A downtown St. Paul church opposes an 88-unit supportive housing facility by Dorothy Day Center

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
Updated ·4 min read
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An affordable housing developer has entered a purchase agreement to convert Catholic Charities’ vacant Mary Hall building in downtown St. Paul into an 88-unit supportive housing facility for the recently-homeless.

Those plans have drawn the attention of a seemingly unlikely opponent — the neighboring Catholic church where Catholic Charities was founded.

Aeon, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that has been building affordable housing since the 1980s, requested that the city make an exception to zoning rules that require a 600 foot buffer between “congregate living facilities.”

The future Aeon apartment building would be 60 feet from Catholic Charities’ longstanding Dorothy Day/Higher Ground homeless shelter, which already offers apartment-style housing with support services on its upper levels, requiring what’s known as a “major variance.”

So far, city officials have smiled on the plan. The St. Paul Board of Zoning Appeals voted 5-0 to grant Aeon’s variance request on June 24.

But the decision allowing construction to move forward at 438 Dorothy Day Place has drawn opposition from the downtown Church of the Assumption on West Seventh Street. The Catholic parish, which dates to the 1850s, filed an appeal to the St. Paul City Council, which will host a public hearing on the matter next month.

“This is a substantial variance which reduces the required separation by 90%,” reads the church’s appeal. “The Board of Zoning Appeals disregarded clear testimony that a concentration of similar housing has already resulted in increased crime and diminished safety to residents, guests and visitors to the immediate neighborhood.”

A spokesperson for the church could not be reached for comment on Thursday. The city council, which cannot comment on appeals in advance of a public hearing because it serves in a quasi-judicial role, will hear from both sides on Aug. 7.

Housing for the very poor

On its website, the church notes that it sits “tucked in the heart of downtown St. Paul … close to the Dorothy Day Center and Catholic Charities, places that care for society’s overlooked. It was at the Assumption that Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis was born. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the church ran an orphanage, known today as St. Joseph’s Home for Children.”

The six-story Mary Hall has been used as housing — including housing for the very poor — since its construction in the 1920s as a dormitory for student nurses. The site has a longstanding history of providing services for the homeless, though its been vacant since 2019, when Catholic Charities completed the construction of the two-building Dorothy Day Place campus, which is located next door to Mary Hall.

Dorothy Day Place currently serves nearly 1,000 people per day through both emergency shelter and permanent housing with supportive services. About 75 residents were relocated there from Mary Hall when the former closed five years ago. In 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, Ramsey County used Mary Hall as a temporary location for people experiencing homelessness and showing symptoms of COVID-19. Among other uses, it housed the Listening House day program.

“For decades, Catholic Charities Mary Hall served as a hub where Catholic Charities and other service providers offered shelter, housing and services to those in need,” said Catholic Charities’ spokesperson Therese Gales.

Affordable housing concentration

Still, arguments that affordable housing has become too concentrated in downtown St. Paul and other corners of the Twin Cities are mounting.

Located above Catholic Charities’ St. Paul Opportunity Center, the Dorothy Day Residence consists of 177 housing units, including 77 efficiency apartments and 100 single-room occupancy units. The Higher Ground St. Paul residences, located above the Higher Ground St. Paul shelter next door, has 193 single-room occupancy units.

A year ago, a group of Black ministers associated with the StairStep Foundation filed a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota, Minnesota Housing and the Metropolitan Council, accusing state and regional funders of placing too many affordable units along the Green Line in St. Paul and in other low-income, high-minority urban areas ill-equipped to provide resources for those in need.

But efforts to relocate services for the very poor to wealthier areas have sometimes withered against fierce community opposition.

Ramsey County this year announced plans to relocate its Safe Space overnight emergency shelter from downtown Kellogg Boulevard to the Luther Seminary campus in St. Anthony Park, but had to scrap those plans when Luther pulled out of the arrangement after heavy criticism from residential neighbors.

Aeon has been working on the Mary Hall project “for a number of years,” said Laura Monn Ginsburg, a spokesperson for the nonprofit, in a written statement. “We have observed and share many of the same concerns as the Church regarding safety and security in the area and have made commitments for increased resident services and safety provisions based on the environment.”

“This housing is intended to provide a continuum of housing to serve residents as they are ready to be stabilized in the community,” she continued. “We see the area as a focal point to stabilize broadly – our lens does not just focus on the Mary Hall development. We look forward to working with the Church of the Assumption and stakeholders as a collective to strengthen stability in this area.”

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