The Bloomington-Normal Water Reclamation District [BNWRD] and the Town of Normal have been working with Home Sweet Home Ministries [HSHM] on how to best handle dispersing the AutoZone tent encampment along Sugar Creek.
BNWRD is starting a major construction project this summer in the encampment area because one of the last combined sewer overflows in Normal is nearby.
“We are looking at basically eliminating that overflow," BNWRD executive director Tim Ervin said. "We're going to be installing some larger sewer infrastructure capable of handling additional sewage and our interceptor.”
The encampment residents have been living next to is an active sewer, which Ervin said worries him.
“Especially in the spring, as it starts getting used more, I really don't want to expose those residents to what's coming out of there,” he said.
BNWRD knows sewage, but it needed help supporting encampment residents who will be impacted.
“We can handle sewage,” said Ervin. “We can handle the infrastructure needed to treat it. Our knowledge on helping the homeless, on [helping deal] with social issues, is very limited. So that's why we reached out to Home Sweet Home early in the program to find those experts to help and guide us along the way.”
Encampment residents
There are roughly 10 people living at the encampment, according to HSHM Director of Community Outreach Steve Tassio.
Tassio said they have been having routine conversations with the encampment residents since early April — asking them if they have any other places they can stay, if they have been reaching out to shelters and where they are at with housing barriers.
“I think what we learned from the encampment that was next to our own building that we shared with Eastview back when October hit, is that people are under so much stress and so much fear, and their lives are so complex that talking about an impossible moving situation months in advance is really, really difficult,” Tassio said.
One of the encampment residents is Louis Ray Starr. Starr said he is a veteran and was living in the New Hope apartments in Peoria before getting evicted.
After his eviction, Starr said he came to Bloomington-Normal to look for his birth certificate “and everything.”
When asked how he felt about the AutoZone encampment disbursal, Starr said, “It shouldn't exist. I want an injunction against it.”
Tassio said he is not sure what the general feelings are from the encampment residents.
“I think it’s mixed. I think there's a combination of aggravation and malaise in some ways,” he said.
Helping the unhoused
There is not a normalized next step on what to do after an encampment dispersal, according to Tassio.
“Which is good,” said Tassio. “We don't want this to be a normal thing. But I do think there's been more openness this time around from the Town of Normal to try to find some other space.”
However, there is no “utopian place” in Normal that can house the individuals at this point in time.
“If Home Sweet Home came to us with a proposal and we had a piece of ground, we'd certainly look at it," said Normal Mayor Chris Koos.
Koos added the Town of Normal government is not equipped to handle something like the shelter village that is being proposed for Bloomington.
“We'd have to hire a lot of people with expertise in that area to do that. And I don't think we're willing to do that,” said Koos. “We would look for an agency to do that.”
Although the town does not have housing solutions for the soon-to-be displaced encampment residents, it is helping where it can.
Last fall, the Town of Normal and City of Bloomington provided HSHM with 30 95-gallon garbage bins that can be used as secured storage bins.
Anyone can go to HSHM and have an employee walk them over to their bin in a locked room to access their belongings.
Tassio said “the odds are against you” in having paper documents such as birth certificates and identifications well kept when living unhoused, so providing storage bins is helpful.
Continuing conversations
Tassio said he has viewed the transparency about the disbursement from the Town of Normal and BNWRD as a component of trauma-informed care.
“They really were trying to be gracious as much as they can by including us in that conversation early, letting us share with our partners about the June 1 date, and then really engaging the people at the encampment as soon as possible to try to give them enough leeway,” Tassio said.
Ervin with BNWRD said it has really been a struggle because he hates to see the individuals forced to move.
The AutoZone encampment disbursement is scheduled for June 1. Tassio said HSHM has a good idea about where people will end up, and will continue to provide services to them.
