An encampment in an overflow parking lot of Eastview Christian Church's Community Center in Bloomington is growing and now has a waitlist.
The Home Sweet Home Ministries shelter next to the encampment has been identifying who stays there and providing resources. CEO Matt Burgess said the waitlist — comprised of around 10 to 15 people — developed out of necessity.
“We've said 30 to 35 individuals in that encampment really hit that upper level of what feels safe enough and manageable enough for us to feel like we have a handle on things,” Burgess explained. “We've been at that point for oh, goodness, a couple of months already.”
He added that numbers are soft because you never know who is staying in a tent overnight.
Over the past six weeks, Burgess said there’s been interest from additional people who’d like to tent at the encampment, so the waitlist started then.
'Triage work'
Burgess said it’s mostly a list to keep track of more unhoused people in the area and provide them with resources.
“If we've got your name on the list, what that also allows us to do (is) hear what their story is, understand what their needs are, try and identify any barriers and make immediate referrals,” Burgess said. “So we're doing triage work, at the same time as putting their name on a list.”
Burgess said the triaging happens across the spectrum, for people already tenting and looking to tent at the encampment.
“One of the key things that we're asking about is now have you tried to seek services in our shelter? Have you tried to seek services from the Salvation Army's shelter? And if so, how did that go? Would that be something that you would be open to looking at again?” are all questions Burgess said Home Sweet Home asks people.
The goal, Burgess said, is always looking to make sure people know about available resources, and that goes beyond shelter. PATH Inc., for example, will receive for people without stable addresses.
Burgess said no one lives in a tent — or on the street, or in a car — because they want to.
Home Sweet Home has done its part, getting five households — couples or individuals at the encampment — into housing, and a few more into area shelters.
However, for many of the people HSHM encounters, Burgess said they’ve exhausted resources for shelter.
“We know these individuals,” Burgess explained. “We have a whole format that we go through. Ninety percent of the individuals in the encampment have tried to be served by our existing system, and it hasn't worked.”
‘Adapt our system’
Several factors lead to this outcome, and Burgess said it’s all individual, but congregate housing or cohabitation in a shelter setting isn’t for everyone.
Some people haven’t even been able to make the encampment work. Burgess said individuals violated the agreement to tent at the encampment and were asked to leave.
That’s why Burgess said HSHM is looking beyond solutions like expanding shelter capacities.
“That's not going to work,” he said. “Will we serve more people? Sure, but not the people that are unsheltered. They're still going to fall on the edges of the system if we don't adapt our system.”
Burgess and others at HSHM have looked into what others have done. He said some have converted area motels into non-congregate shelter for their unhoused population, but upkeep costs are high.
Something like Pallet Shelters — similar to tiny homes —provide temporary, private and secure housing and would be cheaper, Burgess said. These have also come up in conversations between Home Sweet Home and the City of Bloomington.
An issue previously had been funding, but Burgess said he’s not so concerned about that anymore.
“We have within our private community a lot of local philanthropic dollars that are poised and ready to be given to support this,” he said.
At this point, he said the issue is finding a place to put a village of these shelters.
“We're not quite to the ‘We know exactly where this is going to be. We know exactly what it's going to look like,’” Burgess said. “We're not there yet to know how to ask for that support.”
And the at-large problem of finding adequate permanent affordable housing continues. Burgess said on the shelter side, Home Sweet Home has had success recently getting more residents into permanent living, but that just means people get moved off the shelter waitlist.
He compared the issue to a firehose. There’s a lot of water flowing, but the hose has a kink in it. In other words, Bloomington-Normal has a lengthy — and growing list — of people who need homes, but there’s not enough supply.
“That's a long-term issue that we can't lose sight of,” Burgess said.
In the meantime, he added, Home Sweet Home will continue to work with Bloomington, Town of Normal and others on a more temporary solution for “our unsheltered neighbors” in the encampment.
