600 students, no home. Rise in homeless families spurs action in Olmsted County
Apr. 15—ROCHESTER — Lindsey Riess-Wilson knows what it means to be a mother without a permanent place to put her child to bed.
She first found herself without stable housing as a pregnant 16-year-old and survived the next two years bouncing between spaces provided by family members and friends.
It's an experience she shares with many of the parents she helps as Rochester Public Schools' Students in Transition and Fostering Connections coordinator, a position that ensures families struggling with homelessness have the needed resources to keep their children in school and ready to learn.
Having spent approximately two years without a consistent home offers her a unique ability to connect with families.
"I see it from a completely different perspective," Riess-Wilson said. "I'm having real conversations with them, and when I tell them I understand, it's not because I read it out of a book, and it's not because I learned it in college. It's because I literally navigated every single system myself. I have walked through it step by step, and it allows me to walk with the families."
Riess-Wilson has seen the number of families needing support grow since taking the district position in September, and it's an increase that has been seen for several years.
At least 603 Rochester students have faced some sort of homelessness during the current school year, compared to 430 in 2019.
"Most people wouldn't even guess there are that many homeless students," Riess-Wilson said, pointing out homelessness can take many forms, from living in a car or campsite to doubling up with another family when there is nowhere else to turn.
Tallies of how many families are represented by the students counted this year — and how many homeless families have children too young to be included in the student count — are difficult to obtain.
A 2022 one-day count of people facing homelessness identified 50 families, but Mary O'Neil, program manager for the Olmsted County housing stability team, said such numbers only include people who sought some form of assistance that day or were in areas visited by people conducting the count.
It likely doesn't include families who were living in hotels or staying with others.
Riverside Central Elementary School Assistant Principal Melissa Brandt, who previously served as the district's homeless liaison, called it an "invisible challenge," since families struggling with homelessness aren't seen as often as individuals living unsheltered.
District staff have been working for years to make sure the families are seen and supported, and federal guidelines under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act have helped.
However, the federal requirements designed to provide transportation to school, meals and connection to community resources through schools can only go so far.
From her own experience, Riess-Wilson knows families require food and transportation support for day-to-day living, but secure housing is required for long-term success.
She was able to stay with her mother for a few months after her son was born, but later turned to friends for shelter, making it hard to set goals for her new two-person family.
It wasn't until she landed in income-based public housing at 18 that she could start thinking about her next steps, which would eventually lead her to helping struggling students and families.
"It really helped me get on my feet and stabilize," she said, pointing to the ability to obtain her GED, start classes at Rochester Community and Technical College and find employment to support her household.
Emily Briggs, Salvation Army's social services coordinator, said achieving such stabilization is hard for parents when they don't have stable housing.
"When all you can think about is where you are staying tonight, you can't think about where you are staying a month from now," she said.
To help, Salvation Army has increased its budget for hotel vouchers and some related services, but Briggs said the monthly budget is routinely drained early, so families are frequently directed to go elsewhere or return later to see if funds are available.
Amelia Morrow, an Americorps member working with Rochester Public Schools families facing homelessness, said hotel vouchers help but the quest for stable housing is still a challenge.
"There have been cases where I have worked for weeks with families to send in applications or secure funds for a deposit — or whatever combination of things — to get a family all the way to housing and then they are denied for whatever reason," the Luther College graduate said, adding that increased rent prices connected to city growth and limited apartment numbers make it more difficult for some families to find places they can afford, even with outside support.
"Finding housing in Rochester right now is incredibly hard for a lot of families," she added.
Adding to the challenge is the limited temporary shelter options for families.
Family Promise Rochester offers the only structured shelter catering exclusively to families in the city.
It once housed families in rotating churches throughout the city with the aid of church-based volunteers but was forced to revise its model during the pandemic. It now owns a house at 913 First St. NW, which provides space for up to three families.
At the end of March, Family Promise had nearly 30 families on its waitlist.
While stays at Family Promise averaged 76 days last year, with 54 families helped in a variety of capacities that include temporary housing and life-skills classes, Executive Director Erin Sinnwell said families can now stay up to 120 days, due to challenges in the current housing market.
"With COVID and evictions, I feel it's harder to find affordable housing," she said. "It's harder to find landlords who are willing to rent to people with poor rental history or no rental history."
Dorothy Day Hospitality House, which typically caters to individuals facing homelessness, has been known to take in families when room is available, but Board President Tim Haskamp said it doesn't happen a lot.
When possible, the organization can provide space for up to 21 nights in a row.
"When someone is sleeping on the streets, it's hard to say no, if we have room," he said.
With more families looking for temporary shelter and ways to transition from homelessness to stable housing, Olmsted County is in the process of creating a transitional shelter.
The county plans to purchase a former group home at 1621 10th St. SE and turn it into a space that can provide shelter for up to 10 families.
Olmsted County Housing Director Dave Dunn said the $500,000 sale is expected to close by the end of April, with plans to have the first families move in before the end of the next school year.
Between that time, he said renovations will be made to the building and an operations plan will need to be finalized.
County housing staff has been working with Family Promise to better understand family needs and the best approach for offering help, and Sinnwell said the work has the organization excited about the additional resource.
Prior to the county announcement, the Family Promise board had been looking at options for growing its program.
