this into the market?"
