Bloomington Common Council Housing Deliberation Session (Part 1) - September 11, 2025
Bloomington Common Council Deliberation Session on Housing Needs – Part 1 (September 11, 2025)
On September 11, 2025, the Bloomington Common Council held the first of two deliberation sessions focused on housing needs. The session aimed to collect personal experiences regarding finding and maintaining housing, rather than debating specific policies. Approximately seven small groups, each co-facilitated by a council member and city staff, discussed participants’ housing experiences. The meeting included an introduction, breakout groups, group report-outs, and a call for input via online forms. A note: the raw transcript dates the meeting as September 10, 2025, but the provided metadata indicates September 11, 2025; this summary uses the latter date as instructed.
Consent Calendar
- No consent calendar items were presented.
Public Comments & Testimony
- No formal public comment period was held. After the breakout reports, a few individuals offered additional remarks:
- A speaker urged the city, county, and Indiana University to collaborate on a long-term housing plan (5–10 years).
- A longtime resident questioned how the housing crisis developed and asked for more inclusion of older residents who have witnessed past changes.
- A younger resident expressed urgency, noting that many high school and college classmates have left Bloomington due to lack of affordable housing, and that they themselves may not be able to stay long-term.
Discussion Items
- Opening and Logistics: Council President set expectations, emphasizing non-judgmental listening and shared vocabulary. Participants were asked to complete demographic cards (renter/owner, length of residency) and place a pin on a map to gauge diversity of attendees.
- Breakout Group Reports: Seven groups reported back on themes from their facilitated conversations. Key recurring themes included:
Group 3 (facilitated by Jamie and Hopi)
- Most felt housing met their needs; renters considered rent high but fair relative to others. Preferences varied by life stage (e.g., yard size). Short-term rentals: some investors present, no negative experiences reported. ADUs: little firsthand experience, viewed as too expensive but interesting.
Group 6 (facilitated by Councilmember Zulik and others)
- Mix of realtors, builders, homeowners, renters, and county residents. Needs met for some, not for others. Key desires: affordability, walkability, proximity to loved ones, homeownership. Enjoyed neighborhoods near campus but affordable buying options limited. Missing middle housing (around $300,000) sought by older downsizers and first-time buyers. Density discussed.
Group 4 (facilitated by David Brandes, zoning planner)
- Majority homeowners, some renters. Some felt trapped in their neighborhood due to crime, desire for larger house, better sidewalks, transit, amenities. Strong desire to live within city. Lack of stepping stones to homeownership. Open to ADUs.
Group 7 (facilitated by Councilmember Flaherty and Gabriel)
- 16 participants: 14 homeowners, 2 renters; one apartment, one condo. Majority said housing met needs, but some did not. Issues of right-sizing (too much or too little house). Appreciation for traffic calming and multi-use paths. Concerns about connectivity beyond neighborhood, safety, food deserts. Affordability barrier to moving. Strong desire for mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods with diverse housing. Missing middle not present in Bloomington. ADUs: about half would consider building, half would consider renting; mixed views on ownership requirement. Short-term rentals: mixed perspectives on impacts.
Group 2 (facilitated by Councilmember?)
- Blend of renters and homeowners. Affordability central: home prices outpacing income, property taxes doubling since COVID. Concerns about investor-owned rentals changing neighborhood character. Discussed encampments and safety. Solutions: starter homes, condos, duplexes, family-friendly rentals, density in specific places but not tall buildings. Policy tools: land trusts, land banks, rental caps, limits on investor ownership, parking permits, accessible loans, rent control (illegal), form-based zoning, streamlining planning, stronger cooperation with IU and Ellettsville. Short-term rentals: some called for permits and data, others concerned about property rights.
Group 5 (facilitated by Councilmember?)
- Mix of renters and owners. Owners in smaller houses felt needs met; those in larger houses wanted to downsize but were stuck by low interest rates. Valued walkability, diversity, mix of rentals and ownership, parks/trails, grocery stores. Renters forced further out by prices. ADUs: half interested if lot size permits, half not; all supportive of idea. Short-term rentals: unanimously viewed as skewing the market and problematic. Interest in requiring owner occupancy to prevent short-term use.
Group 1 (facilitated by Councilmember?)
