Dakota has been homeless for three years. Dakota, who said she wasn’t comfortable sharing her last name, found her way from Alabama to Bloomington, where her brother lives, by hitchhiking.
She bounced around homeless encampments and camped in Seminary Park about a year ago but said those have been cleared by the city. Friend’s Place, the only overnight shelter with beds set aside for women, is often too full.
“Most people I know, they usually go to the Shalom Center and sleep there during the day as much as they can before they get kicked out for it, and then they just walk around town at night,” she said.
Now, Dakota sleeps on the sidewalk. She’s been to the hospital multiple times for frostbite. She’s 19.
An amendment to Senate Bill 197, which deals with penalties for unsafe property premises, would make it a misdemeanor for people like Dakota to sleep or camp on public property if they don't leave after a warning.
The bill says if police come across someone camping or sleeping, they determine if the person has a mental illness, is dangerous or gravely disabled, and needs immediate transport to a mental health facility.
If they aren’t, the officer has to issue a warning, offer to transport them to a local shelter and call a local crisis intervention team. If the person is on a public right-of-way, like a sidewalk, they have a day to move. If they’re on other public land, they have three days. A person who refuses transport and doesn’t move would be committing a class C misdemeanor and may be referred to a problem-solving court.
It comes after the 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson last year, which held cities can ban outdoor sleeping. That overturned a lower court’s opinion that such bans were cruel and unusual punishments when there’s not enough shelter.
But Bloomington’s history with camping bans and encampment clearings predates the Supreme Court’s decision on Grants Pass.
In 2017, Bloomington and IU Police increased patrols at Peoples Park, where a number of people experiencing homelessness frequented. That led them to relocate throughout the city.
BPD Chief Mike Diekhoff told The Herald-Times at the time the police were not going after park-goers, but only after bad behavior, and that people didn’t want to go downtown and “see the alcohol, the drugs and the fights.”
Two high profile clearings came in December 2020 and January 2021 in Seminary Park, a location where many people experiencing homelessness gather. The clearings enforced an overnight camping ban in city parks. Around 20 tents were removed in December. Police and city staff again removed tents from the park in January after two weeks’ notice, despite a petition with over 1,500 signatures asking then-Mayor John Hamilton for a moratorium on removing the encampment.
In August 2023, the Bloomington Board of Park Commissioners passed a ban on tents and enclosed structures in parks during the day. They had already been prohibited at night.
Since taking office last year, Mayor Kerry Thomson has overseen several encampment clearings. She attended two in January, both cleared due to safety concerns. The second, located in the woods behind Wheeler Mission, was the site of two murders in December 2023 and January 2024.
Bloomington and Monroe County authorities cleared another three encampments near Switchyard Park in May, displacing more than a dozen people. According to a city press release, two clearings were due to health and safety concerns, and officials gave residents a 30-day notice before the removal. The third was on county property, and Monroe County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Phil Parker said county commissioners’ staff issued an eviction notice a week in advance.
City officials cleared another encampment, located south of Country Club Drive, in August, again with 30-day notice.
In a statement, Bloomington Communications Director Desiree DeMolina wrote encampment closures are necessary when they pose serious safety risks. The statement says the decision to clear an encampment isn’t made lightly, and the city coordinates with local service providers and follows a protocol including connecting people to services and storing their belongings.
“Mayor Kerry Thomson has been clear in her belief that complex challenges like street homelessness require thoughtful, compassionate, and community-based solutions—not just policy mandates,” part of the statement reads.
During her State of the City address April 3, Thomson said she convened local housing experts and service providers to create a housing action plan last year. One challenge mentioned in that plan is when encampments are cleared, residents without shelter disperse and become harder to provide care to.
Forrest Gilmore, executive director of Beacon, was one of those leaders. He said the biggest flaw in the SB 197 amendment is it still leaves homeless people in Indiana without proper resources.
“At best, we have maybe a quarter of the beds of the number of people who are experiencing street homelessness,” Gilmore said. “So a good 75% don’t have any shelter options.”
The South Central Housing Network reported last May that 117 people who said they were sleeping outdoors in Monroe County early last year. That’s likely an undercount, according to the local providers’ housing action plan. Of the 249 heads of households interviewed, 98 — nearly 40% — reported being in Monroe County for under two years. That’s because, Gilmore said, many of the regions near Monroe County lack shelters or resources of any kind, which pushes people to urban centers.
Dakota spoke at a protest against encampment evictions and supporting housing for all Sunday by Bloomington mutual aid organization Help Ourselves. The group defines itself on social media as an anti-capitalist organization seeking “to build a strong community within Bloomington that is capable of defending itself from the state."
The group provides food three times a week at Seminary Park or the Monroe County Public Library Downtown Branch. Sunday’s serve included fried rice with egg and vegetables, baked potato casserole and pasta with chicken.
The protest ended in Peoples Park, where National Union of the Homeless organizer Patty Saling spoke and led the group in song.
“We are not alone, we are not alone, we will fight for liberation, for healthcare and a home,” they sang.
Saling, who has experienced homelessness, said after the protest that despite “sanctification” by the Grants Pass ruling or the proposed state amendment, Bloomington has already been doing what they entail.
“There’s a famous quote from a woman in Bloomington who has surely passed by now, but while she was homeless, she said, ‘What do they want us to do? Like, attach helium balloons to ourselves?’” Saling said, yards away from students taking graduation photos with champagne bottles. “‘Is that the only way we can exist in Bloomington, is if our feet never touch the ground?’”
After passing the House, the amended bill passed the House 52-40, but the Senate dissented from its amendments Tuesday. It next goes to a conference committee, where members from both legislative bodies attempt to reconcile differences.
But what’s next for Dakota? She said many homeless people she knows are going to Columbus, but she’s going to try to hitchhike west.
“There’s no shelter, and if we start getting kicked out of our camps and kicked out of the sidewalks, we have no choice,” Dakota said.
