It's Your Business: Are there enough housing units planned for Bloomington?

Gimme shelter. It’s not just a song title, but one of life’s bare necessities. In Bloomington, people are always hunting for housing, right? Every year, of course, it is students seeking houses or apartments to share.

But we also see demand from an every growing number of retirees who find proximity to a large, beautiful, active campus a big draw. Or its workers who want to live close or closer to their jobs. And the competition for housing has become increasingly more intense, even as prices have risen. And nothing increases prices better than scarcity.

Bloomington housing developers continue to step up their game — we see that all around us. But is it enough? Let’s take a look at some hard numbers on the planned (permitted in government parlance) units. We can chart this through the number of permits filed each month detailing the type of units to be built in the Bloomington metro area (a combination of Monroe and Greene counties). Nearly 600 units were authorized in 2023 (569 to be exact).

More housing planned:4,250-unit residential development in southwest Bloomington takes step forward

Almost all of those were for single-family homes (326) or multi-family units (239). For just the first two months of this year, the script has flipped. Out of 217 housing units permitted, more than 170 are for multi-unit housing and only 43 for single-family homes. Overall, in the past 14 months that’s more than 750 units (be it a house or an apartment) adding to the housing stock.

Is that enough? Looking at Bloomington’s numbers against other metro areas in Indiana, we come in a distant fifth in terms of new housing. Indianapolis continues to be hot, with nearly 13,000 planned units and a national rank of 27 out of 384 metro areas. Fort Wayne is also hot (considering its size) by adding 2,493 units to its stock (and ranking 109th nationally). Lafayette-West Lafayette is in the 4 digits as well, with 2,105 new units and a national rank of 126. All the remaining metros in Indiana are in the triple digits, with Evansville adding 902 units and Bloomington, 569 (and a modest rank of 247th out of 384 metros) and a much smaller number than many similar sized college towns around the country. Bloomington has the demand for new housing, both homes and apartments.

The question is if it will meet that demand with a sufficient supply.

Carol O. Rogers is director of the Indiana Business Research Center at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business.