Following Minneapolis encampment evictions and protests, experts discuss solutions to homelessness

[AUDIO LOGO] CATHY WURZER: Here is our lead story, advocates for the homeless and some people who are living in a tent encampment bulldozed by the city of Minneapolis will ask the city council today for a moratorium on dismantling such places. The city recently cleared two tent encampments. One was in south Minneapolis, the other on the north side. Those affected set up tents outside city hall earlier this week. And yesterday, during a committee hearing, advocates and some unhoused people demanded that Minneapolis city council members stop destroying encampments.

By the way, the committee voted to approve a funding package to help the homeless, including more than $5 million for street outreach and transitional housing. We invited Minneapolis city officials to talk with us about this issue, but no one was available. But we do have two other individuals who are familiar with the burgeoning problem of homelessness in our communities, Robert Lilligren and David Hewitt. Mr. Hewitt is Hennepin County's Director of Housing Stability. Mr. Lilligren, a former Minneapolis City Council Member, is now a Metropolitan Council Member. And he's with Native American Community Development Institute. Let's start with you, David Hewitt. Thanks for joining us.

DAVID HEWITT: It's a pleasure to be here.

CATHY WURZER: How much of this is a city issue versus a county concern?

DAVID HEWITT: The first thing I would say, of course, is that it's all of our concern. It's a community concern. But speaking specifically for Hennepin County, and for the human services department, we see homelessness as an absolute priority to address in our community and have reflected that in the way we've invested pandemic recovery funds these last years with approximately 40% of the pandemic recovery funds received through the last package at Hennepin County devoted to measures to assist folks in exiting homelessness and sustaining housing outside of homelessness.

CATHY WURZER: So we know that the federal money for those who are having trouble making rent during the pandemic has dried up. Are you seeing this problem increasing in intensity?

DAVID HEWITT: That's a great question, Cathy. We are seeing some very specific issues arise from that. There are different forms of homelessness and different drivers, and they affect different populations in different ways. Very specifically what we are seeing as the emergency rental assistance comes to an end, is an increase in families with children seeking shelter in Hennepin county. And Hennepin is unique in Minnesota in having a shelter-all policy for families with children. So we guarantee shelter, and we are seeing a very steep increase in the demand for that among families in our community.

During the pandemic, while the rental assistance was in place, and while the eviction moratorium was in place, we saw historic lows. We had huge underutilization in our family shelter system. Now, we are seeing the need for significant overflow. And to put this in some context, we are literally talking about 300 more children in shelter on any given night than was the case this same night last year.

Now, this is essentially a return to the pre-pandemic numbers. And what that really tells us is that rental assistance works. Rental assistance keeps children out of homeless shelters. With that, we're looking at how can we leverage more state and federal resources? We have been investing our own county resources and putting intensive efforts at housing court. So putting legal representation in to assist any low-income household who finds themselves in that crisis situation. We're seeing really good results with that, but this is certainly a really troubling time as we come out of some of those pandemic resources.

CATHY WURZER: For those who are single, some folks who live in encampments don't go to shelters because they feel unsafe, or have lifestyles that don't work with shelter rules, such as drug use. What's your response to those people? What's the help for those individuals?

DAVID HEWITT: In 2019, as we looked at what had been a steady trend of growing, unsheltered homelessness amongst single adults in Hennepin county, and indeed, across the state of Minnesota, and we were asking people with lived experience of homelessness exactly those questions. The plans we were already implementing some of the recommendations from that group, and the pandemic recovery resources really boosted that, enabled us to transform the existing shelters to add storage, laundry, to expand opening hours, so that the majority of shelter beds are open 24/7, so people don't have to leave in the morning, come back at night.

And the number one priority of the street voices group was to add case management. So that actually helped to get you out and into housing because nobody wants to stay in a shelter indefinitely. And we were able to fund new shelters. And very specifically, the kinds of shelters that didn't exist in our community before. And I'll highlight two examples. One being the American Indian Community Development Corporation, the Homeward Bound Shelter. We knew and know that unsheltered homelessness disproportionately impacts the native community.

