While Bloomington-Normal homeless advocates estimate more than 130 people sleep in a tent in the area on any given night, area organizations and city officials have yet to find a response system that adequately addresses the situation, which has worsened in recent years.
An answer could very well be shelter villages that consist of temporary, contained dwellings raised off the ground by pallets and have all the basic amenities someone might need: a bed, electricity and space to call their own.
Matt Burgess, CEO of the Bloomington-based Home Sweet Home Ministries [HSHM] shelter, said he believes these are likely the most viable solution for getting Bloomington-Normal’s unhoused community members off the streets. He’s thought through staffing, funding and other logistics to successfully operate this type of shelter but Burgess said there’s nowhere to put it.
“It's just really tragic,” he said. “We know what the solution is… We just can't find a community partner that's willing to say, ‘Yes, let's make it happen here.’”
Several states, including Wisconsin and Minnesota, have already employed these shelter villages to help their unhoused populations. So even though it’s proved difficult to implement, Burgess said Home Sweet Home is confident something similar will work in Bloomington-Normal.
Sometimes referred to as a tiny homes model, advocates have brought the concept to Bloomington and Normal municipal governments multiple times in the past decade. In 2016, community organizations circulated a tiny house prototype that was ultimately scrapped due to restrictive zoning ordinances.
Potential funding mechanism
While local leaders have discussed various solutions in the past, Burgess said the public’s outlook has progressed. In 2016, Burgess told WGLT he didn’t think the community was at a place to prioritize funding for homelessness. As of 2024, he said he’s noticed increased support for concrete change.
“I expect that we will still have some detractors, people who don't support the work that we're trying to put forward, but I can tell you that is not, I think, the overriding sentiment,” he sad. “I think the sentiment across Bloomington-Normal now is we need to do something better as a community for our most vulnerable neighbors.”
Advocates recently got a glimmer of hope their efforts may have solid support. A county spending advisory body moved a recommendation to the McLean County Board that would put $1 million toward a new shelter system.
Marita Landreth, behavioral health coordinator for the county, said officials aim to find a model to prevent people from falling through the cracks, which means providing quality facilities that don’t require people to share sleeping space.
“We also want to make sure that there's consideration for a lower barrier standard for accessing that care,” Landreth said.
A serious hurdle for many people getting into the congregate shelters the area currently has, where people share sleeping quarters, Landreth said, are restrictions on treatment for people with substance and alcohol use disorders, pets and criminal history.
Regardless of whether a proposal identifies a location, Landreth said the plan is to identify a proposal and get money disbursed within the year. That is if the county approves. Landreth said they are also talking with the county’s health board about other funding opportunities. They expect the issue will continue to be a priority for the community and funding over the next several years.
“At the end of the day, homelessness is a public health issue,” they said. “There’s lots of evidence that shows [this].”
Shelters continue to do what they can
As local agencies continue to have these conversations, shelters are trying new strategies to meet the needs of the people they serve. Home Sweet Home has added a street outreach division, which sends specialists into the community to meet people where they are living. Salvation Army expanded its shelter capacity October, following an emergency order from the City of Bloomington overruling some of the location’s zoning restrictions.
Still, there are barriers to providing care. Street outreach professionals are battling a slew of hurdles while trying to distribute resources, and the Salvation Army is short-staffed.
“We do the best [with] what we can, and we juggle the weight and the workload, and we shift when we need to so,” said Kiowna Towns, the residential services director for Salvation Army’s shelter, Safe Harbor. Towns and other staff have taken turns to ensure the emergency winter shelter, which consists of several beds in the Safe Harbor cafeteria, is staffed 24/7.
The emergency shelter, as with Safe Harbor and Home Sweet Home, is also restrictive with who can stay, and it operates on a first-come-first-served basis. It only holds around 30 people, leaving many of Bloomington-Normal’s roughly 130 unhoused people in limbo. Warming centers operate during the day, and Salvation Army opens its Safety Net warming option overnight, but it doesn’t provide a bed — so it’s not really a shelter.
Dismantling and rebuilding the homelessness response system
Although the county’s homeless response system has changed in the past decade, advocates say there’s still substantial work to do to make it successful.
Liam Wheeler, who coordinates the Central Illinois Continuum of Care program to end homelessness, said the homeless response system has become “ineffective.”
“We have been shelter-focused because that's what we could do, and that's what we needed for a long time,” he said. “But shelters are no longer popular. It isn’t the most effective way to get someone help.”
As the only shelters and true homeless safety net in the county, Salvation Army and Home Sweet Home shelters in particular are facing too much pressure to address these issues, Wheeler said. In an ideal system, he said, shelters work alongside other agencies, including the government, hospitals, emergency responders, mental health providers, schools and food pantries instead of operating nearly independently as they have previously.
Many of these agencies are involved in a housing coalition that formed in spring 2024, and the City of Bloomington is all but steering the ship.
But Wheeler said this is just the start of the work Bloomington-Normal needs to do in rebuilding what he thinks is a broken system.
“Right now, things are literally falling apart and we're dismantling and we're destroying everything,” said Wheeler, who stepped into his role managing the Continuum of Care in late 2024, shortly after the McLean County Center for Human Services stepped up to lead the program for the region.
“This is day one,” he said. “This is our ground zero.”
Critical voices are still missing from the conversation, Wheeler said. Namely, people who are unhoused. He was once living on the streets, but that was six years ago. Too much time has passed and too much has changed, so Wheeler said he can’t consider himself an expert anymore.
What is needed — according to those unhoused
People who have lived in tents, and some who are still in them, say there are many changes they want from their community. Irish Sterling, who recently became a resident of Home Sweet Home but was staying in a tent in west Bloomington before that, said she wants the city to acknowledge them, then provide more housing opportunities. Arlandus Gower grew up in Southern Illinois and recently became a resident at Home Sweet Home. He said he would like to see people give more resources.
Kim Massey, who founded the street outreach nonprofit God’s Mission with her family, said people need to provide help the right way. She said going to encampments without warning can be intrusive, and previous attempts from community members who left items nearby encampments meant no one found them.
“It's going to get ruined, it's going to go in the garbage, it's going to get rained on, snowed on, and then, essentially, those items have been wasted,” she said in those scenarios.
God’s Mission Ministry, Home Sweet Home and Salvation Army all post on their social media accounts to share what people are asking for, Massey said, adding that it is the best way for people to get involved. They can also pursue volunteer opportunities at each organization.
Elizabeth Collins, who was living in a tent in Normal until she got a bed at Home Sweet Home in November, said her request is simple: “Just be kind” to people in this situation.
“We’re not less than,” she said. “It really just goes back to everybody deserves to be treated with dignity as a fellow human.”
