Around 100 people in Bloomington-Normal are unsheltered, according to estimates from a McLean County Housing Coalition. The City of Bloomington is dispersing roughly 40 of them who’ve been living in tents along Constitution Trail, said Director of Community Outreach Steve Tassio with Home Sweet Home Ministries' homeless shelter [HSHM].
Most have nowhere to go.
City Manager Jeff Jurgens said Monday night at a Bloomington City Council meeting that people have been notified they need to leave, and he’s hoping to have people off the trail in the next couple of days — at the latest, by the end of the week.
In a written statement to WGLT Tuesday, Jurgens said the city and community partners are approaching the homelessness situation with “compassion, but there are limits to what can be allowed on public property.”
The United States Supreme Court agreed in a landmark decision at the end of June, which gives Bloomington the green light to disperse any encampments on public land — Constitution Trail included — by allowing municipalities to form their own rules and policies surrounding homelessness.
Jurgens added the Bloomington Police Department “began addressing the presence of homeless encampments along the Constitution Trail” last week.
“This action was in response to ongoing public safety concerns and numerous complaints about the conditions along portions of the Trail, which is frequented by many in our community every day,” he continued.
‘They just try to toss you aside’
Dane is a 22-year-old who’s been staying on the trail between HSHM and Evergreen Memorial Cemetery in Bloomington. He said he wound up in the encampment because he was “dealt a bad hand.”
When the police warned he’d have to relocate, Dane said he’d “just… started to get comfortable.”
“It was just kind of like a haha-screw-you moment,” he said. “You finally start to, you know, sit in, dig in and they're like — they just try to toss to the side.”
Dane added that HSHM has offered him a spot at the agency's sanctioned encampment on the private lot next to The Junction — a community center — and owned by Eastview Christian Church. For people who are just becoming unsheltered, he said navigating life is a lot more difficult.
“If you don't, like, meet some Golden Goose that tells you everything that you need to know, your first week will be spent completely in the dark,” Dane said. “And even once you get to a facility like [HSHM], there's no way that they can tell you all of your resources that will help you in your day-to-day. Because it's not really, you know, let me immediately get out of this spot. It's like how do I survive my day-to-day now?”
Trouble connecting to resources
Tassio at Home Sweet Home said connecting people to resources becomes even more difficult when they’re staying further from the shelter. Many had gathered on the trail by the cemetery because of its proximity to the shelter.
“People want ... a space that's safe and available to them, but they also want to be near the services that they require — food, laundry, showers, cooling centers — and to position [an encampment] way on the outskirts of town makes it really, really challenging for them to be near services and continue to make progress,” he said.
Now, Tassio and others are doing what they can to open the shelter to eligible people and figure out where others are going, so they can continue helping people connect with the services they need to reach their goals of getting employment, connecting with medical providers — and finding permanent shelter. He said it helped that the police told the shelter of their plans to disperse the encampment last week.
“I know some of the officers we’ve been working with, even today, are really trying to give people a gracious opportunity, some time to plan as much as they can, with knowing that there is no secondary location that is currently suitable or called out for them to relocate to,” he said.
For many people, Tassio said moving will likely require them to “get creative,” as they already have been to date. He suspects some people will join more hidden encampments in Bloomington-Normal that have yet to be dispersed, and others may create new encampments in places that haven’t had them before.
People tend to stick together, he added, as there tends to be safety and a sense of community in numbers.
Housing coalition efforts for longer-term solutions
Meanwhile, Tassio, HSHM and a collection of other nonprofits, government bodies and public safety entities have been looking for a solution to get everyone who is currently living unsheltered in McLean County a non-congregate space to live. A location has yet to be identified, though, so it’s unclear when people can expect that to be available.
Tassio said Home Sweet Home is constantly looking for alternatives for those sleeping outdoors, as well as permanent supportive housing options.
“That’s really the way that we bring that total number down and provide opportunities for people,” he said.
Other concerns about the homeless population
In addition to complaints about the encampment, Jurgens said he’s heard from business owners in downtown that there may be issues with the homeless population. At the city council meeting Monday night, he said he’s trying to determine the nature of them, but the city already is planning to increase police presence in the area for the time being.
“We certainly do take those serious and we want to make sure we get that addressed as well,” Jurgens said at the meeting.
Bloomington released a survey Tuesday to better determine what types of behaviors people might be noticing — panhandling and harassment included — and at what times.
Over in Normal, City Manager Pam Reese said there’s only one encampment she knows of within the town. It’s developed along the railroad tracks and Sugar Creek.
Reese said she imagines Bloomington's move is linked to the SCOTUS decision surrounding homelessness, but that case isn’t relevant to Normal’s encampment since that area isn’t municipal land like Constitution Trail.
“We don’t have a specific plan to address the issue there,” she said.
If an encampment does crop up on public land in Normal, Reese said the town “may or may take the same action as Bloomington." Right now, she's focused on working with the housing coalition — which Normal is part of — to find short- and long-term solutions for unsheltered people across the county.
