Behind gravel pits off of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in west Bloomington, tents line a man-made trail. Trees cover the path, which surrounds a small lake. Some tents are standard, two-person setups found at sporting goods stores, others have impressive square footage — all are in varying states of functionality.
To Bloomington-Normal’s most vulnerable community members, the tents there, and scattered elsewhere around McLean County, are home.
A tent at the gravel pits holds all of Stephanie Britton’s belongings. At just under 40 years old, Britton said she moved to Bloomington over the summer because she made a promise to her son — though she had nowhere to stay. She joked in December at her campsite that she makes living unhoused “look good” because of her elaborate setup: She strung together two tents, built a make-shift kitchen and dragged in a mattress to sleep.
Despite her positive attitude, she said it’s been the hardest experience of her life.
“Being right here on this water, it’s ice cold,” Britton said, while it was snowing and below 30 degrees outside. “I didn't know that your body literally shuts down on you, and it's like, moving is painful, like breathing is painful.”
Around November, Britton said she was hospitalized for several days with pneumonia, and as soon as she was discharged, it was back out into the weather that caused her illness in the first place. Because for Britton — and many others in the area — there are no viable alternatives.
Homeless shelters can be restrictive about substance and alcohol use and criminal history, and Bloomington-Normal only has two congregate shelters — where people share sleeping quarters — for people to stay.
Disconnected from resources
For the past several months, a more visible tent encampment has grown outside the gravel pits off Center Street, near the AutoZone in Normal. However, unhoused individuals are scattered throughout the area: in empty parking lots, vacant buildings, and wherever else they can find a spot to spend the night.
Advocates who work to locate unhoused community members estimate around 130 people are unsheltered in Bloomington-Normal right now — and that doesn’t account for the additional people staying in homeless shelters, living in hotels or house hopping.
“This is a homeless epidemic right now,” said Tiere Elliott, who has been unhoused alongside her friend Craig Ross since last winter. “It is horrible.”
West Bloomington’s encampment is currently the largest in McLean County, according to advocates. The largest tent city was previously in a privately-owned parking lot next to Home Sweet Home Ministries [HSHM] shelter in Bloomington, which oversaw and took care of people staying there. But the City of Bloomington dispersed it in October.
No other tent city since has been as connected to resources, advocates said, and unhoused community members said they are feeling the toll.
The two closest bus stops to the lake encampment on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive take anywhere from five to 15 minutes to walk to. This may not seem far, Britton said, but walking even a few feet can be tiring when it’s bone-cold and you haven’t eaten.
“No one's coming to save us. Like, we have to save ourselves,” she said. “But at the same time, if we don't get help — the right help — nobody's going to be able to be safe. And that's the scary part. The scariest part about this is, we're not all going to make it.”
At least two street outreach groups in town — God’s Mission Ministry and an HSHM team — distribute essential resources to Britton and other unhoused community members at their encampments, but necessities remain sparse.
“We're out here in the woods, no porta-potties,” said Irish Sterling, who was hospitalized alongside Britton for a cold-related illness in November. “We don't have garbage. If you see how dirty it is out here, it's dirty like this because we can't get dumpsters.”
Sterling, Britton and others who spent any amount of time living outdoors have had to rely on donations for food, water, toilet paper and everything in between. Advocates come out when they can to drop off the goods. Common currency this winter was propane tanks, which they used as fuel for gas-operated heaters.
‘Why don’t you get a job?’
Items as commonplace, and practically archaic, as battery-operated headlamps and analog watches become necessities for unhoused individuals because phones are too easily lost, damaged or stolen. With no timekeeper, many unhoused people fail to make doctor’s appointments or interviews, and they often miss chances to travel to Bloomington’s two homeless shelters for meals and other non-resident resources.
“I made jokes that I was going to build a sundial and things like that,” said Elizabeth Collins, who’s been unhoused for a couple of years. She most recently stayed at the encampment near AutoZone. “It's little, little, little things that are so important and make such a difference that I always took for granted.”
Walking, it’s over a mile to downtown Bloomington from the encampment, which is about a 40-minute walk, according to Google Maps.
“We get taunted, and we get messed with, you know, ‘Why don’t you get a job?’” Britton said. “You know why I can’t get a job? I had to sleep in a parking garage for [a] third [job] interview because I had to make sure that I had electricity, that I was close to the bus.”
Several unhoused people have jobs and are saving to rent, area advocates say. Others struggle to find employment because these external factors complicate the search. Collins worked at PATH Crisis Center in Bloomington for several months in 2024, and she used her paychecks to secure temporary shelter in a hotel. But she said the nonprofit laid her off, along with around 100 others when it lost the grant funding for their positions.
“I did not expect that ever. I thought I had time to breathe and get some money saved up,” she said. “I had nowhere to go.”.
Soon after the layoffs, Collins said she wound up at the AutoZone site, bundled next to others trying to get their footing. She stayed there until November when Home Sweet Home Ministries shelter staff informed her she’d gotten off the waitlist and could have a bed.
“They drove up by me waiting at the bus stop to go to my eye exam,” she said. That was the only way staff members could communicate with her, since she’d lost her phone and tablet several weeks prior.
“It was the first really cold, rainy, windy day. It was miserable,” she said. But when a staff member walked up to her with the good news, she “just started crying.”
Shelter is temporary, housing is permanent
Now that she’s not worried about where she’s sleeping, Collins said she is searching for employment. Then she will focus on getting into permanent housing — because shelter is only temporary.
Sterling, who was at the gravel pits but now has a bed at Home Sweet Home, is in a similar position. Others who spoke with WGLT are still sleeping outside, including Elliot and Ross, who said they are struggling to find jobs and have been using the Salvation Army of Bloomington’s emergency winter shelter when it gets too cold in their tent.
Britton was temporarily in a shelter but is back at the gravel pits. In December, before she even knew she’d get offered a bed, she said it was hard for her to imagine life with stable housing.
“We are used to so much chaos, chaos is comfortable,” she said. “When it gets calm, it feels foreign. It gives you anxiety, it's terrible. It's like we can't win.”
