(bright music) (bright music continues) - As the homeless epidemic in the U.S. continues to worsen, a Twin Cities organization is providing relief to people experiencing homelessness and not just giving them food and clothing but housing, and unique housing at that.

To tell us more about the proposed shelter village is the CEO of Home Sweet Home Ministries, Matt Burgess.

Matt, thanks for coming in.

- Thanks for having me on.

- Before we get into the shelter village, which is really interesting, you've been at Home Sweet Home now for how many years?

- I've been there for 16 years.

- Okay, how have you seen the issue with homelessness age over that 16 years?

- Yeah, homelessness has kind of ebbed and flowed a little bit over those years.

Really since coming out of the pandemic, though, we've seen just a worsening crisis, particularly of people who are stuck outside on the streets.

Our existing homeless service system has been overwhelmed, and we just haven't grown and adapted to really meet the need that we see now in our community.

- Have you seen, I mean, in the last 16 years, the number of people homeless jump a lot\, or has it been kinda steady and just maybe the the communities aren't prepared for that?

- Yeah, that's a good question.

There'd always been some seasonal fluctuation to what we've seen with people who are experiencing homelessness.

I'd say we've seen a noticeable jump, though, in the past three to four years really coming out of the pandemic.

Once all of the pandemic relief funding and all those initiatives really wound down, we really saw an increase locally in Bloomington-Normal that was unanticipated and unexpected.

- Mm-hmm.

And Bloomington-Normal's also seen, you know, homes that are just going for incredible amounts of money, but homes that, you know, regular people can afford just don't seem to be out there, or apartments for that matter.

- Yeah, that's definitely been true.

We've been fortunate as a community that we've seen a lot of job growth in the local community, but we have not seen corresponding growth in available housing stock, and that's just created a buying nightmare for people trying to get into their first home or even to to rent an affordable apartment.

All of those housing costs have just increased dramatically over the years, the last couple of years in particular, because the demand is so high locally.

- And, you know, I guess one of the other issues is, too, with Bloomington and Normal, you know, they're on the job.

they're trying to build more houses and apartments, but, of course, that doesn't happen overnight.

- Yeah, developing housing, there's a lot of math involved in that sort of stuff that goes beyond me, but it does take an exceedingly long time to develop new housing.

Whether it's multifamily or single family housing, it just takes time for that to take shape.

- Well, this isn't a problem unique to our area, of course.

You know, all over the country, people are trying to help the people who are unsheltered, but a new way of doing that has kind of popped up and really gained momentum, it seems, in the last few months.

Tell us about the village that you hope to build.

- Yeah, we're calling it The Bridge.

It's a brand new named program for us that we are hoping to, not hoping, we will be developing.

A 48 individual sleeping cabin, little shelter village community that we call it.

I describe it as a gated community.

So it'll be a private facility, and the residents will have their very own standalone sleeping unit.

And then we'll have a centralized clubhouse that has some amenities in it, offices and a kitchen and a gathering space.

As well as a separate bathhouse that has showers, bathrooms, all of that sort of stuff will be in a centralized location.

We're looking at doing it on just a couple of acres of land, really, and we think that it's gonna be a really new and important change in our capacity to serve people experiencing homelessness as well as significant change in how we're configured to serve people experiencing homelessness.

- Yeah, in a bit, I wanna talk about the specifics of the village, but just to let people know, this is gonna be at the intersection of Main Street and Oakland in Bloomington.

There's a vacant lot there that I believe Connect Transit owns now.

- [Matt] Connect Transit owns it currently, that's right.

We're actively in negotiations to purchase that lot from them at this point in time.

- [Mark] Do you feel pretty good that that's gonna happen?

- [Matt] I do, I do.

- Good.

Now, as far as these, they're not like the tiny houses that we see on the internet.

- Yeah, they're smaller than that.

- This is basically just a room, and I'm guessing it's got electricity, HVAC.

- Maybe that's about it.

- Yeah, so each of these sleeping units, most of them are gonna be single units.

So they're gonna be very small, really about 80 square feet.

But they will be connected to power.

So they're gonna be able to be climate-controlled throughout all seasons of the year.

So in August when it's brutally hot and humid, people can turn on their air conditioning and stay comfortable.

And in the winter when it's freezing cold, they can turn on their heat and stay warm and not have to fight to really survive those extremes that we see.

The plumbing is the thing that's missing from the sleeping units, we're not running water lines or sewer lines to each sleeping unit.

That'll be through the centralized clubhouse and the bathroom facilities.

- [Mark] Okay.

Now, why, you know, these tiny rooms as opposed to maybe building a building or finding a building that's for rent and having everybody in one space?

- Yeah, well, we've been working towards this for almost two years now, trying to develop additional shelter capacity.

