Across St. Paul, growing efforts to help the homeless face the ultimate test — the neighbors

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
·9 min read

With wintry weather bearing down early this year on the most vulnerable, Ramsey County this week opened new overnight warming houses for the homeless at St. Paul’s Newell Park and the Phalen Lakeside Activities Center, without advance notice to neighboring residents.

Homeless visitors to Catholic Charities’ downtown St. Paul Opportunity Center are entered into a lottery for emergency shelter beds within the adjoining Higher Ground building, and those who can’t get in are sent to Safe Space, a sleeping area set up in the lower level of a county government building on Kellogg Boulevard. When Safe Space is full, they’re transported by van to the warming houses.

“It’s not about not being sensitive to the neighborhood, but our first priority was to keep people safe and warm,” said Andrea Hinderaker, program coordinator for the city’s Homeless Assistance Response Team, which worked closely with the county on the shuttle-based transportation plan.

“The county was very specific,” Hinderaker said. “Folks will be gone by 6:30 in the morning, essentially before daylight. There’s times we have to act on the need in the moment … and lives will be saved.”

A seamless transition between shelters

Working hand in hand with Ramsey County, St. Paul officials have eased zoning rules and set aside funds to create both temporary and permanent new spaces for the very poor, from housing to day shelters, but the execution has sometimes proven trickier than the planning. Across the city, new efforts to help the homeless have drawn a gamut of public reaction, from organized opposition to vocal shows of support and volunteerism.

With the goal of making the transition between shelters seamless, Catholic Charities has extended the hours of its downtown Opportunity Center, a day site for the homeless, from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. nightly.

Guitarist Rod “Hot Rod” Knutson, 70, said he’s lived at the Catholic Charities location since last April. He grew up in Red Lake Falls in northwestern Minnesota and has lived in the Twin Cities less than two years. He only recently became homeless after leaving a sober house that went up for sale.

“I think it’s a good thing to have for people who need it,” said Knutson, a resident of the center’s 32-bed “Focus Forward” specialty unit, which houses especially vulnerable populations.

Not far down the road, despite a recent legal delay and over the objection of neighboring businesses, Listening House, a Dayton’s Bluff day shelter, hopes to open a larger new headquarters before winter’s end at the old Red’s Savoy restaurant on the outskirts of downtown, which would allow it to offer services on weekends and evenings.

Elsewhere in St. Paul, faith-based volunteers have begun trainings with Listening House, the county and other providers to determine if they’re ready to roll out overnight beds at their churches as temperatures plummet.

Reformation Lutheran Church on Oxford Street opened its doors to youth and families when early December snows fell, filling in until the opening of the city’s new warming houses. Faith City Church on East Seventh Street will begin accepting women and children overnight, twice a week, by Christmas.

‘More partnership’

In 2020, at the outset of the pandemic, a spate of encampments overwhelmed city parks and empty lots. It also forced some difficult conversations around how and where to house the homeless.

Molly Jalma, executive director of Listening House, said the city’s new Homeless Assistance Response Team has met with church, county and nonprofit leaders this year to better coordinate services.

“In years past, it’s October, November, and we start talking about cold weather,” said Jalma on Monday. “If anything, this year has been a lot more partnership and collective approach, rather than ‘can someone stay open tonight?'”

Chris Michaels, director of emergency services for Catholic Charities, agreed. Counseling and support services that went remote during the pandemic, missing many of the most vulnerable, have led to a heavy uptick in demand for help, as has an early start to the cold season. This fall, her operations were serving as many people as they usually do in the dead of winter. The Opportunity Center feeds 300 people per meal, three times a day.

“Maybe the only good thing that came out of COVID is we learned how to collaborate, work with each other’s resources and get stuff done,” Michaels said.

Difficult conversations on Snelling Avenue

Not every effort has drawn widespread support. Near Snelling and University avenues, dozens of concerned neighbors recently met with St. Paul police and other officials over plans to expand permanent “low barrier” housing for the previously homeless at Kimball Court, a 76-unit apartment building that has drawn steady police presence.

The Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative is seeking $18.5 million in public funding for 22 new housing units in a future horizontal addition that would adjoin the building at Charles Avenue. Minor renovation of existing units is already underway.

Beacon Interfaith hired a new security company in September, but despite a sizable recent dip in police calls, some neighborhood residents remain opposed to the expansion. Attitudes are mixed.

