In the thick of winter a few months ago, Matthew Stone was living in a tent encampment in the woods near Bloomington, Illinois. “It was very horrible, a very horrible experience,” Stone said. “I was living in a tent with my dog. It was just, all in all, a horrible experience, very cold this winter.” Central Illinois temperatures averaged about 20 degrees Fahrenheit that season, with a low of minus 8 in January. Three days before temperatures dropped below zero, the city opened its first shelter village.
Called The Bridge, the tiny-house community offers people experiencing homelessness private sleeping cabins and storage for belongings. The project was developed by Home Sweet Home Ministries after a local housing shortage worsened in 2021 when a new manufacturing plant drew more workers to the city without enough new housing to meet demand. Homelessness became more visible in 2023 when people began living in a tent encampment in a downtown church parking lot. “Literally hundreds of people would drive by it every single day,” said Matt Burgess, CEO of Home Sweet Home. “And that’s when the community started to say, ‘you know, it’s not okay that we have people who are stuck outside.'”
Illinois weather can be extreme — snow, tornadoes and flash floods — putting people who live outdoors at serious risk. When the city shut down the downtown encampment, many individuals dispersed across the community and continued to live outside. Burgess and his staff studied shelter-village models in Burlington, Vermont; Denver, Colorado; Missoula, Montana; and Austin, Texas. He visited Missoula’s temporary safe outdoor space to see the ideas in action and to talk with program operators.
Finding a location proved one of the biggest hurdles. Organizers prioritized accessibility — close to public transit and services — but faced neighborhood concerns about property values and proximity to residential areas. Home Sweet Home Ministries negotiated with the local transit company to buy a lot directly across from its offices and held public forums to address zoning and neighbor hesitations. The Bridge opened six months after the lot was purchased.
The fully enclosed campus includes a bathhouse and a community center. There are 48 tiny sleeping cabins with capacity for 56 adults. The shelter village cost $2.7 million to build; about two-thirds of the funding came from private donations and the remainder from a county grant. Unlike many traditional shelters, The Bridge imposes few restrictions on who can stay; people convicted of sex offenses are excluded. In the first month, 55 people moved into the village.
Residents like Stone brought simple comforts into their cabins. “We got our bed over on the far wall. We got our microwave and refrigerator behind the door. We got our armoire over here that we can put all of our clothes in, and then we got our desk and our chair,” he said. Alarm clocks in each cabin help occupants keep appointments and stay on track. Stone lives at The Bridge with his dog, Tank, and praised the services available there as he prepared to ride his bike to a doctor’s visit.
Home Sweet Home’s street outreach team reports finding fewer people living outside since The Bridge opened. Burgess said meeting basic needs gives residents the stability to focus on next steps. “We’ve seen people’s attitudes shift from asking with dread, ‘what am I going to do tomorrow?’ to asking the same question with hope, ‘what am I going to do tomorrow?'” he said. One person who stayed at The Bridge has already moved into permanent housing, providing an early sign that the shelter village can serve as an effective bridge from homelessness to stable housing.