Bloomington offers better services for unhoused people than other cities in the region, but mayor Kerry Thomson says it’s “drowning” in demand.
“Today, individuals are being brought to Bloomington by other jurisdictions,” Thomson said at a press conference Tuesday. “Both IU Health and Wheeler, among others, are experiencing influx that they're unable to deal with.”
A year ago, local shelters and housing groups created a Housing Action Plan in cooperation with the city. At the time, those nonprofits said they would stop admitting people from outside the region to emergency overnight shelters.
But Heading Home is ending that requirement. Executive director Mary Morgan explained that the non-profit can’t reunify the many out-of-towners with the communities they came from.
“At this point, we don't have the capacity to do that,” she said. “The fear is that if we make a residency requirement and say, ‘You can't stay here,’ then that person may well just become unsheltered.”
Thomson disagrees.
“Our community is not serving anyone well if we are not able to get our heads above water in order to truly end the cycle of homelessness for the residents who are from our HUD district,” she said. “We will continue to collaborate with Heading Home and all of the other service providers, and we're deeply grateful for all that they do, but I am calling on our communities outside of Bloomington and outside of our HUD region to cease transferring individuals to Bloomington.”
In June, the Homeless Management Information System counted 471 people in Morgan, Monroe and Lawrence Counties living on the street and in emergency shelters. An equal number of people entered the system to those who either left or found housing.
There’s a lot Bloomington is doing to face homelessness locally. The mayor’s office is speeding up permits for housing construction, hiring additional case managers and using incentives to “unlock” vacant housing.
It also hired Bloomington’s first Homeless Response Coordinator, Brian Giffin. The position was created by Thomson to help meet her ambitious goal of virtual zero homelessness. He’s been on the job three months.
“We've really been working hard to kind of get a grasp on what's going on and then try to really look at proactive steps for what we can do going forward,” Giffin said. “Obviously, what we've been doing in the past hasn't been working.”
America’s homeless crisis stems from intersecting problems in housing, healthcare and addiction treatment. Bloomington provides better access to these services than other towns, with facilities like IU Health Bloomington Hospital and Centerstone’s Stride Center.
But Giffin said its successes have come with a catch.
According to Heading Home’s most recent survey, almost 40 percent of Monroe County’s unhoused have lived here under two years. More than a third were homeless when they arrived.
“We've especially seen just in the past few months a lot of other jurisdictions kind of cracking down more on street homelessness and so kind of making it an uncomfortable place to be in those jurisdictions,” he said. “They've kind of inherently moved to a place that has some more services.”
Jurisdictions taking the “cracking down” approach have just been given a freer hand since President Donald Trump’s executive order making it easier to institutionalize homeless people against their will and increase funding for places that are tough on urban camping.
At the same time, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is considering cuts to Section 8 housing assistance that low-income renters rely on.
But the city and Heading Home agree that it’s up to Bloomington to guide its neighbors toward a more service-based approach.
“If you're from Bedford, there is a men's shelter, but it's only open part of the year,” Morgan said. “One of the things that Heading Home is trying to do is to work with other communities in our region to improve the resources they have available in their community.”
Heading Home is developing updates to last year’s Housing Action Plan, and the Mayor’s Office has more meetings scheduled this month with staff from other Indiana towns.
Cities and nonprofits are used to doing more with less when it comes to homelessness, but there’s a silver lining for Bloomington.
With a $7.3 million grant from Lilly Endowment in January, the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County is helping groups expand services for unsheltered homeless.
Despite setbacks, Morgan and Thomson say they’re optimistic.
“In 2025 many of us think that this is an intractable problem that is never going to go away,” Thomson said. “We can and we will get to virtual zero homelessness.”
Within the next few years, Morgan predicted, “I think that we're going to see a decrease in unsheltered homelessness, and I think we're just going to see a community that really wraps its arms around this problem.”