- Mix of renters and homeowners, many downtown or walking distance. Discussed definition of “meeting needs.” Some own houses because priced out of condos; prefer condos but few available. Desire for more small businesses, third spaces. Housing policy should not focus only on core neighborhoods. Good landlord critical. Renters face annual rent increases. Key themes: diversity, options, creativity.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes or decisions were made. The session was purely informational and experiential.
- Next steps: Part 2 is scheduled for November 12, 2025. It will include a summary of feedback from this session and other related community discussions, and will likely present specific policy proposals for deliberation.
- Participants were encouraged to complete a reflection survey (available via QR code) and to submit any additional thoughts via an online form. All survey data will become part of the public record, with names disassociated from comments.
- Facilitators are asked to submit their notes (electronic or transcribed) to the council president.
Meeting Transcript
As people are filtering in, if if uh we're gonna go ahead and get this meeting started, I'd like to call this uh deliberation session of the Bloomington Common Council here on September 10th to order. Uh would the clerk please call the role? Council member Ferry. Rallo. Okay, Matt Smith. Here. Stasper? Here. Daily. Zulik. Here. Rosenberger. Sorry. Here. Great. Thank you so much. I just realized that I don't have my agenda right in front of me. So tonight, first of all, thank everybody for coming because this is a wonderful crowd in here, and I'm super, super excited. So, in terms of our kind of usual order of meeting stuff, the first thing on the agenda is to uh go over the agenda summation. And so I'm gonna do a brief introduction of what it is that we're doing here tonight and the purpose. Um then we're gonna get into these breakout groups that some people are kind of already in and have some facilitated dialogue with staff and council members. We're gonna come back as a whole for some um group reporting and debriefing, and then we'll adjourn uh right around 8:30. So, in terms of my introduction, let me find it. All right, so tonight is part one of two deliberation sessions focused on housing needs in Bloomington. This particular session will focus on sharing your personal experiences related to finding and maintaining whatever housing you currently have and how your needs are or are not being met. The purpose of the session this evening is not to debate specific types of housing or housing policies, but to get a better understanding of what needs are and are not being met with our current housing market based on the personal experiences of those here. And it is an opportunity for both planning staff and council members to learn as well as each of you to build understanding with community members who may not live near you or who may have very different housing needs than you do. Part two is planned for November 12th and will include a summary of what was heard through this and other related discussions that are ongoing through the planning department. There will likely be more specific policy proposals for discussion in November. Uh so just a couple words about shared expectations and community agreements. Uh first, housing can be a triggering conversation, and so please enter this space as neutrally and non-judgmentally as possible. Facilitator questions are designed to allow participants to share experiences, and all experiences are valuable. In it is reality that two different people going through the same process will experience it differently, and both of those perspectives matter and have validity. Second, in terms of shared vocabulary, when considering your neighborhood, it is the place where you live, work, or play. Whether it's a multifamily structure, an urban block, a suburban subdivision, or some other space, that is your neighborhood, and the people living near you are your neighbors, and there are many types of neighborhoods. Last, as an organizer, and I and I'm hoping that this goal was met. My goal was to attract a wide diversity of participants in hopes that many voices and experiences are represented. Okay, so I'm I'm really hopeful that we have that there tonight, and I'm really thrilled that uh that so many people came out to share their experiences. So as we move into these groups, first of all, if you have not already added your demographic information over there on the table, there are some containers to put in puffballs to mark whether you rent or whether you own, and then also um how long you have been in Bloomington, and then there is a big map over there so you can put a pin in where you live. And the purpose of that is at the end to go how how well did we diversify? Okay, do we have you know a good renter to owner? Uh do we have people who've lived here the full spread of time in Bloomington? Um, do we have people from all over Bloomington or mostly in different sectors? So then as we continue this process in these discussions, we can you know uh make deliberate outreach and planning to make deliberate outreach into population groups that might not be represented here or through their other efforts. So that's the purpose of that. So if you haven't already done that, please do so. And lastly, we're gonna have seven small groups for facilitated conversation, and I haven't counted. I think that the groups ended up with uh six or seven chairs each. We might need to add some chairs, okay? There's five groups, there's five groups in here, and there's two out in the hall.
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