By: Diane Benjamin
More from this story on the local Housing Assessment: https://blnnews.com/2024/03/05/ignoring-the-elephant-in-the-room/
PDF page 32 – copied and reformatted since the paragraph is difficult to read:
Poverty levels have increased in McLean County over the last 5 years, Bloomington and Normal. Poverty is measured by the Official Poverty Measure (OPM), which measures pre-tax income against a food cost
threshold and accounts for family size.
At the county level, the poverty rate rose 1.5 percentage points, from 14.2% in 2016 to 15.7% in 2021.
Bloomington saw a comparable increase in poverty rates (up 0.6 percentage points, from 12.9% to 13.5%), but the change in Normal was more pronounced.
Over the 5-year period, poverty levels increased by about 3.4 percentage points in Normal, reaching 25.6% by 2021.
Is Normal’s poverty rate because NO ONE elected in Normal represents citizens?
See PDF page 33 for recommendations based on skin color. NO mention of inflation’s contribution to poverty.
PDF page 34 has even more information:
878 residential evictions were filed in 2022, and 865 were filed in 2023.
Evidently people who didn’t pay rent because government told them they didn’t have to shouldn’t have been evicted when the pandemic ended. Homelessness skyrocketed.
Another example of government trying to help and making everything worse. Trust government to fix what they broke?
PDF page 35 has a chart showing who is homeless. Adults without children show a high number. Every heard of roommates? That is how people who couldn’t afford rents used to have a place to live. It is a great motivator to improve your life and income so you don’t need them!
Adults with children is also high. The survey didn’t ask how many were married or if both people worked.
I haven’t found a chart showing the total number of rental properties available. How many lessors quit renting when government said the leasee didn’t have to pay?
Next, see this chart on PDF page 40:
Evidently using numbers ON THE CHART didn’t fit the narrative. Quote:
The median price of a resale home in McLean County skyrocketed from $167,000 in 2020 to $232,000 in 2023; a 39% increase in the matter of three years.
How about using the September 2018 number of $168,146 and the 2023 number of $222,716?
That’s a 32.5% increase over 5 years. Considering property values had been stagnant or declining for years, is 6.5% bad? It is for property taxes but not for selling and leaving Illinois.
PDF page 42 has a chart showing the number of multi-family units. They have increased by 1158 from 2018-2023.
Quote from PDF page 53 pertaining to the cost burden in Normal:
Although student housing may skew this trend, it is worth noting that over half of Illinois State University
students live off-campus, which keeps the demand for rental housing constant and prices high for local non-student residents.
Remember when ISU torn down dorms and expensive units were built to compensate?
Quote from PDF page 58:
Therefore, according to the APA’s target balance, McLean County should add an additional 8,134 livable
housing units to accommodate this significant increase in jobs in the county.
That statement assumes people who work in McLean County want to LIVE in McLean County. The paragraph below that statement claims in 2022 6400 units were uninhabitable. Where’s code enforcement?
Keep reading, PDF page 59 claims more than 2000 units are in development now.
Starting on PDF page 63 are Strategic Recommendations. If government interferes in the market using the suggested actions they will be throwing money away. WGLT claims Bloomington is considering declaring a housing emergency: https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2024-03-04/bloomington-homeless-problem-could-prompt-emergency-declaration-and-request-for-county-services
Telling people they didn’t need to pay rent or water bills during the pandemic hurt local housing. Think the people who contributed to breaking it can fix it? 😎
Raise your hand if the answer is NO!
There is a lot to unpack here. The worst part to me is that they use “Pre-tax” dollars to determine poverty level. Imagine how high the povery level would be if they used the post-tax dollars people actually have to live on.
Interesting but I not sure why any of it matters? Rivian just laid off 800 salaried workers and just laid off 100 production workers. Given their sales, inefficiency, stock decline and soon-to-be desperate financial situation the entire 3rd Shift will be next to be laid off. That should knock some money off the housing prices and empty out ________ number properties as the U-Hauls leave town. So if you are thinking about selling your home… do it now before the Rivian ship-of-fools slips beneath the waves of history. Just an FYI: Supply to auto worker ratio is normally pegged at 5 -1. So when you lay off an auto worker you also layoff 5 supplier jobs. We will soon have plenty of housing that will certainly be cheaper than it is now. See their current stock price that recently started a massive decline and resulted in Amazon’s investment losing nearly 1 billion dollars.
Salaried layoffs were mostly in California.
Have anyone driven by Heyworth lately, on the east side of Heyworth between town and highway 51, 32 identical small separate homes have been built., Word has it that these homes are all section 8 homes. Don’t have any idea who the builder is.
I heard nobody wants to answer questions
I new apartment development is going in on Raab Rd by the trail. Another new apartment development is going in on Market St. across from Wal-Mart. Yesterday I found out a new development of apartments, condos, duplexes, etc is going in on Hovey by Parkside; Dr Krueger’s old property. Plus building is going in on in other areas like Ft Jesse & Airport Rd. and Beech & Towanda, plus other areas. Sure seems like a heck of a lot of living quarters to me. Where’s the shortage?
So I just saw an article on WGLT that said at the end of April Rivian is going to halt production during their 3rd shift. They say they are going to offer transfers to the workers to the two other shifts. Does anyone believe that this will actually happen? You have your production running on the two other shifts and the jobs to run these shifts have people to do them. So what do the extra people from an entire shift do? Help the people do the jobs that they already do? No, as they get close to this they are going to announce…. well all you 3rd shift folks are going to go on “temporary” layoff. Well then the temporary layoff will become a permanent layoff. By then they will be laying off the 2nd Shift. I am guessing they don’t want to announce an entire shift layoff right now with their stock already headed into the financial basement.
If you can watch this be optimistic about the future of Rivian in our town, you must have some kind of top secret information.
Can the R2 Save Rivian?
https://youtu.be/p2wpfm65tTE?si=ezqI4vbXTjYCqX0e
Don’t try talking sense and reality to anyone backing this albatross. Besides, the liberal leadership in BN, Illinois, and the feds will dump as much taxpayer money into Rivian for as long as possible to keep their green savior above water. Until you have as many charging stations as gas stations and grossly lower the price of purchase, part replacement and repairs, all electric isn’t reasonable for a mass market, which they need to survive whether they want to admit it or not. Other fuels are already being developed, like hydrogen, that will be just as clean or cleaner and cheaper in all phases. Rivian and companies like them are akin to Solyndra. Scaringe tabbed BN because he knew suckers when he saw them.
No wonder poverty levels are higher. Between BLONO,McLean county and state of Illinois taxes those alone would drive up poverty. Then there’s inflation courtesy of Biden no wonder the poverty level is high.