- Afternoon everyone, I think I know most folks in here I'm mayor Carrie Thompson and I want to thank you for being with us today as you all probably already know I ran on a housing platform and for most of my Professional life I have worked on the issues of affordable housing here in Bloomington housing is fundamental and
- we in Bloomington have both challenges and opportunities in front of us. We in my administration are committed to serve in order to solve. And we are here to update you on progress we've made and where we're headed moving forward from here on both housing and homelessness. We took office
- In January of 2024, facing major challenges and broader housing pressures, there were many issues in the hand department and as housing is my top priority, we really needed to get that straightened out before we could move on with a lot of the fundamental building blocks of the housing that we need in our community.
- We had four federal audits in 12 months. We were at risk of losing our federal funding. We had failed software implementation that was leaving work at a really sluggish and out of date pace. Our permitting was broken and we had outdated plans. Our consolidated plan and our UDO were in need of updating.
- And we've had a significant growth in student-focused housing, but really almost no growth in housing for people who live and work here. We need that variety of housing in order to solve the complex issues that are in front of us today. The urgency is really clear. We are choosing strategy.
- to address the urgency and also to address the long-term issues that are facing our community. We fail when people have false promise of services that we may have, but they end up in our homeless camps. We are renewing our commitment to Title 16, and we are doing it in earnest with the top
- challenged properties at the top of our list. This year, we have addressed issues at Crawford, holding our standards with compassion for those in our community who are most in need. We have hired our city's first homeless response coordinator, Brian, where is Brian? He's gonna wave, there's Brian.
- And obviously the city relies heavily on the infrastructure and expertise of our nonprofits. These are the folks who serve our unhoused and our underhoused residents every single day. The team is assembled. We have many rowing in the right direction together. And at the city, we're doing our best to support them.
- Recently the community foundation joined with us and several partners writing a Lilly grant which will fund new case management Among other things which will help our long-term homelessness issues we've convened agencies to shape and implement the housing action plan and the city has partnered to help enhance the built-for-zero model and
- Today, individuals are being brought to Bloomington by other jurisdictions. Both IU Health and Wheeler, among others, are experiencing influx that they're unable to deal with. I understand now that Heading Home has removed its residency requirement in the Housing Action Plan, which was set to be implemented
- this spring. I disagree with that choice. I really value heading home as a partner and their work is tremendously needed in this community. We need them to be successful so our community can be successful. But I want to tell you what happens when we do not draw boundaries around who we can and cannot serve.
- the safety nets that we have in place have become flooded. And that flood is happening in a multitude of ways. But recently, just as an example, an individual was at IU Health here at our regional hospital and academic health center, which we are extremely proud of. That individual needed medical care for 20 days, having come from Avon.
- At the end of that 20 day period, that person had nowhere to go and was forced to stay in the hospital for an additional 23 days until the hospital could problem solve and find a place for that person to go. Part of the heading home plan
- which will be incredibly valuable to our community once implemented, is for medical respite. But it's important, especially as we house a regional academic health center and hospital, that everybody being discharged from the hospital is not expected to come to respite that will, I anticipate, already be overtaxed.
- We need medical respite for people who otherwise would be living in this region. Likewise, we continue to meet people on the streets who are not from our region. HUD has a multi-county region that heading home and our housing service providers have committed to serve.
- That enables us to take care of folks who are from more regional areas that may not have services. But at this point, 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.
- 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 if they are not from here. They need to be close to the safety nets that they already have.
- and by dropping them off here, they end up in encampments and they lose any tie at all that they have to their families and friends who may be able to house them. This is leading to long-term homelessness for several individuals that we know. My promise is to continue partnership with other jurisdictions, to share our best practices, to learn from theirs,
- and to see how we can collaborate for a broader plan that seeks to serve the unhoused residents of Indiana. In Bloomington, though, we need to coalesce around a system that serves our residents, all of them. When I was parenting, I learned this phrase, I guess I'm still parenting, once a parent, always a parent, but I learned this phrase that you can't teach a drowning person to swim.
- In Bloomington right now, I think we're barely treading water with our homelessness. We need to get to a point where we can commit to people before they become homeless, that we can work on diversion with them. We can work on eviction prevention. And should someone become homeless, we have
- the services that they need to support them into and through permanent housing. And those services have to include case management. They have to include helping someone get back on their feet. If we truly want to solve homelessness in the United States, and I'll talk about the new executive orders in a moment,
- What we really need to do in addition to focusing on truly solving homelessness individual by individual is to be equipped to provide trauma informed care from infancy through adulthood. Because most folks who are living on our streets and living in shelters have untreated trauma. This is a whole cloth community approach.
