About 90 residents gathered Wednesday at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Bloomington for a community forum on the state of homelessness and housing in the community.
The event was sponsored by the McLean County Housing Coalition as a part of the Central Illinois Continuum of Care conference.
Of the many topics discussed at the forum, a group of five county housing experts discussed the various successes made in recent years.
Top of mind for many community partners is The Bridge, Home Sweet Home Ministries’ [HSHM] non-congregate shelter village near Downtown Bloomington. Olivia Brownlee is the senior manager of shelter operations at HSHM.
“We wanted to build The Bridge, but we needed support ... from folks who were going to provide mental health services, substance use recovery services, connections to employment, and ultimately stable housing,” she said. “And we can't do it alone. So, we've really seen our community step up, and we have we built The Bridge with these things in mind.”
Adam Lovell, co-chair of the housing coalition and community services director of the Salvation Army, said The Bridge is one example of how the coalition has brought various different groups together in the county.
“They're kind of the known players, but I think we're starting to see more, for lack of a better word, fringe organizations join the coalition. One of the greatest ones has actually been St. John's Lutheran Church,” he said, “… but they've been an integral part because they do support and [provide] services for the community.”
Lovell said the coalition has invited businesses, law enforcement, fire and EMS, and the health care system to help homeless people compared with what was done in the past.
Brownlee agreed. She said staff at HSHM attend meetings with other agencies and organizations like Chestnut Health systems " ... and then also with The Bridge, we have a collaboration meeting once a month for our service providers.
“So really attending these meetings and making those connections is how we’ve done things differently. Meeting on or off site … because we can’t do it alone. Not one person knows about every resource.”
What keeps the work difficult
A good portion of what the panel focused on was what the agencies represented at the conference still need and what is lacking despite their ongoing efforts.
Various communities and states manage homelessness differently.
Tami Foley, CEO for Mid Central Community Action, said to this day, one of the biggest issues keeping communities from getting on board to address homelessness is public perception.
“It takes a long time to change perception, and it still is very stressful and bothersome to anybody in the coalition or anybody working this field, when somebody says, 'Well, they did it to themselves, or they're on drugs, or they have a mental illness,’” Foley said. “Well, probably every one of us in this room has some sort of a mental illness.”
Foley said many people struggle to perceive homeless people as something other than being unsafe to the community.
“We have too many people that don't want them in their backyard. Well, kicking them out of their backyard is going to do no good if they have no place to go,” she said. “They're just going to show up in somebody else's backyard. So, people need to come together and help us find solutions and not just keep moving them and moving them and moving them — that's not going to do any good.”
Lovell made it clear that people his organizations deal with are not stupid, either. Rather, they understand public perception and work to avoid it.
“These are some of the most intelligent, some of the most resourceful people I have ever met in my life, and a lot of them don't want to be seen,” he said. “They don't want to be found, and that makes it more difficult for us to go out and provide services.”
Lovell said a family sleeping in a storage unit or in the back of a U-Haul truck understands what they are doing is not legal but people do it, nonetheless.
Shifting political landscapes
Another key issue facing housing experts is the federal political landscape. Organizations may find that certain administrations are more or less willing to grant funding than their predecessors.
In the case of the Trump administration, organizations based in schools are facing that on top of other funding battles. That is what Amy Pawlik, associate vice president for enrollment and student services at Heartland Community College, faces.
Pawlik said the landscape is every changing, but Heartland focuses its energy in several different areas at once "… where there are resources, obtaining grants and new grants, different kinds of funding streams that are available through different kinds of legislation and different kinds of state funding and federal funding.
“And, so, I think regardless of what the legislation is on the federal and the state level, staying abreast of what the opportunities are and then trying to be responsive to that and what we offer so that what we’re doing is well aligned with the resources that are available.”
Kayla Arnholts is the homeless and truancy coordinator at the Regional Office of Education #17. Her office covers McLean, Logan, Livingston and DeWitt counties.
She faces challenges of her own in relation to government funding.
“The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act is what prescribes treatment for instances of homelessness in schools, and so that's a federally funded program that comes down to the state,” Arnholts said. “And the state government itself hasn't provided funding for children experiencing homelessness since 2009, I think.”
Arnholts said she has met with state Rep. Sharon Chung, D-Bloomington, to ask her how Illinois guarantee funding regardless of what the federal government does.
Experts at the conference also addressed local government and the Normal Town Council’s recent action related to a code of conduct in Uptown Station. Many at the forum said it targeted people who are homeless.
When asked how more collaboration can be built into future issues, Lovell said the mechanisms already are in place.
“The invitation has been open to the town, to the city, to the county. You know, we just need somebody from those agencies who can actually implement change and has some level of authority.” Lovell said. "Our doors are open. Our meetings are open.”
She added “… it's unfortunate that it took it to this level that we're finally being able to sit down or starting to schedule ways to sit down with the town staff and council to go over all these issues, but unfortunately it's taken this long to do that.”
During the public question portion of the forum, the experts were asked directly what they wished for some town council members in attendance to hear.
Pawlik said she recognized some can hold a perception of “us and them” when it comes to people without housing.
“This is our community; these are our neighbors. These are people that are moving about our community and often have untapped potential to be amazingly contributing members of the community and already are,” she said. “But as long as we continue to isolate [housing concerns] as a separated problem, we're not going to be able to embrace resolutions that are sustainable.”
Lovell said policy makers have the ability to change laws from benefiting landlords to benefiting tenants.
Arnholts said local government leaders could take the time to thank their organizations for their work and gain a better understanding of them.
“Thank you for raising your hand and saying that you want to help your community — that's really important. So, let's talk about that,” she said. “What does your work look like? What do you need in your work to succeed? We could all benefit from that conversation, but I think if we start from ‘you matter, your work matters,’ then we're off to a good start.”
What about the the future?
One of the final questions asked of the panelists was not about their past successes, but the future. What worries them about the next five or so years?
Brownlee said her concerns are for community members not being able to help as much as they currently are.
“What worries me the most with the cost of living rising, affordable housing becoming less accessible, folks are forced to focus only on themselves and their own situations and their own families,” she said. “That leads them to not be able to recognize the humanity of others and the ways that they can provide mutual aid and community care, because they’re forced to only be able to focus on themselves to survive...”
Pawlik said she worries her staff faces the possibility of burnout because frustration exists about how they feel like nothing will change.
Along with rising costs, Foley said she knows the rising cost of rent is a problem in Bloomington-Normal, as it is in much of the country, adding the rising costs while apartments are not increasing in quality is pricing people out.
"[There] are people that are here working at jobs that are driving from outside of McLean County because they can't afford to live in McLean County, and developers are going to see that, and I fear that they're going to go there and build in the smaller towns around McLean County and not want to be around us because well now the populations are growing,” she said.
For community members at the conference and elsewhere around the county, the housing experts recommended joining their efforts. Whether through time, money or donations, their organizations have many opportunities to help.