Returning to a rotation through area churches had been ruled out, and Board President Erich Heneke said the goal was to provide a permanent space to meet the needs of more families.
"I think ideally we would have one large space that would allow us to serve 10 to 12 families at a time," he said.
If that space is in the new county property, Heneke and Sinnwell said Family Promise will study how it can assist efforts while maintaining its mission.
Riess-Wilson said the addition of temporary shelter will help more families find the stability they need to find new paths.
"It takes families about 30 to 60 days after entering a stable scenario, even if it is a shelter, to get comfortable and be able to get on their feet to understand where they are at and how to move forward to get stable housing," she said.
Another need is access to ongoing help so families can maintain that stabilization.
Now 29, Riess-Wilson said the county-based support she received as a single mother in public housing was critical to being able to reach a place where she's in a committed relationship and has a growing family with two incomes and stable housing.
It's why she's excited to see the opportunities that will emerge through a new county program that is embedding social workers into schools.
"Now we have that outreach and that access point with a direct connection to the county," she said.
The two social workers — former Family Promise program director Nicollette Keller and former Olmsted County Adult and Family social worker Emily Krage — are dubbed Hope Navigators and will work with families referred by Riess-Wilson.
With the required data-sharing and interagency agreements recently finalized, O'Neil said the two social workers, as part of the county's overall housing effort, are already getting busy, with one based out of Riverside and Overland elementary schools and the other stationed at John Adams Middle School and Mayo High School.
"I feel there is going to be far more work than what the two workers can handle," O'Neil said, pointing out the social workers will also meet with families from other schools throughout the county, when needed.
The new effort, which is being funded through state support for homeless prevention efforts, is designed as a way to see what impacts are made and whether added assistance is needed.
O'Neil said such efforts can help the county address issues that go beyond housing and can be barriers to positive outcomes for families and the community as a whole.
"While the issue is going to start as housing, we know there are a lot of underlying issues and housing is only a symptom of the overall crisis," she said.
While county, school and nonprofit efforts are working toward addressing the needs of families that lack housing, other programs continue to assist families on the cusp of losing housing.
O'Neil said the housing stability team receives regular calls from families looking for a place to turn, and Briggs said The Salvation Army has seen many families who never thought they would face such needs.
"If someone is new to financial crisis, with the economy the way that it is, a lot of them don't know the resources available to them, and they just fall on our doorstep and they don't know what to do or where to turn next," she said.
To help prevent that, Minnesota lawmakers have allocated $50 million to the state's existing Family Homelessness Prevention and Assistance Program, which Three Rivers Community Action uses to help families pay missed rent in an effort to avoid homelessness.
Larry More, a Three Rivers housing advocacy specialist, said the added funds are expected to arrive this summer, so the agency is staffing up to help process applications as the arrive.
He said past funding through the program, which has typically arrived quarterly, is frequently exhausted shortly after it's received due to increased need.
"We are seeing where rents are two or three or four months behind," he said, pointing out that the program must ensure all rent is paid to help a family avoid eviction.
With an average of 17 new evictions filed each week this year, More said the support helps prevent more-costly outcomes that can result from families being left without shelter.
Advocates say every effort helps address the growing need and reduce the potential for long-term impacts on the children who are part of the families struggling with homelessness.
For those like Riess-Wilson, helping other parents protect their children from such struggles faced with housing insecurity is the driving force behind the work.
"It's really the impact on the kids that has made a difference for me," she said. "That's kind of where my heart has landed."
Programs designed to help families facing homelessness often rely on community members to meet mission goals.
While the primary goal is to help families find secure housing, Amelia Morrow, an Americorps member working with Rochester Public Schools, said the efforts need to go beyond that to provide access support and items needed for daily living, including clothes and hygiene products.
The goal, she said, is to make sure students "feel comfortable in their skin and their clothes."
Here are a few ways to support the programs that help families who are struggling with housing:
Rochester Public Schools
Lindsey Riess-Wilson, RPS's Students in Transition and Fostering Connections coordinator, said community schools have resource rooms that are always looking for donated items.
"Students and families access the student resource rooms like nobody's business," she said.
Frequently needed items include non-perishable food, towels, toiletries, hygiene products, diapers and clothing.
Clothing can be or used in good condition. Lindsey Riess-Wilson said the key is that it is something that students would want to wear.
In addition to dropping off items at community schools, Riess-Wilson said donations can be delivered to her office at 3935 U.S. Highway 14, on the east side of Rochester.
Family Promise
A variety of donations are also accepted by Family Promise Rochester through its website at
.
The site offers options for financial donations, as well as a gift registry that identifies a wish list of times needed by the organization.
The organization also has a variety of volunteer opportunities available, from preparing meals and organizing family activities to helping behind the scenes.
Family Promise is holding a forum at 1 p.m. April 30 at Cloria Dei Lutheran Church, 1212 12th Ave. NW, to provide more information about the organization, how it has changed since COVID and how people can help its mission.
The two-hour event is open to the public.
Salvation Army
Rochester's Salvation Army effort also accepts online donations at
https://centralusa.salvationarmy.org/northern/Rochester/
Additionally, it accepts donations of food and other items at its Social Services Center. 115 First Ave. NE.
