(upbeat gentle music) - The problem of homeless or unhoused people isn't just an issue in major cities like Chicago, Rockford, and Peoria.

At any given time there are nearly 26,000 Illinoisans experiencing homelessness according to the Illinois Department of Human Services.

This winter, two people from Bloomington-Normal's Public Radio Station, WGLT, produced a documentary chronicling what it's like being unhoused in the Twin Cities.

WGLT Digital Producer Emily Bollinger and her friend and colleague, reporter Melissa Ellin join me now, they are the news people behind "Frozen and Forgotten: An Unhoused Winter in Bloomington-Normal."

Thank you both for coming on, appreciate it.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- So we do talk about the homeless issue a lot in Peoria and those bigger cities I mentioned.

What about this issue in Bloomington-Normal kind of spurred you on to make this documentary?

- Yeah, I'll go ahead and take that one.

So I have been covering Bloomington-Normal's homeless scene, whatever you wanna call it, since really, we started having an encampment that was growing in right next to our downtown.

And that was a little over a year ago in October of '23.

And since then there's been a big sweep or a dispersal, as some people call it.

And that was when we started this project, making sure that we were still covering without it being visible.

- Sure and what part of this did you decide, you know what, instead of doing audio, web stuff, we should do something video wise?

It's the first time GLT's ever done that.

- Yeah, that was kind of what I wanted to spearhead.

I saw Melissa doing a lot of the unhoused coverage and we made a short video about the encampment.

It was about two to three minutes long and it gained a lot of traction.

A lot of people on social media started to talk about the encampment because of the video that came out.

So there was a lot of discourse on TikTok and Instagram and people were like, "What do we wanna do about this?"

And it started to open up a lot more eyes in the Bloomington-Normal community to the problem because, you know, reading a web story is different than watching a video on it.

So I said to Melissa like, "Next time you cover the unhoused "or people experiencing homelessness, can I come out?

"And we could start making a video "and just kind of see what happens."

So it really started with the encampment and we wanted to see what would happen from there.

- Now, there are a few different encampments around the Twin Cities, I live by both of 'em actually and see them every day.

Which ones did you go to?

And I mean, you don't have to give us specific locations, but tell us which ones that you visited.

- Yeah, I'll take that, again.

So like you said, there are many, even when I referenced the larger encampment, which was next to Home Sweet Home Ministries, Bloomington based homeless shelter, there were the others existing, there always have been.

But the ones that we specifically went to is one in West Bloomington off of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive near Chestnut Health Systems' location.

And that is currently estimated by experts to be the largest one that has grown since the encampment dispersal.

And then, there's one that is more prominent near the AutoZone off of Center Street in Normal, specifically near the train tracks.

But we went everywhere for this.

And that was really because we did ride-alongs with the people doing street outreach to support these people.

And we went on them with their normal day.

We were essentially shadowing them.

So, you know, we really weren't picking and choosing, we were along for the ride.

- Yeah, that site in Normal by AutoZone, very visible and in a very heavily populated area.

The one off of MLK more off the road so to speak, and in a wooded area.

Did you guys have any safety concerns in doing any of these or going to any of these locations?

- I can take the start of that.

We had safety talks with the outreach team.

I even got some of it on film.

I don't think it made the documentary, but we did have safety talks with each team.

We had a safe word, "If you feel unsafe "by anything that's happening right now, "just say the safe word and we'll go back to the car."

- Yeah, that was a large conversation that the people who are doing this work, the street outreach team members, have all of the time.

We became a part of that because, like I said, we were effectively a part of the team for a short time with them in our reporter roles.

And so, whenever we went back alone, which we did do to gain additional footage, which Emily was always doing, I was always there as well.

But I do wanna add too that I don't think we ever had to use our safe word so... - No, we never had to use the safe word.

There were like, you know, obviously, some suspicious situations, but we never felt like our lives were in danger.

- Well let's talk a little bit more about what you encountered, because there's a lot of misconceptions out there, I would assume, about the situation and some of these encampments.

What kind of people did you find out there and can you tell us a little bit about... just pick one or two and tell us about their situations and why they told you they were in this situation?

- I can take that.

- Yeah, yeah.

- "These are all people who in some way, shape, "or form fell on hard times," and that's a direct quote from one of them, Irish Sterling who will be on a panel we're holding on Wednesday.

And she specifically had been in Bloomington and has been what some experts refer to as chronically homeless.

It's kind of, you know, in and out of homelessness, might seek shelter at some points as she is currently in a residential shelter with Home Sweet Home Ministries, but also has lived in a tent and was living in a tent when we met her.

And was living in a tent when I've met her other times.

She has been seeking a job, it's hard for her to get into housing because, as people who rent know, there are a lot of income qualifications.

There are, what we call, like black marks for residents.