- that we need everyone committed to. This can work. And if we get this system working, it will lessen the load on our providers and allow them to work long term in the relationships that allow people to thrive. The new executive order that came out last week shows us a national shift
- It shows us a call for more enforcement and less autonomy. HUD and the HHS are going to defund housing first and harm reduction. We don't agree with these policies. We know people need to have a decent, stable roof over their heads in order to truly thrive.
- And once they have that roof over their head, we can't stop there. Housing first cannot be only housing. It has to be housing and services. We cannot effectively arrest our way out of the homeless problem, even if we thought that was the right thing to do. Let me tell those of you who have not worked
- on this issue in the past. If you arrest people, they will end up in our jail perhaps overnight, and then they'll be back out on the streets. They then will have a record that will cause them to be much more difficult to be housed. This will perpetuate
- the issue of homelessness, not only in Bloomington, but throughout the United States. That said, we did make some arrests at seminary last week, and we made more arrests this week, today. We are taking a stand against the dealers that are in our community
- that really are preying on people who are vulnerable at this point. People who have substance use disorder and they're finding ways to make money and it's creating a lack of safety in our community, but most importantly, it is causing extreme challenges and much more difficult lives for those who are the most vulnerable in our community. Homelessness is solvable.
- It is truly solvable. And I think in 2025, many of us think that this is an intractable problem that is never going to go away. We can and we will get to virtual zero homelessness. If any community in this country can do that, it's Bloomington, Indiana. We have the generosity of heart,
- We have the creativity and we have the resources that if we commit to a systems-wide approach, we can solve homelessness. My administration will continue to lead with love and compassion and also with clarity in what participation looks like and how to get the help and services that
- folks need in order to completely thrive. Our residents deserve better, and we are committed to providing better. Obviously, if we want to solve homelessness, we also have to solve our housing crisis, which is not unique to Bloomington. There are several pieces of our housing ecosystem that the city impacts
- Part of that system is impacted primarily by our legislative branch, our city council, and the other part is primarily impacted by our administration. And I want to recognize we have a few city council members here with us today. We share the same goals, the council and the administration.
- We work in different ways because of our roles in order to solve this problem. The council's legislative. They approve our budget and they pass ordinances and zoning changes. So the policy level changes that are needed in order to impact housing, we have a team at council that are already working on that. On the administrative side, we implement housing strategies. We do compliance.
- We form partnerships, we secure outside funding, and we improve the permit incentive and internal systems to make housing happen faster and smarter. Our housing market is truly an ecosystem. Our commitment is to remove barriers and create the conditions for housing to happen through smarter processes.
- First, we're committing to modernize our systems and processes. We're cutting red tape. We're revising policies and the permitting process. We already have a limited audit process that's going to be conducted by Flintlock in conjunction with our Hopewell work. That will give us some work to start on on the permitting process. But we also will be doing a comprehensive audit of our permitting.
- That is pending at this moment. But we believe that once that's initiated, we can begin to make changes in that permitting process by the end of this year. Let me tell you why that's critical. When a builder or developer applies for a permit and they have to sit and wait for that permit for 12 months, frequently they're paying staff for that 12 months
- They may be paying for plan changes and other professional expenses. That cost all goes into the cost of the house. Whether it's owner occupied or rented, our residents end up paying for that cost. If we can get our permitting systematized so that we can check all of our boxes in a systemized way that is expedited, that will actually
- reduce the cost of housing, and it will produce more housing. Supply and demand. Additionally, we are committed to shifting the internal culture. We want partnership. We want partnership with builders, with developers, with neighborhoods. We want to come to the table and say,
- You want to house people in Bloomington? Thank you for being here. Let's see what we need to do together to get to yes. We want to make it easy to build great things in Bloomington. We also are leveraging city led development, specifically the Hopewell neighborhood. We're moving to less idealism, more realism at Hopewell.
- This process, because the city is involved all the way through the PLAT process, will help highlight places in our own system that create friction and red tape where there doesn't need to be any, and can help inform this audit process that we are currently going through. We will come out of this Hopewell process
- with a design portfolio of homes that we are ready to approve throughout the city of Bloomington in an expedited fashion. Our move at Hopewell through engagement with Flintlock that's going to help us get to final plat is an invitation to local builders to come back to the table. The huge scope of Hopewell
- is simply too much for many local builders and developers to take on all at once. This is a way to break it down so no one single builder has to do the entire project and so that we can invite a community to really participate in building what will become the gem of our community, our Hopewell residential project. We also will demonstrate what's possible. We think a lot of what
- is going to be done in Hopewell will come to live out in amendments in the future to our unified development ordinance. This gives us a model to look at. So neighbors that are looking at what is this gonna look like in an adjacent neighborhood to me can see the incredible neighborhood that's coming up at Hopewell and understand what that feels like.
