City of Bloomington leaders contemplate solutions to ‘terrifying’ reality of housing market

BLOOMINGTON (25News Now) - Alarming data about Bloomington’s housing market has revealed a need for thousands of new homes.

During Tuesday night’s Committee of the Whole meeting, Bloomington Normal Economic Development Council President and CEO Patrick Hoban said as the population continues to grow, there is already a need for 4,500 houses in 2025.

“The terrifying part is if you project that out to 2030 and 2035, it’s saying you need 16,000 houses,” Hoban said.

According to Mid-Illinois Realtors Association President Tracy Patkunas, there are only 99 homes on the market right now in Bloomington-Normal.

“If we could even get back to our healthy market, usually when we’ve got available maybe six to 800, that would be huge,” Patkunas said. “We just keep growing and growing. There are probably thousands we could really use.”

She said there is not enough housing to serve the people who are coming into the area for work and school.

“Right now, we only have three homes under 100,000,” Patkunas said. “That’s including single-family and condos.”

Patkunas added that there are only 34 new construction homes available, and they are all priced at $250,000 or more. She said current housing just isn’t affordable for most people.

“The majority of what our clients are looking for right now is anywhere between $150,000 to $300,000,” Patkunas said.

Hoban said he is concerned about the increasing amount of people moving to surrounding areas because the housing crisis is making homes less affordable.

“Across the board, we are more expensive than Peoria, Champaign, Springfield, and Decatur,” Hoban said. “It’s cheaper to live there.”

With that in mind, City of Bloomington leaders are considering possible solutions to increase development. Deputy City Manager Billy Tyus presented housing incentives he believes could help increase development over the next two years.

He said those could look like reducing fees by 50% to 100% for projects in TIF districts and enterprise zones, which are areas that are granted special tax breaks to encourage economic development.

Sales or food and beverage taxes in mixed-use developments could also be waived for commercial businesses.

Any incentives put forth would need to be approved by the city council.

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