Early in that two-year timeframe, we really investigated what type of shelter that we needed to develop, and we came back to what is just often described in the field of homeless services as non-congregate shelter.

And that means that we're not expecting people to sleep in a big bunk room with multiple beds in the same space, not expecting people to share spaces like we do in our traditional system.

Non-congregate means people have privacy, autonomy, they have their own space, so that the tensions and the conflicts that we see in our existing system are mitigated.

And really, it allows for us to serve some people who aren't able to be successful in that group accommodation setting, who maybe have more active mental health symptoms or have a more significant trauma history, and they need to have more separation from other people.

So that's why we landed on non-congregate, first of all.

There are a couple of different ways to offer non-congregate shelter.

We chose this shelter-village model because, at least theoretically, it can be developed quickly.

Like I said, we've been working towards this for two years now, but it can be built quickly, and it is very, very cost-effective.

In contrast to purchasing and renovating a large building that will cost multiple millions of dollars, we're looking at purchasing this land, building these 48 sleeping units, a clubhouse, and a bathhouse for under $3 million total capital development costs.

So, it's a cost-effective, rapid, and thoughtful way to expand our service system.

- Sure, since you brought up money, who's gonna be paying for this?

- Yeah.

We're committed to this being a public-private partnership.

We're not relying solely on public funding.

One of the unique things about Home Sweet Home Ministries is the vast majority of our operating budget is funded through private donations.

We're blessed by the support from our local community and have been for over a hundred years.

And so we have some capital reserve money that we have stewarded for just this type of a purpose.

So we'll be using a considerable portion of that capital reserves, but we're also getting some funding through McLean County.

McLean County has funding that comes in to support mental health and public safety initiatives, and this shelter project is addressing connecting people to mental health and substance use disorder services, so we're eligible to receive funding through that.

We were actually the sole respondent to the grant opportunity that they released at the beginning of the year, and so, you know, we stepped up and we said that we will take this on and utilize that funding as part of the way that we're gonna get it done.

- And the Town of Normal, City of Bloomington have given you their blessing, for whatever that's worth.

- Yeah, both the city council and the town council from Bloomington and Normal have both unanimously passed resolutions endorsing and encouraging the transaction between Connect Transit and Home Sweet Home Ministries for our purposes of developing that specific parcel of land for this specific project.

- And there's always people who say, you know, "This is great, but I don't want it in my backyard."

Have you come across a lot of people who have those concerns?

- I wouldn't say a lot.

Definitely, there are some nearby neighbors that live within a couple of blocks that have expressed some concerns.

And we always knew that that would be the case no matter where we tried to expand shelter services.

I really think that we have tried to be thoughtful about the design of the project, the design of the campus so that it's gonna be visibly attractive to the neighborhood.

We're taking security and safety very seriously.

We're gonna have a comprehensive onsite security system so that we will have visibility to the fence lines and that sort of thing surrounding the campus.

And it's a 24-hour-a-day staffed program, so my team will always be on site once we open.

Just like our existing shelter program, we're always on site, and so there will never be time where professional oversight and supervision isn't offered, that will always be part of the project.

- And it's fairly close to your main Home Sweet Home building.

- Yeah, I always love telling people that if I stood up in my office and looked out my window, I can see this parcel of land from my window.

And so, it's not directly across the street from us, but it's about a 60-second walk from that parcel to our existing campus.

- So how does it work?

Do you find somebody who is in need of shelter?

And what happens from there?

If they say, "Okay, yeah, I'd like to take advantage of this," what do they have to do?

- Yeah, we are prioritizing people who are stuck outside, right?

People who can't be served in our existing shelter system.

And so we are, my street outreach team goes out and finds where people are right now, and we will add this as one of the ways that we're offering assistance, that we are able to extend an offer of shelter to people who don't have that right now.

Targeting and focusing on the people who are outside in tents, sleeping under piles of blankets, maybe in their car or in a parking garage, those types of scenarios.

There will be a screening process, just like there is for any shelter program.

It'll be a minimal, just, you know, we wanna verify that we know who this person is, they understand the program as we've got it designed, and as long as all the things line up the right way, then we will fast-track them to come in to their own sleeping unit.

- And what are some of the rules that these folks are gonna have to abide by?

- Yeah, we're gonna try and have it be as low-barrier as possible, but that does not mean a no-barrier shelter by any means.

You know, basically our rules are gonna revolve around safety kinds of considerations.

Can't be aggressive to somebody else, can't be threatening to somebody else, can't be engaging in undesirable behavior in the immediate neighborhood area.

Kinda like a one-mile radius type of around the campus, we're gonna ask people to refrain from certain behaviors, all around safety kind of areas of focus.

We're gonna differ from our existing shelter in that we aren't going to require as a hard line people to be completely sober all the time.

So if people have ongoing substance-use disorder and they have a reocurrence of use, we'll still allow them to come in and sleep in their unit, as long as they're not unsafe to others or to themself.

