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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Thank you to many of you who have contacted me to advocate on behalf of people experiencing homelessness. I am grateful for the outpouring of support from constituents on behalf of some of the county’s most vulnerable residents.
There is a lot to share about what Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis are doing, and how the state is partnering to enhance local efforts locally to provide safe shelter to residents experiencing homelessness. This newsletter is dedicated to that topic. I want to thank David Hewitt, Director of the Office to End Homelessness, for his significant work in this space, and contributions to this newsletter.
This newsletter is focused on shelter, but I want to say up front that permanent housing remains the goal. That work is ongoing; for the period January 1 – May 31, 700 people have secured permanent housing with county and city help. Ultimately, our aim is to connect every person experiencing homelessness to affordable permanent housing. This is an ambitious but absolutely necessary goal.
If you or someone you know is experiencing homelessness or housing instability, you can reach Hennepin County/Simpson Housing’s Adult Shelter Connect line at 612.248.2350. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, appointments are available by phone only at this time.
My best,
Shelter Available Today
As of today, there are 50 private rooms available for families with children at People Serving People and St Anne’s and we want to get all families out of encampments and inside as soon as possible.
At both People Serving People and St. Anne’s, families can find safe shelter from the elements, staff trained in trauma informed care and connections to quality childcare, healthcare, education and housing services. Additionally, as a right-to-shelter community for families with children, the county will work with families to make shelter arrangements even if these agencies no longer have rooms available
Responding to Families
We continue to implore all families with children to contact the Hennepin County shelter team at 612-348-9410 to arrange to get them into one of these safe places today. Outreach workers on the ground in city parks are aware of this and have helped connect some families to shelter. We want all to come inside and avoid the risks that are present at encampments. Please share this information broadly so we can help get more families out of harm’s way.
Immediate Response to COVID-19
We know that the COVID-19 pandemic is particularly threatening to our most vulnerable neighbors. As soon as the Hennepin County board issued our emergency declaration in mid-March, we expanded the entire shelter system to be CDC-guidelines-compliant, we also expanded it on a massive scale to shelter significantly more people, and we took immediate action to protect just under 600 of the most vulnerable (older people and people with comorbidities). We responded to the urgent need by asking willing Hennepin County employees to work in and run new shelters. Hennepin County shelters now operate 24-hours a day and offer breakfast, lunch, and dinner so residents have a safe place to reside full-time.
These enormous efforts are the reason we have not seen widespread outbreaks in our homeless community as many other urban centers across the country have experienced. Hennepin County is spending almost $3 million per month for this response.
In addition, at the time of the civil unrest in Minneapolis, Hennepin County participated in the state-led effort to move about 130 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness from the Sabo Bridge, Stevens Square and Cedar encampments (also offered to folks on the Greenway) to two area hotels leased and managed by Avivo and Start Today.
Current, Ongoing Supports
Hennepin County in partnership with the city is deploying our Healthcare for the Homeless team to provide health supports to people at encampments across the city. Our Homeless Access and non-profit outreach teams are similarly working in encampments. They attempt to connect people to openings in housing, shelter and other services.
County and city staff and services have Are currently overextended at levels previously unheard of after standing up, staffing and maintaining hundreds and hundreds of new units of protective and isolation space since the days that followed the State of Emergency Declaration while also converting our entire homeless and housing system to be responsive to COVID-19.
On May 13 Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis communicated to the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC) that we could not safely stand up any additional hotel sites. This was before the murder of George Floyd and the resulting uprisings stretched our shelter system even further
Making Shelters Safer
These actions taken together have led to the largest and safest shelter system we have ever had in Hennepin County. Today, including the state’s most recent encampment evacuation to hotel sites, there are:
- Approximately 1,130 spaces in use for single adults experiencing homelessness in Hennepin County.
- Two-thirds of these spaces are individual separate rooms.
- All of these spaces are available for guests to use 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Three months ago, there were:
- About 930 emergency shelter beds for people experiencing homelessness in Hennepin County
- All of these beds were in congregate settings with as many as 130 people in one room in the largest setting
- Only 180 spaces were available 24/7
Additionally, our family system still operates under a right-to-shelter for families with children and we have more than sufficient capacity to serve and shelter families
Testing for COVID-19
Mass testing at both our family shelter and one of our hotel sites recently found zero COVID+ test results for guests and staff. As of last week there had been a total of ~100 COVID+ cases among people experiencing homelessness in Hennepin County (as per MDH). While there is still a long road ahead of us, positive cases among people experiencing homelessness stayed flat thus far and have been declining steadily in recent weeks.
This effort has required unprecedented levels of funding. Hennepin County and partner staff have volunteered to be redeployed from their traditional work to offer support and step into roles they’ve never had before. This response has stretched our capacity and that of our nonprofit partners to a level that is unsustainable without additional support.
Helping People Keep the Homes They’re In
The economic impacts of COVID-19 are further threatening to exacerbate these challenges. To prepare for the risk of thousands of people newly threatened with homelessness, Hennepin County recently announced $15 million for rental assistance for low income households who cannot afford their housing costs due to COVID-19.
Please help us share this resource widely: https://www.hennepin.us/rent-help.
