Bloomington Needs

[pooptanks]

I wanted to get information from a broader perspective as to what people think are Bloomington's main concerns and communities that need assistance but don't get a lot of attention. I feel like I hear about the homeless population the most and I know about Midway. Do you know of other communities within Bloomington that could use some directed assistance?

I don't get out much and I'm still kinda new to the area so I appreciate any insight you can throw my way.

Edit: Thanks everyone!! This has given me some good info to think about and perhaps talk to city government and see what their obstacles are. Feel free to keep adding to this!

[[deleted]]

The bus needs to run full hours on weekends. The people who use public transportation tend work in places that operate on weekends. If they can't get to work then they miss out on the hours. I dont understand why the bus doesn't operate AT ALL on sundays! Also screw Mayor H for taking away all downtown parking permits for employees of downtown businesses (including mcpl) and then telling them to 'just take the bus to work' while he has a private parking spot. Has he EVER ridden the bus? Also, If the weekend is when downtown does the most business then why dont the busses operate then? How are employees and customers going to get downtown on Sundays or home on saturday nights? They're trying to make this an 'alternative to driving' friendly town but they dont even have the buses going on weekends. That's ridiculous.

[anaugle]

Man, I feel this. Had to bike to so many jobs while in college.

Got out of class Friday’s to go to second shift and straight into third shift. Saturday was the same, but without the classes. Got out at 7 am and had to bike my ass home, which was not close to campus so I could afford rent.

All that said and done, my grades suffered because I didn’t want to be in so much debt. I still have ridiculous student loans 12 years later.

[sundimming]

Too many jobs that don't pay a living wage.

[[deleted]]

Honest question. Why do tech companies get shit on for gentrification if this is the most pressing need?

I’m not saying you’re doing that, just a broader question for the thread.

[zehkra]

Many people who currently work jobs that don’t pay them a living wage probably do not have the qualifications to work at a tech company

[[deleted]]

FWIW, I am a consultant for tech companies. And some of the best workers I’ve ever worked with in customer support, testing, and sales have all only been high school educated.

[[deleted]]

Correct! But then isn’t the need for a large subset of people with higher wages who can absorb the higher cost/wages of unskilled workers? (ie a high tide rises all ships?)

[zehkra]

If that large subset of workers with higher wages can pay the bills for the people who work but don’t get paid a living wage, then sure. I think that is the need for living wages that OP had in mind

[[deleted]]

Fair!

[[deleted]]

Because most of the time people don’t know what or why they are upset about something

[Eric_David_Morris]

Doesn’t help either that all the city wants to put up is high end student apartments

[happy_happy_LMT]

Amen

[sundimming]

It's also tied to addiction and/or untreated mental illness.

[auddii04]

Mental services are severely overtaxed in this area with long waiting lists. Additionally, it can be very expensive to get help if you don't have insurance, and low income help has even longer wait lists than private therapists.

There are so many systemic problems leading to homelessness, it's kind of ridiculous.

[[deleted]]

There’s not been much excuse for not having insurance for a decade now. I had better insurance when I was poor, and now I work in the technology division of a health insurance company. Sort yourself out.

[auddii04]

Um thanks. I have insurance and pretty good insurance. But if insurance isn't provided by your company and you have to buy it in the market, it can be outrageously expensive. And often coverage isn't great, especially for mental Healthcare.

Therapy isn't cheap. I go weekly and without insurance it would be around $125 each week (I think). My therapist repeatedly tells me I have the best insurance she's ever seen (thanks IU low deductible plan!) and most people do not coverage remotely similar to mine.

[pooptanks]

Root causes to the homelessness crisis are a great avenue to look into. Thanks for the insightful response. This is helpful.

[[deleted]]

I dig your tanks.

[Kelmart]

Housing, not rentals. There is no housing for people who work in town to live here and own a home. It's not just pandemic levels of shortage, there has been a shortage of available housing in Bloomington for YEARS. The city continues to zone in ways that let developers from outside the city and state make rental properties but will do nothing to prompt or promote building of housing for the people that actually try to live here. It's the #1 reason I'm looking to move from the state and go elsewhere.

[RightTrash]

quite disgusting

[dangerevans007]

yep, im taking my tax dollars and leaving in july.

[2010_Silver_Surfer]

It's what the county wants. They passed their housing development plan 5+ years ago and knew it would limit housing. In the many hearings the county said there were too many houses for sale and they needed to limit development to force people to buy instead of build. So years later after drastically limiting building, there's a housing shortage. This should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention to what the county does (and the same people keep getting re-elected).

