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McHistory goes back in time to explore big moments and small stories from McLean County history. McHistory episodes can be heard periodically on WGLT's Sound Ideas.
There's a declaration of emergency over the number of unhoused people in Bloomington right now, and efforts to provide new housing and expanded space in shelters. The issue is not new, though the response today is perhaps more humane than it was in other eras.
“That's what they called them then, hobos. Sometimes they call them bums, but they [bums] were the ones that didn't want to work,” said the late Walt Bittner, a former Bloomington mayor and longtime city council member who grew up during the Great Depression.
“These hobo jungles, they used to call them, sometimes there were 50-60, people living in these old used cars. Junkyards had old cars laying around,” said Bittner. “Just two blocks from our house on the other side of the railroad tracks, there was a hobo jungle.”
This community has struggled with this problem throughout the 20th century, and even in the 19th century, said Bill Kemp, librarian at the McLean County Museum of History.
“The hobos were really the people that were down on their luck and were traveling from town to town trying to find a job,” said Bittner in a 2002 oral history for the museum.