Protecting People in Encampments
These unprecedented efforts still fall short of meeting the extraordinary need in our community. There are very real public health risks that are unavoidable in large, concentrated encampments that must be considered in our collective response to this situation. As described above, we will continue to deploy our Healthcare for the Homeless team to provide health supports to people at Powderhorn Park and other encampments across the city. Our Homeless Access and outreach teams will similarly continue to work tirelessly to connect people to services and the shelter and housing that is available.
The county and city’s previous experience with large encampments has taught us that the larger encampments get, the more dangerous they become. That is especially true for those staying within them. This was true before factoring in the global pandemic that requires social distancing to keep vulnerable individuals and our community safe.
What the City of Minneapolis is Doing
The City of Minneapolis has been a close partner of the county’s in this work. If you would like information specifically about the City’s overall homeless response system and encampment response the city’s webpage here: http://www2.minneapolismn.gov/cped/housing/WCMS1P-081097.
Underpinning: Lack of Affordable Housing
Our region’s lack of affordable housing does the most harm to people with very low incomes—those making 30% of the Area Median Income (or about $30,000 for a family of four). People of color are disproportionally represented in this group and even more disproportionately represented in who experiences homelessness. In Hennepin County:
- About 74,000 households live in this income bracket.
- We have only about 14,000 units of subsidized housing in Hennepin County that are affordable for them.
- About 95% of people experiencing homelessness have incomes at or below this level, including many who are working full-time jobs.
The math is simple, people can’t afford housing and there is not enough of it.
Immediate and Long-term Solutions – In ‘Normal’ Times
Every year, the county invests about $134 million, primarily state and federal funds, to support a range of affordable housing and shelter response strategies. This funding allows us to:
- Provide shelter for 9,000 people experiencing homelessness
- Help more than 7,500 residents who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness maintain or access permanent housing
- Support 15,000 people in supportive housing
- Create or preserve about 975 units of affordable housing
As I mentioned above, from the beginning of the year to the end of May, our community has moved more than 700 people in Hennepin County directly from homelessness into permanent housing. This work makes a difference for the people served but unfortunately it is not nearly enough.
Increasing Supportive Housing
Last year the Hennepin County board adopted a new strategy to proactively drive construction of 1,000 new units of housing affordable to those with the lowest income, including housing specifically designed for people who are chronically homeless or medically fragile.
This is an innovative 10-year strategy that the we estimate will cost the county $90 million and require continued investment from state and city funding partners. We have already awarded $6 million to fund seven new supportive housing projects which will create 212 physical units of housing for people experiencing chronic homelessness and people with severe addictions.
Partnership
If you’ve read this far, it is clear how closely Hennepin County and the City of Minneapolis are collaborating, and partnership with the State of Minnesota is woven through this work as well. Here is the list of joint initiatives the city and county are working on that the state hopes to join:
- Funding for additional outreach at encampments to connect people to shelter and housing
- A park board request: Funding for incidental expenses at encampments: bathrooms, handwashing stations, showers, medical services and security
- Capital and operating support for emergency shelter: dormitories at the State Fair Grounds (or other state-managed location), excess quarantine housing identified by the State Emergency Operations Command (SEOC), or other new shelter locations including but not limited to hotels
- Response to the City/County joint request to the SEOC for staffing support, either re-assigning state workers as the County has done, or new staff for hotels and shelters
- Purchase of hotels using federal CARES Act dollars or bonding across the state and region, a long-term investment in shelter and housing that would supplement this strategy that the City and County are jointly pursuing
- Support for longer term shelter needs for culturally appropriate shelter and medical respite shelter
Further Ways to Help
People often ask ‘what can I do to help,’ so here is an answer, to the best of my ability. These challenges require all of us working together with the urgency that the moment requires. Here are a few things you can do right now to help.
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Keep advocating: Join forces with established efforts to increase housing stability in our community. Check out the Homes for All Campaign, MN Coalition for the Homeless, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Please continue to reach out to your state and federal representatives, as well as your city and county elected leaders and let them know we need immediate funding and action to address homelessness in our communities.
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Volunteer: Many organizations lost volunteers when the pandemic started. Organizations need volunteers now more than ever — you are likely connected with your local non-profits but otherwise Handsontwincities.org is a good place to start.
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Donate: Nonprofits who are providing shelter and essential services to people experiencing homelessness are facing dire financial constraints at a time when their services are more needed than ever. Hennepin County is doing everything we can to increase funding, but your donations are badly needed, too.
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Educate: In order to take decisive and effective action together, having a sound understanding of the challenges we face together is crucial. The National Alliance to End Homelessness is a good resource to help educate your friends, family, and neighbors on solutions to end homelessness. You can also find great statistical information for Minnesota at Wilder Research.
Thank you again for your passion for this work. It requires good faith collaboration and strong partnerships across government agencies, the public and private sectors and, especially, community and people with lived experience of homelessness. And to reiterate, shelter and encampments are not acceptable solutions; only housing is.
Contact us
Marion Greene
Commissioner, 3rd District
612-348-7883
Elie Farhat
Principal Aide
612-348-7125
Laura Hoffman
District Aide
612-348-0863
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