- We also want to unlock our existing housing supply. We're looking at incentives for rehab and unused units, and we are supporting the return of any housing stock that's not being used back to the market. We have people who want to live in Bloomington, and we are eagerly welcoming them. We will have a process
- for neighborhood identity and integration in this process. That will include nodes for Bloomington's key commercial neighborhoods that can start to welcome residents more readily. I wanna move to our economic development vision because part of the housing ecosystem is obviously impacted by our economic development and vice versa.
- We can't grow a local economy if the people who power it can't live in our city. Housing is the foundation of economic development right now in Bloomington. We have to connect the dots for people that we are ready to grow our workforce population
- And we can do that by welcoming them to the city of Bloomington where they will have a place to live. Housing affordability has two factors. More than two, actually, but two key factors. One, of course, is the cost of the house that's being produced. Obviously, that sets the price point.
- But the other part of whether or not that unit is gonna be affordable is how much the person makes who's going to live in that unit. My administration is focused on growing wages in Bloomington. We're doing that through strategic partnerships that are happening at the trades district and beyond. And we're committed to ensuring that we have wage growth throughout the city of Bloomington. I want to,
- Also highlight the enforcement of our Title 16 that we've been doing before I ask cabinet members to come up. Over the past few months, we have done some significant enforcement, not only at Crawford Apartments, but with one landlord in particular.
- This is important because we have existing housing stock that is not safe or healthy to live in. If you live in the city of Bloomington and you rent a unit, we want to make sure through our Title 16 that you are able to live healthily and safely. We have filed against
- both of these property owners to remove their rental permits if they cannot bring things back into compliance. I am very proud to say that yesterday, through inspections, we saw dramatic progress at Crawford. We believe that those units will come back into compliance
- And we have to ensure that the people living there have the supportive services to keep them maintained well. We also are working towards agreements with the landlord that is out of compliance. If you rent in Bloomington, you need to be committed to providing safe, decent housing to your tenants. It's only fair.
- Everyone deserves a safe, decent place to live, especially if they are paying market rate in order to live in those units. I want to welcome members of the cabinet up, because I know there's going to be a multitude of questions. And as we looked at the issues of homelessness and of housing, we saw that nearly everyone
- on Cabinet works on this in some way. So if I can ask Cabinet to come up and then we will field questions from the press.
- He's ready. Yes. We're taking that on a step-by-step basis at this point. They do have an August 1st deadline for compliance.
- We believe that they will likely get there, but we're we're undergoing Inspections today as well at a different building. So we'll see what the results are at that point, but we're going step-by-step There is a current lawsuit in place. So August 1st was their date to cure So it will proceed if they cannot comply
- So we're not gonna talk about specific municipalities tonight, but last month I convened by invitation all of the mayors in Indiana. So we had a number of them come to discuss best practices around homelessness and how we were moving forward.
- It's not just municipalities or sheriffs dropping people off. What other things that happen are that people come here for care and don't have means to get back. So they may come for some kind of rehab, either physical or substance use. They may come to our hospital. And so it's important that we have means to get them back. I wanna highlight at this point that stride, which is our
- crisis center run by Centerstone, which is here on Morton Street. It is open 24 hours, seven days a week. They have a reunification fund. You can call Stride and get services from them to get back to where you are going. The hospital now also has reunification funds and we would like to ask all of the treatment facilities
- to provide that as part of their care.
- Our goal is really to very clearly state that we won't tolerate any of those predators. Our work is to serve people who are truly in need and to help keep them safe. And so we will keep doing it until folks get the message that we're not open for that kind of business here.
- So it will be a modified process just so that we can make sure that we're housing folks that can be successful in in the units Many of them require intensive case management that piece needs to be addressed it can't just I don't know if you want to answer any further about that, but essentially The whole goal is to make sure that we're being successful with rehousing folks Do you want to
- A more complete answer. Okay. One of the most challenging things is housing people who have been chronically homeless. And in order to do that and do that well, the case management has to be very intensive.