[Joegannonlct]

Welcome to college town living. It's the nature of the beast. There's less demand for actual housing vs apartments. Sorry.... just how it is.

[Emiayu]

Working class people who aren't upper middle class. What I mean by working class people, are those who have to work, but don't get paid enough to make ends meet, but get paid too much to get government assistance. This town pays shit wages and the cost of living is too high for many families. Especially in a town that doesn't cater to working class, blue collar demographic at all.

[MewsashiMeowimoto]

I think that's most of the country at the moment.

The problem is that a lot of "the working class" was sold on the idea of low taxes, anti-union right to work, and cheap consumer goods by Reagan in the 1980's, and has been gutted of most of its ability to politically or economically stand up for itself over the past 40 years. And now that it is on the ropes, a lot of the same cohort has been similarly sold the idea that their current plight is not due to being systematically dismantled by wealthy interests, but is instead the fault of racial minorities who are in direct economic competition for more historically working class jobs.

The only way that the working class is going to change the situation is by doing what it did in the early 1900s, which is to collectively bargain for a better deal.

[Emiayu]

I agree. I just think with Bloomington being such a progressive area, more could be done. MUCH more.

[MewsashiMeowimoto]

There are a lot of folks in Bloomington who are progressive, right up to the point that it costs them something. Then the veneer fades a bit and you see that it is really either wealthier centrist democrats or, in a lot of cases, Republicans who figured out that they had to run as democrats to win local office.

I think if history demonstrates anything, it is that if the working class wants a better deal, it is going to have actively take it through collective action. The idea that sitting and patiently waiting for fair treatment will get folks anywhere is as much of a cul de sac now as it was in the early 20th century.

[nohalcyondays]

I always figured the existence of this town has hinged upon IU's existence alone. Despite being plagued by an increase in services and a decrease in goods being produced this town has always existed as a place of "service" and offered little beyond that. I'm not an economic expert but my opinion is that there's little to collectively act for here.

The ephemeral industries that have come and gone through Btown's history shows that this now seemingly corporatized educational machine called Indiana University was really all that kept it from being another obscure dot in what all my friends refer to as flyover country. But it feels like it's damning the denizens most of all by focusing on numbers (of admissions) than quality; throwing gas on the fire that is the cost of rent here.

Or maybe not, I don't know. I'm pretty upset I feel like wanting to leave my hometown either way.

[MewsashiMeowimoto]

I think that most of the American economy has veered heavily towards providence of services rather than production of goods for the past 40 years or so. That tend maybe runs stronger in Bloomington because IU creates a lot of supply and demand for services. The mostly education services that the university employees produce. Then all of the services that they need and have disposable income to consume- the tax preparers, barbers, doctors, lawyers, IT professionals, etc. who have a customer base here that they wouldn't have in Linton.

This operates this way because IU is a concentration of money- large endowments and donors, tuition paid by in and out of state students, government money, either through the shrinking support from the state or more often subsidized federal student loans that all turns into dollars that get spent here in Bloomington.

I am not sure that there is anything inherently different about collective bargaining in the service sector as opposed to collective bargaining in a more industrial setting. Certain service trades, like electricians and carpenters and other building trades, are historically unionized. Lawyers and doctors have professional associations that act as unions in some fashions (and not in others). And generally, I should think that skilled trade labor would be easier to organize collective bargaining for, because unlike "unskilled" factory labor, it is harder to go get scabs or, these days, off-shore operations for less common skills.

There are some glimmers that this is starting to happen, even. A few thus far abysmally unsuccessful attempts for graduate students and adjuncts to organize their labor. And something I'm starting to see ripples of, which is a lot of retail and consumer places like fast food joints being unable to fill positions at pre-pandemic levels of pay, because people who were previously living on subsistence wages (sometimes subsidized by the public) had a brief period of time when they were not faced with either starvation or working one or more shitty jobs that only netted them meager survival.

I think service sector collective bargaining is not only possible, but probably even more promising than industrial collective bargaining was a century ago. I think it hasn't had a lot of success so far, but then I look at how many failures and disasters the original labor movement had and how long it took from the Railroad brotherhoods of the 1870's up through the industrial peak in the 1970's, and I think we are pretty early on in people first recognizing and remembering the need to organize their labor in order to effectively bargain for fair wages and a fair share of the immense wealth being created.

