People's Park is cleared of the homeless but not Bloomington

The homeless population in Bloomington has never been a secret; for years, their hangout spot was at People’s Park, but since this summer when the Bloomington Police Department and the Parks and Recreational services enforced their presence and the park’s rules, the homeless have moved to parks closer to the Shalom Center at Bryan and Seminary Parks.

Bryan Park is just a 15 minute walk east of the Shalom Center, and Seminary Park is just a 5 minute walk down the street from the Shalom Center. After the increased police presence at People’s Park - specifically their morning meetings that were held there this summer - the homeless migrated to parks closer to the Shalom Center where they can get services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Especially Seminary Park is becoming the new homeless hangout. At any time of day, you will find them sitting on the benches or napping under the trees. This has caused families to pass the park and not use it because parents don’t want to bring their kids around the homeless who could potentially be drunk or using drugs.

The wishful park users are making sure this doesn’t go unnoticed. They’re calling the parks and recreation department and expressing their complaints, specially about the homeless sleeping on the ground, according to the parks and recreation operations and division director Dave Williams.

“And of course, they're not just taking a little cat nap in the afternoon sun, they're probably drunk or something like that. And people are very offended by the proximity of these people to the shelter house and they want to use this playground - they want their kids to use it,” Williams said.

The police and the parks and recreation department are taking this problem seriously and enforcing the park’s rules, especially the hours that it they are open, and if anyone violates the park hours which close at 11 p.m., then they are given a citation.

More drastic security changes that they will be making in the future is adding surveillance cameras, according to Williams.

“It will keep people on their toes, probably better behaved. Not that it will be a crime free public space, but for some people it will give them that sense of comfort and security that we lack,” Williams said.

Some residents have expressed their concern to Williams - and he agrees - that the Shalom Center’s proximity to Seminary and Bryan Parks is the reason for the homeless’ usage of these parks.

In the September meeting of the community of neighborhood associations, residents of Bryan Park said they have contacted the Shalom Center and tried to get their services moved to another part of Bloomington, but that won’t make the homeless problem in Bloomington disappear.

“There's a lot of drug use as a crisis across the board in Indiana right now and [Bloomington is] no exception to that rule. It's been kind of an uphill battle just on neighborhood interpretation of us. Like kind of their viewpoints on us, but it hasn’t affected our staff or our services,” said the director of shelter programming at the Shalom Center Caitlin Bryan.

Not only is the migration of the homeless population moving closer to the Shalom Center affecting people who want to use the parks, it is affecting the residents of the Bryan Park neighborhoods.

They have witnessed homeless people do drugs, have sex, and find syringes in their back yards and on the neighborhood streets.

“There are people constantly finding needles, people sleep in their back yard or in their garages, I don't know whose yard it was but somebody was having sex in their back yard at one point, people passed out, that's a pretty common problem,” said Jon Lawrence, the past president of the council of neighborhood associations.

Residents of the Bryan Park neighborhood have brought this problem to the attention of the police and the community of neighborhood associations in Bloomington. It was brought to the associations’ attention at a meeting in September.

The police’s response has been to increase their patrols in the Bryan Park neighborhoods and in Bryan Park. They have held mobile roll calls at Bryan Park, which is in part what they did to get the homeless to move out of People’s Park.

“The idea [of mobile roll calls] is to get us out there and be seen, and see that we’re taking this seriously,” said the Captain of Administration at the Bloomington Police Department Steve Kellams.

Mobile roll calls were one of the tactics that the police used to eliminate the homeless presence at People’s Park, so they are hoping that it will have the same effect at Seminary and Bryan Parks.

Although the homeless population in Bloomington may never disappear, Williams thinks that it’s a good first step that the population is moved out of downtown.

For years the parks and recreation services and the police department have gotten complaints about criminal activity, fighting, disorderly conduct, drug usage, and complaints from employees and business owners along Kirkwood, according to Kellams.

But now, at the heart of Kirkwood in front of the IU sample gates, it’s like the homeless were never there. At People’s Park, there is a mural of Bloomington where visitors and IU students take pictures in front of, students and residents eat Hartzell’s Ice Cream or Bloomington Bagel at the tables, concerts were held there this summer, and the parks and recreation services are renting out tables to clubs and organizations at IU or within the community.

Business owners and community members alike are happy with what the enforced rules and laws has done.

“I have not seen as much [criminal activity] since People’s Park has been monitored more closely by the police,” said Nick’s English Hut manager Pete Mikolatis.

Female employees along Kirkwood are especially happy with the turn of events. When the homeless essentially lived at People’s Park, female employees of Blutique were scared to close the store at night alone, and leave work without a male escort because they would get harassed by the homeless sitting on the bench in front of the store, according to the manager Misty Morganett.

“The girls don’t feel the need to have escorts when they leave now they're not getting the rides that they did before or someone to wait on them. Now, they'll just leave. They don’t feel as scared,” Morganett said.

Even though the police have taken care of the homeless in People’s Park, they are still negatively affecting other parks and residents of Bloomington, which is what the police is focusing on.

“We're going to try to keep doing what we're doing. Resources will dictate a lot of that. One of the things we know for a fact is in this community officer’s presence has an effect on behavior. So, if we can provide it, we're going to try,” Kellams said.