- It needs to happen with a frequency and a level of support that folks really need, and it needs to touch many facets of life, some medical, some mental health, other skills based. We are working with Beacon, who's the provider of those services, to get to a point where they have an approved case management plan there.
- This is very important, not only for this property, but as we learn more and more and as behaviors change, we need to be sure that all of our housing-first residences can be successful. That's the goal, to safely house people, and so we need to make sure that when you move into a housing-first residence,
- You are safe and you have what you need to truly thrive. And that means that your neighbors need to have the same. Laura. For the equipment, you do.
- that need to happen to make this change occur. I'm also wondering how much money the city has given to heading home that may not be available to you to use for these initiatives to help the local homeless population. So there are resources available through the new Lilly Grant to fund new case management.
- That case management, part of that case management at least will be pointed towards reunification, which means when somebody comes here, getting them reunified with their community of origin. Yes, supplying money to get them there. The community foundation has funded a small account for reunification.
- We also likely will fund some reunification. And New Leaf New Life also has reunification, as does Wheeler and Beacon. I don't know what their balances are, but certainly if there are folks out there listening that would like to fund these initiatives, their money is welcome.
- the heading home. Do you want to answer that? Could you repeat the question on heading home?
- I believe that they have only been given approximately 1.2 million dollars Some of that money did come back to the city and the programs that they were intending to fund are being funded currently Let me be clear heading home is doing great work on many things including data dashboard some landlord mitigation and convening providers so it's
- Money, too, heading home helps homeless service providers in the end. So they are a partner, and we're glad to have them. Hi, John McBride of the Indiana University. Nice to meet you. But my question is multi-part. First of all, you mentioned some arrests that took place earlier this morning.
- So we are committed, excuse my voice, I'm fighting a sinus infection.
- We're committed to trying to keep these vulnerable communities safe. Drug dealers prey on these people hanging out in the camps and the parks, and so we are focusing our efforts on taking the drug dealers into custody so that they aren't able to peddle drugs to people who have addiction issues and things like that. We will continue to focus on those areas, and we will continue to make arrests to try to stop this predatory behavior.
- I'm sorry. They were made from an area down by Crawford apartments.
- that we need and are committed to a comprehensive whole cloth approach that involves housing but it also involves services and it involves getting all of the players on the same page rowing the same direction.
- So affordable housing, I call it capital A affordable housing, which is the HUD's definition of at what point you need subsidy. It says that 80% and below of the area median income, and that's by house size. And at Hopewell, to be clear, while we do have some capital A affordable housing going there, we're targeting
- an increase in attainable housing, which means that it will not be subsidized. It will be created at the level that our workforce can afford.
- The details of the executive order are still forthcoming. But our plan and our commitment of our entire administration is that we lead with dignity and compassion first. And we have one of the most highly trained police forces in the state, if not the country, at de-escalation. And I'm incredibly proud of our police.
- the way that they interact with all people, whether they're housed or not, and we're committed to continuing the processes that work in our community. Do you want to say anything further?
- Not yet. Again, the details of that order are still forthcoming. So we're going to have a hard time understanding what that means. But just guessing what that means, I anticipate that it is illegalizing sleeping outside. And I'm not really sure how you enforce that.
- Can you tell us what media source you're with? Thank you.
- And so we base our decisions on safety first. And when an encampment becomes unsafe, we do our best to give a 30 day notice depending on the details of that safety violation. And so we have a team that goes out and works with folks over a 30 day period to try to relocate them.
- And most folks move on their own. My goal as mayor is to be able to tell everyone who's sleeping outside, who's from here, that we have a place for you to sleep inside tonight. When we can do that, we will have no problem enforcing an executive order. We have to have the structure and the resources in place in order to
- get to the end goal. I want to highlight too that the executive order also calls for better and long-term mental health care. I'm not clear on what the Trump administration's plan is for providing that, but I couldn't agree more. As long as it's compassion-based and evidence-based care, this is needed. It's needed for all ages in our community and in
- all communities throughout the nation.
- What we're looking at is how to drive the housing for the people who are living and working here. My hope is that the students will be encouraged to live in the housing that was created for them.