So we wanted to resource community-based agencies to work in community and provide an option that didn't exist before. And we've seen a lot of success there. 50 people using it every single night. Many, many moving onto housing. And the second example, which was part of the package at City Council yesterday, actually was even more funding there, is a [INAUDIBLE] village, which was designed in partnership with folks who were staying in encampments in 2020 to look at what was needed that would enable them to come inside. Looking at individual structures, chemical health, mental health services onsite, and really intensive services in our project.

At any given time, it's sheltering 100 people. But also, this week celebrates having moved 100 people on and into permanent housing from that setting. Of course, there's more work to be done. And of course, we need to just work with people to say, you don't need to go to a shelter. Let's try and connect you directly to housing. So we've also been putting more folks directly out into community.

And so irrespective of your feelings about shelter, how do we connect you onto housing? And we're seeing some successes there, as well.

CATHY WURZER: So despite the best efforts, there are still people who are out in the street. And organizers say tearing down these encampments doesn't get rid of unhoused people. It just moves them around. So I'm wondering what's the coordination between the city of Minneapolis and the county on some of this?

DAVID HEWITT: So historically it's been city, county, nonprofits, and those groups meet regularly. The concern of everybody in that meeting is how do we get services out to folks? There's always work that can be done to improve the efficiency, the effectiveness, and the equity of those efforts. But again, I mentioned we've just rolled out in the streets the housing team. In one week out in community, they encountered half a dozen people who were in encampments who actually had open referrals to existing housing programs, some with physical units tied to them. And they had no idea.

So that's some of the way in which we've tried to introduce more people into the system to address some of those coordination gaps, to make sure that where there are resources, we're bringing to bear as efficiently as possible. We don't have housing sitting waiting for people, while people are sitting, waiting for housing. But we're really connecting those dots, and we're making progress. With that, of course, there's further progress to be made.

CATHY WURZER: A final question, many of us have noticed encampments of unhoused people that have sprung up along the Mississippi River in Saint Paul. They were also cleared recently. Is there coordination between the counties, Hennepin and Ramsey County, on these moves?

DAVID HEWITT: What I can say with regards to the movement of people, of course, is that we are a metro. We as Hennepin County in my team are entirely focused on our jurisdiction, which is in Hennepin County while they're in Hennepin. So there's some coordination at an individual level, but we're really focused on our jurisdiction.

CATHY WURZER: All right. Mr. Hewitt, I appreciate your time. Thank you, so much.

DAVID HEWITT: Thank you.

CATHY WURZER: We've been talking to David Hewitt. He's Hennepin County's Director of Housing Stability. Joining us right now is a former Minneapolis City Council Member and current member of the Metropolitan Council, Robert Lilligren. He's with the Native American Community Development Institute. Good to have you here.

ROBERT LILLIGREN: Yeah, good to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: The last time you and I talked it was 2018, and it was about the large encampment of native people along Hiawatha Avenue. At the time, the community and Mayor Frey were worried. There was support for folks living there. Where is that community support now?

ROBERT LILLIGREN: That is a great question, Cathy. And I think one of the things that enormous encampment at Franklin Avenue and Hiawatha did was made an invisible population very visible. There were some 200 tents right along Highway 55 and the light rail. 100,000 people or more saw this camp. And you couldn't deny the issues anymore. And before that it had been very scattered site, easy to ignore, and we can't ignore it.

And so that was the wall of forgotten natives, as we call that homeless encampment, the encampment at City Hall. These are occupation efforts, protests, increased visibility of our unsheltered relatives.

CATHY WURZER: We just talked with the person who oversees Hennepin County's programs to help the unhoused. And as you know, there are efforts to find people shelter. But the problem continues. There's these cycles of camps popping up, folks getting evicted, dispersing, maybe going to a shelter or elsewhere, but eventually, setting up camps again. Why does the cycle continue?