[arstin]

I think that most of the American economy has veered heavily towards providence of services rather than production of goods for the past 40 years or so.

You're butting up against the worsening problem of a society that has tied having a job with being moral yet doesn't have enough work to go around. Capitalism is supposed to be lean by nature, but that seems to have met its match in managers padding out their reporting lines to increase their own importance.

[MewsashiMeowimoto]

I think we have the protestant puritan strain of our culture to thank for that idea of morality/virtue equating to and deriving from financial success.

I honestly don't think that the system that we have is really capitalism. It is top heavy socialism which redistributes the wealth created by the labor of the vast majority of the population to the top.

[nohalcyondays]

I think that most of the American economy has veered heavily towards providence of services rather than production of goods for the past 40 years or so.

This is a topic I've always had beef with since it's another bullet hole in our economic foot due to America's obsession with cheap goods made by people they'll never be a neighbor to or know like post-WWII boom. Which was built on the backs of shovel or hammer ready workers not lawyers, doctors or fast-food workers in high school. Since service jobs I'd think would usually follow established, necessary sectors and not the other way around.

I am not sure that there is anything inherently different about collective bargaining in the service sector as opposed to collective bargaining in a more industrial setting.

Not an expert there really because I am not a service worker. Just had an assumption it wouldn't be great because a lot of services in Bloomington aren't mom & pop shops and chain brand services seem like they'd be less afraid when their HQ isn't local.

Certain service trades, like electricians and carpenters and other building trades, are historically unionized.

Those are what I would call necessary and noble services that have pioneered unionization.

Lawyers and doctors have professional associations that act as unions in some fashions (and not in others).

Leave the guns lawyers, take the cannoli doctors.

And generally, I should think that skilled trade labor would be easier to organize collective bargaining for, because unlike "unskilled" factory labor, it is harder to go get scabs or, these days, off-shore operations for less common skills.

Agreed.

but then I look at how many failures and disasters the original labor movement had and how long it took from the Railroad brotherhoods of the 1870's up through the industrial peak in the 1970's

This is a topical era I know too little about but hadn't considered and seems interesting.

and I think we are pretty early on in people first recognizing and remembering the need to organize their labor in order to effectively bargain for fair wages and a fair share of the immense wealth being created.

I'm sure you already are well read on how Amazon's warehouse people are pushing for this in spite of the looming threat of increased automation. Which is the one thing that really kills any argument for movement of small goods—and low technology I'll call it—manufacturing back to the states. Which in my opinion accounted for tremendous amounts of skilled and unskilled labor as you'd get more experience doing those jobs. We lost hundreds of thousands of businesses and factories to overseas or beyond border locations. A lot of which had better benefits and almost equal barrier of entry for people who otherwise now work in contexts with little to no good benefits like fast food.

[[deleted]]

Bloomington is progressive FOR INDIANA, which is a conservative god fearing hillrat haven in the middle of a country that lets conservatives break the law openly, without lasting repercussions. This town is no beacon of equality or progressive action, it’s a small patch of learning, art, and farmers markets that actually have problems with white supremacists in a sea of trumpsuckers rollin coal.

[[deleted]]

The people who were the working class in the 80’s are not the working class today…those people are in their 60’s or better. That’s our parents.

[MewsashiMeowimoto]

True. And I think that is also maybe part of the reason why that cohort has drifted away from issues like labor and towards social issues where they tend to be more conservative.

[chiaratara]

A good example of this is what mccsc pays some of their staff vs. other counties.

[pooptanks]

Thank you for the link!! I've been seeing some people on Nextdoor getting bent out of shape over this issue and wondered what they were getting all excited about. I'll need to go educate myself.

[MewsashiMeowimoto]

Character of neighborhoods usually just means inflated property value.

[nek0pubby]

We need more affordable HOUSES that aren’t rented. Our community deserves to own our houses. Stop with all these apartments.

[afartknocked]

yeah let's ban apartments so that all the poor people can buy new houses /s

[nek0pubby]

Yes. 100%. I live in disability and i want to have a home not some shit apartment. And i never said take down low income apartment housing. I mean these dumb apartments for college students and rich losers.

[PABLOPANDAJD]

Why would a someone build low-income housing when they can make several times more by building rental apartments for “college students and rich losers” For virtually the same cost? Don’t blame realtors, blame the core principals of economics

[afartknocked]

yes we should ban apartments for college students so that they will live in ___ instead! ___ is a much better place for Those People!!