We don't want that condition to be a barrier to a safe sleeping situation for them.

We also would look at that type of an individual as a prime candidate to get connected to addiction recovery services or mental health services, if that's an issue.

And so we don't wanna set up a barrier between ourselves and them, we wanna help bridge where their situation is into services by engaging them in this project.

- Yeah, with those services, will it be kind of a case-by-case basis, where somebody is looking at person A and saying, "Okay, you've been staying here.

Have you been looking for work?

Have you been trying to better yourself?"

Is it one of those things where they'll work with the person, and it's not just a place to hang out, so to speak?

- Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

Again, this is one of those nuanced type of dynamics, that we're not going to mandate anybody has to do any specific type of service, right?

That's not gonna be a requirement.

What we're going to do is we're going to engage people.

We're gonna build a trusting relationship with them, we're going to encourage them.

If they have mental health symptoms, we're gonna encourage them to get connected to mental health supports.

If they have a substance use disorder, we're going to encourage them to get engaged with recovery services from that perspective.

And one of the really innovative aspects of this specific shelter village is that those service providers, they're gonna come to this location.

We're not gonna have to send people across town to get those services.

Those services will be provided directly on site, right there on what is now a gravel lot it'll be in the clubhouse in The Bridge right there.

- That's good, I mean, as you know, I don't have to tell you, a lot of these folks don't have transportation or money for transportation, so that's one barrier, I guess, they won't have to worry about.

- Well, yeah, transportation is definitely a barrier, but also just the going into an unfamiliar setting, right?

If somebody isn't accustomed to going to a doctor's office or a counselor's office or what have you.

We're eliminating that fear or trepidation that people may carry with them.

Maybe they had a bad experience at a previous service provider, and so going into a professional office scenario is something that they're not willing to do.

We're eliminating those as barriers as well by inviting the service providers to get outside of their offices and come to our facility to provide those services.

- In doing some research for this interview, I saw a lot of these villages in bigger cities around the country.

While you were doing your homework and looking into it, what did you find in terms of how successful they were and what they needed to be to be successful?

- Yeah, that's a very good question.

Obviously, community to community, we see different levels of successful outcomes with initiatives like this.

The factors that contribute to successful outcomes include our services available on site, and we are very committed to providing those services on site.

Is it a well-run and staffed program?

Is safety prioritized, right?

Those are things that we're committed to.

And then a key factor is, is there housing to move people into following their transition time in the shelter village?

And so that's where we have to continue to work as a community to make sure that we have adequate access to housing available to people to move into so that they can have a permanent place and a place of stability.

- Yeah, how would you deal with something like that today, when, again, it takes a while to build new houses and you have to find ones that are affordable?

So, today, in McLean County and Bloomington-Normal, how do you deal with that?

Let's say you do have someone who is homeless but they're ready to work and they're ready to turn their lives around, how do you find that affordable housing?

- You know, we have a whole division of our organization that provides housing assistance and works with local landlords, and so we've got some innovative ways that we make housing available for the people that we're serving.

We do what we call master leasing, where Home Sweet Home Ministries signs a lease with a local landlord and then sublets to a person that we're serving while we provide outreach-based housing navigation and case management services.

So we make it easier for the landlord to have their stable stream of income, have their property well cared for because our staff are coming on site on a regular basis, and we make it possible for people to get into housing.

And so we're gonna really lean into those relationships that we have already through our housing supports and look to expand that.

That's something that we can do with existing housing.

It just takes the relationship building, the development of the collaboration with local landlords to give people a chance and, you know, give people a chance with some guardrails that come along with working with an organization like Home Sweet Home Ministries.

- With this proposed village, are you gonna have structures that are big enough for, say, a family?

Husband and wife and child, or maybe just a mother and child cabin?

- We don't intend to serve households with minor children in The Bridge.

This is really just for adult households.

So we do have a number of cabins that will be built to provide accommodation for a two-person household, two-adult-person household.

But I always cite, the bathrooms are kind of gonna be in a centralized location, they're not gonna be attached to the unit.

And so if you have a small child that has to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, it's just not a good logistical setup to send that child across the way to go to the bathroom.

That's one of many reasons why we're not looking at serving families with children.

But we do have some capability of providing accommodation for two-adult households.

- Okay, I wanna talk to you about a few other issues regarding the homeless issue going on.

You know, we talk about encampments in the Twin Cities, and there's one known as the AutoZone encampment because it's near an AutoZone.

- Yeah.

- But it's right by a creek that I know is gonna have some major sewage work done coming up very soon.

- Yeah.

- So is there a plan in place yet on how to peacefully and respectfully move those folks out of that area?

- Yeah, I think there is.

