Whoever takes Bloomington's top job after the April 1 election will have to contend with two ongoing housing issues: A shortage in available units, and a rise in the number of people who are unhoused.
Two of the candidates running for Bloomington mayor — former Republican state Rep. Dan Brady and current Ward 6 city council member Cody Hendricks — have framed the issues as lingering on due to a lack of forceful leadership.
But incumbent Mayor Mboka Mwilambwe believes the issues have been addressed by the city at a reasonable pace.
Take, for example, incentives for developers.
Bloomington-Normal has a long-documented history of not having housing available since the rapid need developed after Rivian came to the area in 2021. Recently, Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council CEO Patrick Hoban told Bloomington's city council the area is currently short by 4,500 units. By 2030-2035, the area could be short by 16,000 units.
But a standardized package to incentivize developers to get housing projects underway in Bloomington is only just now expected to be before the city council soon, years after the issue first began.
Hendricks said in an interview he believes there's been too much discussion around the issue — complicated by inflation, rising costs, labor issues and other, external factors — and too little action.
"To talk around the issue and bring it back before council for more discussion with no action to me shows that we don't have the leadership that we need to bring those issues forward and try to find ways to tackle them the best we can," the first-term city council member said.
Mwilambwe said he believes the ongoing discussions have been necessary to get the incentives right.
"Staff listened to feedback from council and now they're in the process of really fine-tuning those incentives packages ... it's important for us to get the whole picture, what it's going to mean not only in terms of whether it's going to be effective... but also understanding what the financials around that are," he said.
Mwilambwe said he supports the premise of incentives and were he to be a tie-breaking voter, as mayors sometimes are, he would vote to approve such a package.
"Time has shown in the past few years that, well, nothing is happening. So I think that puts us in a much better position to say yes to these incentives. When presented with something like that, there's no way for me to say no, if I had to be the tie-breaking vote. I think it's important for us to move forward," he said.
Hendricks said he's supportive of ongoing city projects to investigate whether zoning requirements are stymieing possible development and rehabilitate existing city houses that may not be currently fit to live in. He's also supportive of developer incentives.
"We have lots of different options and I think we need to try everything possible and see if that's the thing that pushes the needle," he said. "We can throw everything out there and it still may not be the thing that pushes developers ... but to sit and not do anything also is not acceptable."
Twenty-two year legislator Dan Brady is also supportive of incentives, in general, but also framed the housing shortage as a matter of leadership. He touted his years at the statehouse as having equipped him with "the contacts in which to bring those types of projects."
"Those types of developments take coordination, take incentives for the developers and investors to want to do it — and it takes a leader that's going to be working at that type of program night and day and working with city staff. I believe I'd be that type of leader," Brady said.
His proposals mirrored some of those things that are already occurring within the city, including property revitalization.
Housing and the unhoused
At a WGLT forum, Brady connected the issue of a lack of housing — or affordable housing, since rents have skyrocketed since the pandemic — to an ongoing issue of people who are unhoused in the city. The most recent estimates have put that figure around 130 people.
"Yes, we can all pre-judge and we can say that there are those who have chemical dependency problems and yes that's true, but there are those that made a lasting impression on me: The fact that they've had a job, they're looking for another job, they can't make the rent and they end up in the situation they're in," Brady said.
Hendricks agrees that the issues are connected, which is part of why he's advocated for a quicker pace on both housing development and possible solutions for the homeless.
"This is a crisis. I think we need to treat it as a crisis and I think we need to be taking much quicker action. We have discussed the waiving of fees [for housing developers] before the council. We did that last month and it just kind of went really slowly," he said.
First elected to the council in 2023, Hendricks said he also believes the issue of how to help unhoused people in Bloomington was largely handled by the city manager, with which he disagrees.
"I think it really should have been more of a collaboration between the mayor's office and other government leaders to find solutions," Hendricks said. "In my mind, it wasn't on our city manager to try to find those political solutions, to address a problem that we saw and continue to see in our community. We know there are different situations in which organizations like the [McLean County] Regional Planning Commission have called for joint committees between the city and county and the town, and these things haven't happened."
Mwilambwe, speaking at a WGLT candidate forum, said the city has acted where it can. He cited the city giving $150,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds to Home Sweet Home Ministries [HSHM], as well as other grant funds. He also said he wrote a letter for the nonprofit to help them secure a $350,000 grant for a proposed village of cabins that could provide shelter for the unhoused in winter months.
"It's not that we haven't paid attention and that we haven't wanted to do anything," he said. "Homelessness is a very difficult issue."
Brady proposed another idea altogether in September: Move anyone living in a tent encampment near HSHM downtown to the now-city owned former Owens Nursery property in southeast Bloomington. The proposal went nowhere. In a recent interview with WGLT, Brady was the only candidate to mention that the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that municipalities have the right to penalize people for sleeping outside.
"[There is] also direction, now, from the United States Supreme Court over what can or cannot be done. That's a factor that has to be taken into account," Brady said.
All three candidates said they support HSHM's proposal to build 50 cabins to provide people a place to sleep before this winter arrives, emphasizing that because a private entity is pursuing the project, it may move quicker than anything the city could have done.
Municipal elections are April 1. Early voting is already underway.