ROBERT LILLIGREN: Yeah, and I really want to lift up something that David Hewitt said from Hennepin County, and to acknowledge his incredible work and express thanks for it. But he said this is an issue for the whole community to resolve. And I think one of the things that supports this, these being persistent problems, is the ability to sort of silo efforts. You've asked questions about it being the city's responsibility or the counties. It's everybody's responsibility.

And we need a unified, collaborative, systemic solution that involves all sectors, public sector, starts with the folks living unhoused, service providers, businesses, the corporate community, the faith-based community I think is a really untapped resource. But it needs to be systemic. It needs to be formalized and codified. And these one-off solutions just aren't going to solve it.

And we need to acknowledge these are people, individuals, families. There's going to need to be solutions tailored for just about every individual, which is resource intensive. But in the long run, I'm convinced it would be more effective.

CATHY WURZER: Interesting you just brought that up. So many unhoused. Each situation seems different. So many are dealing with mental illness and drug addiction. Are they having a tough time navigating the help that is offered, or are the efforts not meeting these people where they are?

ROBERT LILLIGREN: Probably a bit of both, and those are questions I think we would need to take to these people living unhoused, these families living unhoused. I thought David's example that people had housing waiting for them, and they were unaware is just a good example of how the system isn't working in a collaborative and unified way.

And so I think that's really a way that we need to engage. We have these incredible activists, advocates, outreach, folks that are building relationships, building trust with some of our unhoused relatives. And I think that's the level that we need to be working at.

CATHY WURZER: You mentioned trust. Should Minneapolis-- as a former City Council Member, you know the inner workings of City Hall. Should Minneapolis be ripping down these encampments? I mean, that doesn't really build trust, does it?

ROBERT LILLIGREN: It doesn't build trust. You're exactly right, Cathy. And there's such a cluster of issues around these encampments. And some are located in the heart of residential areas, and they tend to have negative-- they can have negative impacts on the neighbors. I don't think tearing down or bulldozing, I think was the word you used earlier, Cathy, is really the solution. But really this unified, collaborative effort that involves more than just the city, more than just the county, or the Met Council, or metro transit, or the state. But involves the community and starts with the individuals who are living unhoused.

CATHY WURZER: Because you're with the Met Council now, and of course, for folks who are not terribly familiar, you do a lot of regional planning for the metro area, including efforts to increase affordable housing. What are the largest sticking points to getting people into housing they can afford?

ROBERT LILLIGREN: Yeah, well, first off, I want to say I am really proud of what the Met Council has done in response to the growth in unsheltered people living unsheltered. And from our housing side, the Met Council has a regional housing authority. And we've secured more and more emergency housing vouchers. And we have built collaborative teams with metro transit police. We have our homeless action team, which does outreach partners at the community level and tries to bring the resources under Met Council control to the community.

But I would say the biggest challenge to housing folks is the lack of housing, the lack of housing production, the lack of housing stabilization and retention, and affordable housing. And again, that's a solution, those are solutions that are going to come from an entire community. No one jurisdiction of government, no one sector within the community can solve this alone. But if we work collaboratively in a unified way to build a system of solutions, I think that's the best way.

CATHY WURZER: Is there an area of the country that you look to as maybe a place where they're doing it right?

ROBERT LILLIGREN: There are a lot of best practices. We often look to cities like Portland and Seattle, some in LA, and the south, but I don't know that anyone's doing it right or has hit on the right solutions yet. I think that the growth of people living unsheltered has just been so phenomenal that it's an area that everyone's grappling with. It's an area that has historically, up until fairly recently, at least here, has been easy to ignore.

And so I think we're all striving toward the right solutions, or I'm guessing the right cluster of solutions. And we're all looking toward each other and what other communities are doing.

CATHY WURZER: I wish I had more time. Always appreciate the time with you, though. Thank you.

ROBERT LILLIGREN: My pleasure. Thanks for having me, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: We've been talking to Robert Lilligren. He's a former Minneapolis City Council Member. He's now on the Met Council. He's also with the Native American Community Development Institute.