In fact, the meeting that I had immediately before coming to talk to you was a meeting that I had with the Town of Normal and a local organization, trying to figure out if we can locate another spot for the tents to relocate to.

But really we've been, for the past couple of months, working with the individuals in that encampment, making them aware that this June 1 deadline is approaching.

So we've been communicating that routinely for the past couple of months, working with people, helping them find other options.

We've been bringing people into our shelter when space opens up and we have the ability to do that.

And so we've been approaching the June 1 deadline with a plan, but I think it's an overstatement to say we have a great plan for where people are gonna go, right?

We're gonna do what we can to provide shelter, but the reasons that people are in tents don't just evaporate because we reach a date on the calendar.

So we expect many of the people who are in that encampment currently to relocate their tents elsewhere.

We hope to keep track of them, but that's one of the things that we know, when they relocate, sometimes we lose track of them and it takes us a while to reestablish contact.

- Sure.

Another issue, today as we're taping this, there's the Budget Reconciliation Bill, and it's looking at cuts to SNAP, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, food stamps, as it used to be called.

What kind of of an effect do you think it'll have if that goes through on the services you guys have and just what people are doing in Bloomington-Normal as far as trying to survive?

- Yeah, I think it would be reasonable to expect we will see an increase in need for food assistance if that resource gets cut from many of the people who are getting that right now.

We would expect to see an increase in numbers of people coming into our dining center.

We provide meals every single day of the year to people in the community, and we would expect to see those numbers increase.

We'd also expect to see numbers increase for people coming to our low-income food co-op, our other significant food assistance.

And I think our colleagues that operate food pantries or other feeding assistance programs across the Twin Cities would say the very same thing, that they would expect that the numbers that are already fairly substantial, we would expect them to go up even more.

- Those other agencies in the Twin Cities, are they involved at all with the shelter village or helping you guys out at all with that?

- We have multiple nonprofit partners that are gonna come in and provide their services on site.

I've referencing mental health services and substance use disorder treatment services.

But we're also gonna have other agencies that do housing navigation.

The local federally qualified health center, they're gonna send their mobile health unit on site and different organizations like that.

Our youth homelessness organization, they're going to operate on standby if we have somebody in that target age range, they would come and provide us with assistance.

So yeah, we have multiple nonprofit partners.

As far as running the shelter village itself, I mean, that's really a Home Sweet Home responsibility, on us.

- Sure.

- And you said before about 2.6 million to build it, is that right?

- Yeah, that's what our most recent construction estimate is.

- And what about the upkeep in terms of what it cost to upkeep it?

And salaries and things- - Yeah, operating budget is a different thing than the capital budget, right?

Right now our operating budget comes in right around $700,000 a year to run that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with always having two staff on site.

Most of that $700,000 is paying for the staff, providing the services on site.

And then a portion of that would be for insurance and utilities and grounds maintenance, those types of things, but the vast majority is staffing for the shelter program.

- With this now looking like it's really gonna happen finally after a few years of talking about it, have you gotten a sense of excitement from donors, corporations, things like that in the Twin Cities?

- Absolutely, absolutely.

And that makes me feel a lot better and a lot more hopeful about our ability to get this done in the timeframe that we're trying to get it done.

In fact, for the past couple of years, as we've been talking about this concept, I've had multiple conversations with donors and people who wanna volunteer who've said, "Let me know when you're ready."

And so I have a growing list of community partners that we'll be talking to to garner support.

I'm excited.

You know, it looks like all sorts of different offers, right?

Obviously, looking at financial donors is a big part of what I'm doing, but offers of skilled labor and things like that have been part of the picture as well.

Artists wanting to be involved in doing some kind of beautification for the campus, different things like that.

Even our Water Reclamation District folks have said that they wanna partner in meaningful ways in helping get the project done.

And so it's been a really encouraging and momentum-building dynamic that we've experienced.

- It's good to have an open-minded community when you're talking about things like this.

- You know, I think it's an indication that this, there is recognition that this is a community issue.

This isn't a Home Sweet Home issue, this is a community, a Bloomington-Normal, McLean County issue, and we need to all share in ownership in addressing it.

- Real quick, before we leave, when do you hope to break ground?

- We hope to break ground in early July.

With the negotiations taking the time that they're taking, we expect to close on the purchase of the property by the end of June, with a fairly immediate turnaround to start to get shovels in the ground.

- All right, it's gonna be interesting to see how this works, and I'm sure a lot of other communities around Central Illinois will be watching you too to see how it works.

- I've already had conversations with friends in Peoria and in Champaign about this project.

- All right, very good.

Well, Matt Burgess, CEO of Home Sweet Home Ministries, I know you got a lot of work ahead of you, but we wish you the best of luck.

- Thank you, thanks for having me on again.

- All right, thank you.

And thank you for joining us.

You can check us out anytime wtvp.org and on Facebook and Instagram.

Have a good night.

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