- and that, in fact, the empty units should start dropping the price of those student-based units. The reason that I am differentiating between the student-based housing and other housing is really important because the undergraduate student housing that's being developed today is really targeted at a certain lifestyle, a lifestyle that
- that stays up a little bit later and recreates differently. And so the challenge in our community is that if we have 200 units of housing that's available in a large student development, you can't put a single mom with a couple of young kids in there. They have a different schedule. And so in that way,
- I really want to encourage, especially the undergraduate population that runs on a different schedule, to live in the great units that have been developed for them, which are also many of them right on the transit lines that take them right to campus. So that's how the community can work really well. And then we need to target
- anything that we're doing to add units in existing neighborhoods and to build new units elsewhere towards people who are living and working here long-term. So also about global, you mentioned that you're looking at places to reduce red tape and friction where there's a certain in. Can you go into any further detail about what limitations you're looking at lifting
- and maybe an ETA on when that, I know you said a rough end of the year, but some sort of a specific date that's not. Do you wanna take this, David? David Hittle, Director of Planning. Hi, could you repeat that question, please? Yeah, so earlier Mary Thompson just mentioned that cities looking at places where there are sort of unnecessary limitations, friction, red tape,
- Yeah, probably two major arenas there it's the process the permitting process I think there's probably more friction here and
- Than needs to be the case maybe more here than you would find in similar cities across the state other localities nearby We're as the mayor mentioned going to have a third party comprehensive audit for the first time of our processes We have great people smart people talented people hard workers and very civic minded people Processing our permits, but they've never had the benefit of a
- thorough examination of best practices, helping to bring in an understanding of, you know, where we have redundancies, where we have bottlenecks, where we have inefficiencies that can be fixed. So I think that'll help our permitting system and make life better for developers and builders. That's one arena. The other arena is the unified development ordinance, which is our zoning ordinance, which tells you how you can build, where you can build it.
- And I think that it makes it relatively easy to build a house a conventional house It makes it relatively easy to build a massive student apartment complex It makes it relatively hard to build everything in between which is where you really serve the middle class and the lower middle class the people that
- work for the school system or work for the government but can't afford to live here. And so we want to take a close look at those restrictions that probably shouldn't exist and find out how to remove those, how to tailor them so that they're less obstructive.
- So we have hired a homeless response coordinator, as you noted.
- With SEA-1, we are not in a position to add additional staffing. Brian, our homeless response coordinator is doing a phenomenal job. That really is a coordination effort so that we can get all the parts of the city, you can see how many, that touch the unhoused challenges in some way together on the same page and we know
- what each other are doing, but we're also reaching out to the organizations that are either serving folks that are unhoused or, as is the case right now, he's doing a lot of outreach to folks who may be unknowingly releasing people that end up in camps without services.
- Great, I wanna thank you all. Oh, Dave, sorry. I don't have an idea of how many encampments we have at this moment, no. Other questions? Yes, Jeremy.
- You're getting your steps in today, Kelly. There you go, $22.85 per hour. Anna might be able to back me. So the Prosperity Indiana releases an annual housing wage
- Annual housing wage report for the state every year Bloomington always winds up on the top five We're actually at position number four, which is lower for us. I believe it's 2285 It might be 2385 the other municipalities are in 24 to 25 dollar range In the city of Bloomington organization or the our community
- How many jobs in our community pay? That's a great question. So I think that we would have to work backwards into the AMI data that Mayor Kerry was mentioning when talking about affordability. Do you know what our average four person?
- I apologize, I don't have it memorized, but I can follow up with that information, yeah. Heading home did a recent survey, and we do not have that data yet, but I imagine
- The place it's going to be released is on the Heading Home website. So we're grateful to them for their work on that.
- You wanna field both of them, is that what you said? Yeah. I don't know who wants to take this question, but the council's having a full hearing tomorrow night, so they'll be talking more in depth about union at Creston at that point. Not clear about what your first question really means, the similarities between that and Crawford, but this is a tax abatement hearing tomorrow night, and so that's a,
- that's different than the Title 16, although there are Title 16 issues. So are you wondering about Title 16 compliance or tax abatement compliance?
- to respond to you. So Union at Crescent is a low barrier housing option. It is not a permanent supportive housing unit like Crawford is. So there are two very different things. It has to do with who they are housing. Union at Crescent is not just dedicated for permanent supportive housing, though. And Jane, do you have anything else to add? I think you'll hear all about the abatement, the tax abatement issues tomorrow night.
- Okay, we're gonna wrap this up. I want to first extend my thanks to the media. We value you so much in Bloomington and we are so glad that we have such a robust crowd of journalists here. We appreciate you helping us get the word out about this very complicated challenge.
- and our optimism for coming together to really heal the challenge. I want to reiterate, if there is any community in the United States that could solve homelessness, it's Bloomington, Indiana. We can do it. We have some hard choices to make. Thanks for coming today.