“I don’t understand why the city looks the other way,” said Andrea Suchy-Shinn, who manages several low-income housing units of her own and once witnessed a man die of an apparent drug overdose in the alley behind Kimball Court. “The neighbors have been meeting. We’re not all in agreement.”

Hinderaker, of the city’s HART team, said she and other key providers have worked closely since this summer with Kim Clemonson, Ramsey County’s deputy director for housing stability, to plan a range of winter services.

On Monday night, Ramsey County began staffing the seasonal overnight warming shelter for the homeless in the Lake Phalen boathouse on Phalen Drive, and another aimed at young people ages 14-24 in the Newell Park building off Pierce Butler Route and Fairview Avenue.

Among the major funding sources, Gov. Tim Walz last summer found $6 million in leftover federal pandemic relief funds to back Ramsey County’s shelter programs.

“This is the first time St. Paul has the option to capture anyone and everyone who is interested in warmth and safety,” Hinderaker said. “Ramsey County has built in a transportation system to this plan, and that’s really one of the largest barriers for folks who have decided to leave their encampment at night.”

Listening House opening delayed

Jalma said business has been brisk at the Listening House headquarters in Dayton’s Bluff, where some 150 clients a day stop by to check their mail, grab lunch or simply spend time with others who have been homeless. Many have recently settled into low-income housing, but they still come back to commune with peers.

On the outskirts of downtown St. Paul, a recent legal effort by business owners to stop or stall construction of a new home for Listening House at the former Red’s Savoy site ran aground in October when a Ramsey County District Court judge denied the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order.

Listening House, currently housed inside a church on Maria Avenue, is wrapping up interior demolition at its new headquarters at East Seventh Street and Lafayette Road, with the goal of moving into the new site and adding evening and weekend hours before winter’s end.

“We’ve been delayed probably about a month due to the initial lawsuit, so instead of a January date we’re looking at late February, early March,” Jalma said. “The difference in us opening will be availability of products and materials. So far, it’s been OK. But people who are more familiar with construction say hold on, it can always change. I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic.”

The city, which last year eased without eliminating zoning rules around day shelters, is devoting $1.4 million in tax increment financing toward the project.

Kimball Court expansion

Kimball Court, a dormitory-style, single-room occupancy building at Charles and Snelling avenues, accepts former residents of homeless encampments, almost regardless of past history, under the “Housing First” premise that housing is an essential first step toward other forms of stability.

When Suchy-Shinn learned that Beacon Interfaith wanted to add a 22-unit addition, she organized a neighborhood meeting last October attended by nearly 80 residents, as well as St. Paul police and a deputy director from the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections.

She said she’s witnessed open drug exchanges, and another neighbor said a brazen drug dealer parked his car outside the building so frequently, its image ended up on Google Maps.

The building has been a magnet for documented police calls, though even neighbors opposed to the expansion have acknowledged that some activity has calmed since Premier Management added a security team in September.

Dan Gregory, a spokesman for Beacon Interfaith, said drug use and other incidents increased as residents from nearby encampments began to hang out outside the building in the early days of the pandemic, but those calls have since fallen some 60 percent to 70 percent as a result of a zero-tolerance policy toward drug dealing.

Requests for security

The Hamline-Midway Coalition and St. Paul police have been heavily involved in working towards solutions, he said.

“Obviously, there’s specific concerns around the building, but people are really focused on finding solutions to homelessness,” Gregory said. “Beacon is committed to being a good partner in advancing those.”

Gregory said Beacon Interfaith has been working with Avivo, a Minneapolis-based provider of mental health, job counseling and other support purposes, to increase the intensity of services offered to residents. To that end, Avivo secured a $500,000 grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services, and is seeking $260,000 annually from the city or Ramsey County to continue those services.

Kimball Court’s proposed $18.5 million expansion and renovation is already backed by $7.9 million in housing infrastructure bonds through Minnesota Housing, with additional sums from Ramsey County and the city of St. Paul, but Beacon Interfaith is asking for an added $3.2 million from the city as a result of rising construction costs. Improvements would include new office space for Avivo staff, a new accessible entrance, lobby space and a welcome desk to enhance security.

Suchy-Shinn, who owns some 18 residential units, nearly half of them federally-subsidized Section 8 housing, said she’s been attempting to schedule a meeting with city council member Mitra Jalali, who represents the neighborhood.

“We’d like the security team to stay there permanently,” Suchy-Shinn said. “We would like the residents in the building to be able to have their own council. The conditions in the building were deplorable. The bathrooms didn’t lock in the past. People were coming in off the street and using syringes.”

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