If you've ever been evicted, that makes it nearly impossible sometimes to find someone willing to rent to you, all of these factors.

And while Irish is just one person we spoke to, all of the other people we spoke to were in very similar situations.

Another person was Elizabeth Collins, goes by Liz.

She, similarly, has been in and out of shelter.

I use shelter, not housing because a residential shelter, congregate shelter is temporary and they're very particular about that language.

But she is currently actually in a tent again, which has changed from our reporting.

She lost her job that she had that got her into a hotel around the summertime.

And since then, has battled with depression as many people also struggle with.

I mean, I think what I'm trying to say with all of this is these are normal people who just financially had a bad month and that caused them to live on the streets.

You know, not everybody has someone that they can move in with or, you know, I don't know if you, or I would be able to support someone in our house as well.

So it's really a financial matter.

But these are individuals who are just like all of us.

It's not like there's something special about them that causes them to become unhoused.

- And we've heard from folks in the past that, you know, with people who are unsheltered, some may have substance abuse problems, some may have mental health problems.

Did you encounter any folks like that?

Depression can be obviously called a mental health problem, but did you find anybody who's had a really, really serious mental health problem, like schizophrenia, anything like that?

- We did not encounter anyone who had any issues with psychosis, which is where sort of I would call schizophrenia 'cause I am a mental health reporter so that's sort of where I rely on that expertise.

When it actually comes to substance use disorder, alcohol use disorder, that is one of the main misconceptions that I believe every single person we spoke to, which was around like, you know, a handful, a little over a handful of people who are unhoused brought up.

They want the public to know that many of them do not deal with substance use disorder.

At the same time, some of them do.

It is a disorder, it is, you know, to use a more dated term, addiction.

And it is something that they battle with, but that for those who do have it, they say it is not the cause of homelessness.

It is just a factor that plays into it.

And sometimes, you know, it can be a little symbiotic.

You know, you become unhoused and then you start relying on the substances more and it's just, again, something that they battle with.

But the vast majority of people we spoke to have no substance, no alcohol use disorder.

- There's another narrative out there that some of these people who are out there want to be out there.

Did you run into anybody who said, "Yeah, I wanna live in a tent?"

- No.

- No.

- In fact, we ran into people who said, again, the opposite.

And they're aware of these misconceptions.

It's not like they live in their little bubble and, you know, remain unaffected by all of the discourse that the public has about them.

Especially because a lot of the times, especially when you're on AutoZone, like they kind of get heckled, I guess, for lack of a better word.

Like they get directly called these names, or told these things about themselves.

And, at the end of the day, they're also the only ones who get to define their own story.

None of them want to be in a tent but, for a variety of reasons, including sometimes the substance use and alcohol use disorder or, you know, branching out to issues with their mental health and not being able to live in a congregate setting i.e.

you know, sharing a bedroom with someone, they are left with no real other course of action than to live in a tent or on a bench really, wherever.

- What's it like in the Twin Cities?

We heard about Peoria and the unsheltered population we've had here, what's it like in the Twin Cities in terms of beds available at shelters?

Are there enough, are there even close to being enough beds available?

- No, I think that that is something which you even mentioned we're seeing across the state, we're seeing across the country.

There are wait lists that are, you know, dozens of people, sometimes long.

And I think that the experts in the homeless shelters in the Twin Cities will tell you that they are quite long right now.

And, you know, they move through the wait lists.

People leave the shelter because they can't live in that congregate setting, as I was saying.

There's a lot of differences every day about who is staying in that shelter.

But every time someone leaves, you know, they may or may not be winding back up on the streets.

There is a shortage of space that is part of the issue.

- Yeah, tell us a little bit about the groups that both of you went out with to these different encampments and who they are and what they're trying to do to help with the problem.

- I'll let Emily take this one.

- Sure...

So we started going out with Home Street Home Ministries and the main street outreach person that we followed was Lauren Wiggins.

So we followed her and her team around and she showed us a lot of the different locations.

And the documentary mostly follows her.

And then, we also followed around God's Mission Ministry, which was Kim Massey and her husband, Eric Massey Sr. And yeah, we just followed them around.

Home Sweet Home Ministries, they just started their street outreach program pretty recently.

- [Melissa] Over the summer about.

- Yeah, over the summer, it's a new thing.

But God's Mission Ministry has been doing it for a while.

And they're a volunteer... - Volunteer based nonprofit.

- Nonprofit.

Yeah, they're a nonprofit group.

So two very different groups both doing street outreach.

- I want both of you guys to answer this, but Emily, you first, when you went out to these different encampments, what did you see that just totally caught you off guard, or shocked you, if anything?

- Yeah, I will say the first five minutes we started filming, it was an incredibly snowy day.

