“The length of time people are needing our help has increased. That’s probably the most notable change that we have seen in the last year is that from a length of stay in our shelter, from the intensity level of the rental assistance that they need, to our rapid rehousing programs, those have increased compared to what our previous experience has been,” Matt Burgess, Chief Executive Officer of Home Sweet Home Ministries (HSHM) told Cities 92.9.
To understand the current situation in our community we have to go back and look at what it has faced in the past few years. The Covid-19 event will stand in history as a watershed moment from which the direction of our world changed. And housing and the homeless is a big part of that story.
When the Covid-19 event began there was a huge impact on shelters as they had to immediately begin practicing social distancing. This resulted in a loss of beds available at shelters.
Along with that, with businesses shutting down and with people not being able to work, concern arose regarding the possibility of the number of homeless in the community increasing. Fortunately the government did a pretty good job of making sure that didn’t happen. But the remedies applied were less than perfect.
Burgess told us, “As a community we were better able to prevent people from falling into homelessness during the pandemic.” “That eviction moratorium was a huge thing that for low income tenants protected them from that vulnerability,” Burgess said. “It wound up being fairly poorly applied in general I think because people got into significant holes thinking, ‘Well I don’t have to pay my rent anymore.’ And so when the eviction moratorium ended there were a lot of people who were in real bad situations that wouldn’t have had to have been in those situations if we had done things differently.”
After the moratorium ended the coalition serving the homeless geared up for a surge of homeless but thankfully that didn’t happen. Still that is not to say that people were not evicted.
According to Burgess, “We did see an increase in evictions.” “There were a certain number of people who were in those holes that I mentioned and landlords were ready to move them on,” Burgess said.
“One of the unique things in this community is that simultaneous to all of that Rivian was hiring thousands of employees,” Burgess continued. “And so area landlords, property management companies, realtors, I mean it was an unprecedented boom time for people who had housing stock available. There was so much increased demand, not all because of Rivian, I mean we saw this across the country, but Rivian was a unique influence on our local market is how I describe it.”
Then the market law of supply and demand took over as Burgess explained, “And so at the same time that landlords are able to evict people, they also know, ‘I’ve got an abundance of people looking for an apartment.’ What happened with that dynamic was we saw probably around a 20% jump in (rent for) the type of units that we were working to get people into. So if something cost around $650 it jumped up to $800, $850 dollars a month.”
“And so there was a sizeable increase in monthly rent,” Burgess went on. “But there was also an increase in upfront cost for a perspective tenant. So instead of saying, ‘Hey you know what we need a security deposit in order for you to move in’ many landlords went to saying ‘We need a security deposit and first month and last month rent before we will consider you as a final applicant for this unit.”
Naturally this impacted agencies that help people with limited funding find housing. Burgess put it this way, “That becomes insurmountable in many circumstances for people to be able to get in an apartment. Even if they can afford the monthly rent at that higher rate they can’t get in because they don’t have that savings piled up. They don’t have two or three thousand dollars sitting in an account that they can fork over up front.”
“So those are some of the obstacles that we really saw exerting themselves from this time last year to now, January 2023,” Burgess explained. “Those have been unique challenges in the housing market that we have seen folks that we serve experiencing.”
Cat and Kevin’s Top Stories for 2022 Number 7 Wintergreen III / Weldon Reserve
Today there are approximately 250 homeless people in Bloomington Normal according to counts. But counts of the homeless are difficult to do accurately. They are done in the winter and it is difficult to find all the locations where a homeless person may be curled up to find warmth. Burgess believes it is likely there are 300 homeless people in the twin cities.
Currently men are staying in homeless situations longer than women and children. At this time no one is really sure what the reason for that is. One can only speculate.
There has been a resurgence in families needing assistance. Very few families required assistance during the pandemic.
HSHM constantly has people listed on a priority list. It’s not a waiting list per se because it is not based on first come first served. The list is prioritized based on need.
It is important to understand that most homeless people are not living on the street. They are living in shelters. In our community less than 10% of homeless are on the street. Burgess estimates the number to be around 20 people.
The perception that homeless people are unemployed is a misperception. Most work. But their financial situation is so precarious that any emergency, such as a serious illness, can result in homelessness.
Burgess summed up the situation HSHM faces for us saying, “We are facing the most challenging combination of circumstances that I have ever seen, right now. Between the housing crisis, inflation, still the turmoil of our economy hasn’t gotten back to where it was pre pandemic, all of these things are combining to make this a true crisis type situation.
