A homeless encampment near downtown Bloomington that started growing around a year ago in an overflow parking lot is no longer.
By end of day Oct. 15, the roughly 35 unsheltered community members who’d been staying there left and all signs of the encampment — tents, pallets, personal belongings — were gone.
A handful of people tenting at the Eastview Christian Church-owned lot got into housing or Home Sweet Home Ministries, the shelter's CEO Matt Burgess said. Some others were able to find friends or family to stay with.
But the “vast majority,” Burgess said, relocated to other places outdoors.
“Dispersing this encampment is not a solution in and of itself,” he said. “What we have to do, even when it's less visible of an issue than an encampment in this visible parking lot, we have to continue to push for those long-term solutions that bring all of our neighbors indoors.”
‘We built a community’
Many people at the encampment didn’t want to talk Monday, as they were packing or tired of questions. Sonja Craig, who joined the encampment in August, was more than willing to share — and tried to get others to do so too. She had just started packing her belongings and said she wasn’t sure where she was going. Her one plan, she said, was to make sure she and a friend she met at the encampment stuck together.
She added that she wasn’t ready to leave.
“We built a community out here,” she said. “We made friends.”
Craig mentioned her niece was also staying in the encampment and had set up her tent with chairs and a bed, so it could act as a living room. Others had put in couches, she said, making it “literally like housing.”
She lamented that the city — which had ordered the encampment to be disbanded — and community partners couldn’t find an alternative option to house everyone.
“You can put us all into one building, one hotel, we'd all fit,” she said. “But we're literally like a family… so this is — it's going to be big on a lot of people.”
Emergency winter shelter seemingly unpopular
The Salvation Army of Bloomington opened an emergency winter shelter to coincide with the closing of the encampment — another city order — but WGLT didn’t speak to anyone who said they planned on using the resource. Salvation Army is also still working to deliver everything they had promised for the space, though spokesperson Deborah Cole said they managed to get temporary mattresses until cots they had ordered are delivered.
Anthony Maple, who said he’d been at the encampment for around two months before the closure, said he can’t go to Salvation Army. He’d been staying there previously and had some issues, so he’s not allowed back for six months. And, he said he wouldn’t want to go back.
“I really don’t want to go backwards,” he said, adding that he’s not really moving forward right now either. Maple said wasn’t able to find housing in time for the encampment’s closure, so he was getting help relocating to a new location near Lake Bloomington on Monday afternoon.
“It’s just, you know, on the same plateau,” he said, adding that permanent housing is his goal. “It's not like I went up yet.”
At the same time, he said the community needs to better understand how people become unhoused, and who is currently unhoused.
“Everybody’s not a bum and everybody’s not a vagabond,” he said. “Everybody can be a paycheck away from being homeless. I mean, a bill here, you know, a bad habit there, anything, you know, Before you know it you're homeless, and then it's a process to get back stable again.”
Continuing efforts to aid area unhoused
Kim Massey is the CEO of God’s Mission Ministry, a street outreach nonprofit that helps area unhoused. Massey and her team helped Nelson and others move.
“It's heartbreaking,” Massey said of the closure. “This isn't our first time moving clients after a displacement, but it's extremely hard for them… They have to pick and choose and battle with what they're going to take, what they're not going to take, what they need, what they don't need.”
Massey and others of God’s Mission Ministry, as well as volunteers and staff from Eastview, Salvation Army and Home Sweet Home also helped clear the lot of tents and belongings Tuesday.
Massey and Burgess said they are encouraging people to stay in touch so they can still get resources, particularly since HSHM is not next door. Struggling to continue contact is also often an issue nationwide when people who live on the streets are displaced since they may not have phones or be otherwise easy to reach.
“They won't be able to adequately shower, get three meals a day,” Massey said. “It'll be harder for them to get transportation, to get to these places, to utilize the services.”
Street outreach — which God’s Mission and HSHM do — is also designed to meet people where they are at, which Burgess said will become crucial.
Meanwhile, the City of Bloomington, Town of Normal, McLean County and several community partners are still working as part of a housing coalition to find housing solutions, including a non-congregate shelter that can provide privacy for people.
Eastview wrote in a press release that the church is committed to continuing its help of the unhoused.
"We believe every person at the encampment is dearly loved by God, and we will continue to advocate on their behalf by being part of long-term solutions wherever we can," the statement reads.
Until a permanent solution is found, dozens of unhoused Bloomington-Normal community members brace for the cold.