And they said, "Okay, we're gonna start at "the AutoZone encampment, there's somebody there "who we wanna talk to, we have a bed open "for her at Home Sweet Home."

It was Liz Collins, who Melissa mentioned earlier.

And we saw her at a bus stop and when we pulled up she just started sobbing.

And it was just, it was very emotional.

It felt a little weird to be filming during that moment, but I was like, "I really wanna get this, "this is a very emotional moment "that maybe other people should see" and that was a lot.

We talked about it in the car after we had that moment 'cause she was running late to an appointment.

And they said, "Well, she doesn't have a phone, "she doesn't have a watch, "so we can't get in contact with her.

"She doesn't know what time it is."

And that was something that really stood out to me was in five minutes we're seeing somebody sobbing, they don't have a watch, they don't have a phone, they don't know how to get to their appointments.

They're running late to their appointments.

And that had a really big impact on me.

And just interviewing all these people and then having to go home to my apartment afterwards, really, it makes you think about their situation a lot more.

- And why was she crying?

- Out of happiness.

She was very happy she was getting a bed.

She didn't know she was getting a bed 'cause again, they, she didn't have a phone so they couldn't contact her.

So it was very happy, emotional tears.

- And Melissa, what about you, what surprised you?

- I think I was a little less surprised only because I've actually done this before.

This was not my first time doing that shadowing sort of that I mentioned, I went out with Jolt Harm Reduction, which used to have a larger presence in the Twin Cities before organizations in the Twin Cities started doing the street outreach.

And I think what struck me was actually the change I noticed, the instance I just mentioned was probably, I think I went out October 2023.

When I went out more recently.

And we were doing outings in November, December, January was how spread out people were.

When I went two years ago now that was not the case whatsoever.

People were creating small communities in smaller wooded areas, particularly I'm thinking right now of the MLK Drive encampment we mentioned.

The tent setups were extremely elaborate.

You wouldn't have been able to tell that they've only been there a couple of months for some of them.

And they were also spread out along the trail.

I didn't necessarily see one, you know, spot where people were congregating.

They were really forced to pick a spot that was theirs.

And I think, you know, when we're having these discussions with the people living there, they talk about that as well.

So I think it's just the distance from each other, the distance from resources, that's what struck me the most.

- And did you get any insight into whether people out there try and help each other, or they mostly stay to themselves?

What did you see concerning that?

- It seemed like a little bit of both.

Some of them really liked helping each other.

Or we talked to Stephanie Britton and I think we have a quote from her where she says something like, oh, they like to call me the mayor around here.

Maybe she was, you know, self-proclaiming that title.

But a lot of them do like to help each other.

Or some of them will live in the same tents and others like to keep to themselves for personal reasons, safety reasons.

So it was really a mix of both.

- Yeah, let's talk about safety, because we talked about your safety earlier, but the safety of the people who are living out on the streets in these tents, I mean, they're susceptible to just about anything.

Did you learn anything about how they keep themselves safe and if they do, you know, face safety challenges out there?

- Yeah, 100% they face safety challenges, particularly during the winter months.

At least two people we spoke to, including Stephanie Britton and Irish Sterling... Well those were the two, but those two got cold-based illnesses and you know, that is a sincere reality.

Pneumonia, bronchitis flareups, what have you.

There is also just trying to stay warm, trying to stay dry.

You know, they have to figure out...

They don't have cars, that's why they're living in a tent, right?

So how do we get a pallet to keep us off of the freezing cold ground?

And that's where, you know, Home Sweet Home, God's Mission Ministry does come in, but, you know, they have also a whole shelter to run, in the case of Home Sweet Home, they might not be able to get the resources needed.

So there's a lot of different communication that goes on for that but ultimately, you're, at some points, in below freezing temperatures trying to survive with nothing but like a thin material to keep you from those elements.

You know, death came up, nobody died that we know of, or that we spoke to, and nobody has that we know of yet.

But that was a serious concern that was brought up multiple times.

- And a more minor concern that a lot of them had was stealing 'cause even if a lot of them do get phones, you know, they don't have vaults out there, they don't have lockers, they don't have storage units.

So a lot of their stuff, they did mention, does get stolen.

- Yeah.

- And some of them did mention like, "Oh, somebody stole my phone, somebody stole this."

So there's not really a lot of precautions that they could take to prevent that.

- And they know who's stealing it too.

You know, they're name dropping like, so and so took my phone and it's, at the end of the day, what are you gonna do about it?

- [Emily] There's nothing they can do.

- They kind of need the phone too.

- The folks that you talked to, did you get any idea of where they're from, if they're locals or, you know, I've heard a lot of the folks over on the MLK sites, since it's by the interstate they may be from other parts of the state or other parts of the country.

Have you heard anything about where these people were originally from?

