A country-wide cold front might bring Bloomington into single-digit temperatures this week, and Michale Williams, 49, said he’s worried about frostbite.
“It’s one of the biggest things you have to worry about, being out here, is getting frostbitten,” Williams said. “That’s dangerous. That’s very, very dangerous.”
Williams said he moved to from Indianapolis to Bloomington three decades ago, after family circumstances left him homeless at 16. Of the 30 years he has lived in Bloomington, he has been without permanent housing for 25.
This weekend Williams was one of 30 overnight guests at the Bloomington Severe Emergency Winter Shelter, a year-old volunteer program that works with local churches to host overnight shelters on days with dangerous winter conditions.
That was on Saturday night, when weather conditions were subfreezing. Those temperatures are expected to lower as the week goes on, and as of Monday, The Weather Channel predicts Bloomington will hit wind chill values as low as -12 degrees on early Wednesday morning.
Cold-related injuries are on the rise in the U.S., and people experiencing homelessness are especially vulnerable. For people without access to heat or shelter, severe winter conditions can be devastating.
As this week’s cold front freezes Bloomington and Monroe County, Williams is one of an increasing number of people in Bloomington and Monroe County experiencing homelessness in extreme temperatures.
A 2024 count by the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority found 456 people experiencing homelessness in an area called Region 10, which is made up of Monroe, Greene, Lawrence, Martin, Morgan and Owen counties. Of those 456, 350 were in Monroe County, and 142 were living entirely without shelter.
These numbers have been on the rise. Williams attributed that to Bloomington’s lack of affordable non-student housing, or to displacements after people leave jails or prisons.
“Most of the time when a person comes in and comes out, they lost their house, or they lost their apartment, and that puts them out here on the street,” Williams said.
Williams said these newly displaced are often the most vulnerable because they lack experience surviving weather extremes or knowledge of local resources and shelters.
“If you don’t know how to keep yourself out of the elements, or how to protect yourself, or how to just survive, you could die out here,” Williams said. “I lost a lot of people already out here.”
During the winter months, many recently displaced rely on local organizations and charities for safety from severe conditions. Increased demand can strain those organizations’ resources.
Allie Jewell is a senior studying social work at IU and one of three volunteer coordinators at the emergency winter shelter. She said recent weeks of cold weather have strained the shelter’s resources and the availability of volunteers, who are in increasingly limited supply.
The emergency winter shelter accepts volunteers through their online sign-up form.
Jewell said people will often line up at the shelter doors hours before opening, looking for a spot. Often, those lining up outnumber the shelter’s capacity. They have to turn away those left in line.
Forrest Gilmore, the executive director of Bloomington-based antipoverty organization Beacon, said that those unable to access shelters during periods of extreme weather face risk of injury. The elderly or those with mobility issues, who might not be able to get to a shelter across icy and often un-shoveled Bloomington sidewalks, are especially at risk.
Beacon is accepting donations of coats, hats, clothes or other warm winter gear at Shalom Center, which is open 8 a.m. - 4 p.m. Monday through Friday at 620 S. Walnut St.
“Anybody in a wheelchair or some other kind of mobility device, walker or scooter or anything, definitely it's tough for them,” Gilmore said. “They generally can't navigate the storm and the snowpack everywhere.”
Gilmore also said people sometimes hurt themselves while trying to keep warm. Williams said he’s burned hand sanitizer in a can before to stave off cold exposure in his exposed hands and feet. He knows of people who have accidentally caught their tents on fire with the same method.
Williams said he worries for others facing the dangers of extreme cold, especially the elderly or those turned away by crowded shelters. He partly attributes his own survival to the help and advice of older unhoused people, as part of what he calls the “community within a community” of people experiencing homelessness in Monroe County.
“I’ll be 50 in July – and Lord, I hope I make it 'til July – but from 16 until now, it’s been a struggle,” Williams said. “But I’ve made it.”
