By Blake Haas
BLOOMINGTON – The clock is ticking for 17 people residing in a small tent city near Home Sweet Home Ministries in Bloomington.
Those residents have until Friday to leave the parking lot that Eastview owns.
However, those residents need somewhere else to go due to prior experiences at The Salvation Army and Home Sweet Home Ministries.
The local nonprofits are working with the City of Bloomington to find those residents a place to stay.
“We’re taking a very compassionate approach. (We’re) giving folks time to find a solution, but at the same time, we also want to be a part of the solution,” said Bloomington Mayor Mboka Mwilambwe on WJBC. “We certainly do not want people to be out in the elements and suffer.”
Generally, local nonprofits, like Home Sweet Home Ministries, work to find housing for these individuals.
“There are some unanswerable questions right now,” Matt Burgess, Chief Executive Officer at Home Sweet Home Ministries, said on WJBC’s Afternoon Show. “(That) includes where they are supposed to go. There is no good answer for that. The reality is those who can’t seek shelter, either with us (HSHM) or The Salvation Army, who do not have a family member who will allow them to stay with them. They are going to wind up setting up their tent somewhere else in town.”
The individuals living in a tent have to leave the property by Friday.
Blake Haas can be reached at Blake.Haas@Cumulus.com.