- I know one mentioned he was from Peoria, or maybe that was TR- - Two, yeah.

- Two mentioned they were from Peoria and that they were here for a court date in... Or here in Bloomington-Normal for a court date.

And then they just got stuck there.

And then Liz, I believe is from South Carolina.

- Yeah., a lot of the people we spoke to are not necessarily born and raised Bloomington-Normal.

However, the vast majority of them lived in Bloomington-Normal in housing for some time before they became unhoused.

So I think there is a narrative sort of, that goes around is like, because Bloomington specifically has two homeless shelters, maybe people are coming to Bloomington for that resource.

And that's just not the case.

I mean, you know, you're not necessarily gonna show up somewhere unless you know you're going to get a bed.

So people are generally at least from the state, but they may not always be Bloomington-Normal natives.

- And are any of these folks aware of the laws that are now popping up in Peoria and other places saying it's basically illegal to camp in public?

Are they aware of that?

- I would say some were 'cause, yeah- - Craig and TR.

- Craig, yeah.

Craig Ross, who will be in the documentary, he did mention Peoria and the laws happening in Peoria.

So we know at least two people were aware of that.

- Yeah, I mean they have, you know... they don't have access to the internet in the woods.

They might not have access to a phone, but they can go to the library, they can go places and, you know, they're educating themselves on their own situation, they're aware of that.

So most of them were knowledgeable and they have to be aware of that too because, you know, Peoria and the Twin Cities are so close.

Perhaps, it's indicative of a shift that might happen in Bloomington.

I know I covered when the Supreme Court made its ruling allowing municipalities, including Peoria, to set their own guidelines surrounding how to " criminalize," as some advocates say, homelessness.

Bloomington has had public discussions about not doing that.

So, you know, we don't have that criminalization or legalization, but it's been top of mind for many of them.

- From what you've seen, who you've talked to, the outreach folks that you've hung out with, does anybody have a consensus of how we can not even eliminate the problem, just make it better for these folks as far as shelter, jobs, training, things like that, any thoughts on that?

- Yeah, the experts all will say that there are short-term solutions.

There are things that we, even as individuals, can do right now, but that the long-term, ultimate solution is to get more affordable housing, to get people into permanent supportive housing, which is also a nationwide struggle right now.

So that's the long-term in the meantime, the experts that we spoke to specifically for this series talked about, you know, providing resources, whether it's financial dollars or you know, physical items, tents, sleeping bags, food, et cetera, to the shelter and the nonprofit, whoever is going out and doing the street outreach in the community because they have the established relationships and they say that that's the best way to actually get the resources into the people's hands.

- And if I can add to that, we do have a moment in the documentary where we run into some wet sleeping bags at the AutoZone encampment.

And our expert, Kim Massey said, "Well, this is great.

"Someone had a great heart, great intentions, "but leaving sleeping bags out in the snow, "out in the rain is not gonna help anybody."

So just making intentional donations, not just leaving stuff out to get wet, giving stuff to the street outreach teams because, like Melissa said, they're the ones who know the unhoused people and they're the ones who are knocking on their tents, and being respectful, and building the rapport.

So just making intentional donations.

- Sure, your documentary, "Frozen and Forgotten: An Unhoused Winter in Bloomington-Normal," what do you hope people get out of this?

- I hope people just understand the situation more and have more empathy for people who are experiencing homelessness.

Because a lot of people have been asking me about the documentary and asking, well, how can I help?

Or how could you like, look at these people and not just tell them to get a job?

How are you going out here?

And I just want them to have more empathy for the situation and understand more what people are actually going through.

- Yeah, I would add to that and just say that I hope people have a better understanding of who these people are.

I think that, as we discussed before, there are lots and lots of misconceptions about who is sleeping out in the cold.

And, as our experts said and called like, this is the street family, these are our neighbors, these are sometimes our friends.

So I just hope that when people either sit down and read, or are watching that they're able to see that that is a fellow human, a fellow community member on the screen talking about what they're going through and what they need.

- Any ideas on part two?

- I think that the funny thing about this is like, for me in particular, like I said, I've been covering homelessness for over a year.

I can't even see it in parts, you know.

Like there's always going to be follow up because until people are no longer living outside, it's an issue that needs to be covered.

- Yeah, there's nothing in the works right now, but I know I would love to because, as Melissa said, people's housing situations are changing all the time.

So it'd be great to do some sort of follow up with them.

- Well, it's something very cool that you've done.

First time WGLT's ever done a video documentary, so congratulations on breaking ground on that.

WGLT Digital Producer, Emily Bollinger and reporter, Melissa Ellin, thanks for your hard work, we appreciate it.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- All right, and thank you for joining us.

Don't forget you can see us anytime really at wtvp.org, on Facebook and on Instagram have a good night.

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