Life in a homeless shelter through the eyes of an 8-year old

Homelessness is on the rise in Minnesota. A statewide survey released by Wilder Research in March found the number of people who are homeless has increased about 6 percent since the last count in 2009, to more than 10,200. Nearly half of the homeless are 21 or younger.

On any given night, more than 100 families stay at People Serving People (PSP), a homeless shelter in downtown Minneapolis. Residents include about 200 children, who are on average 6 years old. The shelter is at capacity and has been for several months.

MPR News spent some time with one of the children at the shelter, a third-grader who has been with her family at PSP for just over a month.

Note from Michael Edgerly, Executive Editor (3/22/2017): MPR News has removed the name of the child in this story and deleted a video and photo of her. As rule, we do not remove stories from our website. We broke with that policy in this instance because the well-being of the child is at stake.

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