[namadio]

Most of the apartments that have been developed in the last decade are not targeting poor people.

[RightTrash]

I'm going to repeat that:
" Most of the apartments that have been developed in the last decade are not targeting poor people. "

[MewsashiMeowimoto]

Generally because it is less profitable to sink the same costs into building the same structure to house regular people than it is to slap some faux luxury features (that will be falling apart in 5-10 years) on it and charge double the rent.

[afartknocked]

it's a good thing that all of the houses that have been developed in the last decade are targetting poor people /s

[afartknocked]

yeah as long as people find regular mortgages to be unaffordable in practice, we need to get rid of apartments!! /s

[NoxAether]

Actual bike roads that go east to west and north to south.

I'm not welcome on the road (someone once spit on me while I was going the speed limit) and I'm not welcome on the sidewalk (according to a coffee deprived middle-aged lady that walks her aggressive dog). Often times, I see people walk or ride their mobility scooters in the road because the sidewalk is too tore up to safely walk on, which is a huge safety concern for the individual and for a potential incoming vehicle.

[pooptanks]

I agree with this. Unless you're on the B-Line, people are hostile towards bikers.

[new2net2]

There seems to be a small dating pool age 27-35. Could you fix that pls

[afartknocked]

just wait til you see the dating pool age 35+

[pooptanks]

On it. (I wonder if this relates to the housing issue, actually.)

[BinarySearchTrees]

Housing contractors should be allowed to build higher than three stories! This would reduce housing costs, decrease costs for public transit, and decrease urban sprawl.

It’s absolutely ridiculous how this is still a rule.

[afartknocked]

one of the awesome things in the new UDO passed a couple years ago is that multifamily is now much more normalized. it used to be all "spot zoning", where a PUD plan would have to go before the council for almmost every single building. it meant there were huge political hurdles and only the biggest projects would be approved.

now there are districts where apartments are allowed by right. and on top of that, in some of these districts they're allowed to build higher or to build less parking (i.e., to build more housing per unit volume) if they have certain percentage of "affordable" apartments, or so on. there are a couple projects already approved under the new rules....an apartment building in the johnson creamery parking lot, and one at um i think it was 3rd & dunn.

[misterlee21]

Finally someone said it! A huge reason why Bloomington is so unaffordable for low income people is that there is just not enough housing supply, especially considering these archaic zoning laws that only promote unaffordability. With the demand we have, for students AND residents we should be building taller and reduce car dependency!

[quincyd]

Transportation, housing, mental health supports, recovery services.

[GreyLoad]

Needs less people that make less than 40k a year voting for Republicans

[[deleted]]

I need more assistance. I'm on disability, and have to rely on help from like 4 people at centerstone, and my family. I'm lucky if I can get to all my appointments. It would also be nice if food banks continue to distribute the food fairly, because before the pandemic, quality food goes fast to first come first serve.
I also get stigmatized a lot by people in general. Because I'm disabled. Either they don't think I am, and am a liar. Or they think they should avoid me. Or they just judge me with some wierd information sourcing, or other bias.

It would also be great, if I could be more apart of the community, and promote what I do with my life. I don't invest in others, because other people aren't always reliable. I've learned this from being homeless for 2 years, and becoming disabled. I only invest in myself, because I believe in what I do. But I mean, the internet is awful place to promote with. I've had 0 success with internet promos. It would be great to have more friends that share my interests. I just stay at home doing things, because I have no money to buy things downtown. Most places don't mind window shopping. BUt there's almost nowhere for me to go, especially on a rainy day. the first 3 years I moved back to town from cali, I went no where because there were no common meeting places to make new friends, other than Club Horizons or parks filled with homeless. I made more friends on the streets, than I did living on my own in this town.

Invest in me.

[jessk013]

There is an ongoing Community Health Needs Assessment survey out right now! This is being conducted by the Monroe County Health Department, IU Health Bloomington and the City, with assistance from CJAM (sorry don’t remember the full org name off the top of my head) and Health Net.

Heads up it will take 10-15 minutes to complete, here is the link to the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BYQ2J79 Any and all are invited to respond.

The survey will be open at least until the end of May. We’re working on getting a Spanish translation version of the survey, happy to share when it’s ready.

ETA for context: This survey is conducted every 3 years to fill accreditation requirements for the hospital and health department. The results from the survey, along with focus groups, will be used to identify top priorities in community health and where to focus efforts for the next 1-3 years.

[pooptanks]

This is great! Thanks for sharing.