Minnesota homeless shelters face ‘overwhelming‘ need, challenges to operation

NINA MOINI: Around the state, homeless shelters are struggling to stay open as demand for their services grow. Just last week, The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Agate Housing and Services, a homeless shelter in Minneapolis, was not planning to reopen even after they received $1.5 million in grants from the city and an anonymous donation that matched the city's contribution.

And Agate isn't alone in facing barriers in providing shelter for the homeless. Joining me to talk about the difficulties for homeless shelters across the state to stay open and operating is Matt Traynor, the director of advocacy and interim executive director of the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless. Thanks for being here, Matt.

MATT TRAYNOR: Hi, thanks for having me.

NINA MOINI: And also on the line, we're very happy to be joined by John Cole, who's the executive director of Chum, a homeless shelter in Duluth. Thanks for being here as well, John.

JOHN COLE: Great to be here.

NINA MOINI: Matt, I'd like to start with you. We used an example from Minneapolis. But obviously, there is a huge need across the state, and obviously, we have extremely cold weather and an extreme weather that we also face as a population here. What have you been hearing in recent months about the need since it turned colder out? What's the need like, overall?

MATT TRAYNOR: Yeah, it's a huge need. Unfortunately, we've been hearing from folks that they're seeing more and more people coming into their shelters, and now, the data is telling us the same as reflected in the Minnesota Homeless Study. But even though it's getting cold right now, the need is always there. It's just a heightened risk of having to be homeless in Minnesota during the month of January or February.

NINA MOINI: Absolutely. John, what are some of the difficulties that you and your staff are facing right now to be able to serve the need that exists?

JOHN COLE: Well, we are seeing an increased demand for services. And the sheer numbers are really overwhelming. When we-- When I look back to 2020, we were-- all our shelters combined with just serving 872 people. Now, it's jumped up to almost 1,800 people coming in. And these are presenting a variety of needs.

The elderly persons experiencing homelessness is the fastest growing segment. We have youth. We have people with physical challenges. We have people who sleep at the day, people sleep at night, people being released into homelessness from the hospitals or jails and the prisons, and this is really creating-- exacerbate the demand on existing shelters and particular shelters like ours, who have been around for almost 50 years and who have just simply outgrown their space.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, how have the services that you've provided changed over the last 50 years?

JOHN COLE: Oh, it's changed tremendously, particularly here in Duluth, in addition to the sheer numbers. There's a huge percentage of the persons experiencing homelessness who have a chronic homeless experience, and that is significant levels of mental illness and chemical dependency that has necessitated us to try and diversify the types of services that we offer.

You have to get skilled staff in. You have to increase in numbers of support staff, and you have to be able to begin to delve into the root causes and try to find ways in which we can keep people alive in the first instance to be able to channel them towards getting housing, and housing is the really the main way to end homelessness. And there really isn't, sadly, enough of that.

NINA MOINI: And I don't know if you were listening to our last segment, but lots of talk on a national scale about just the opioid epidemic, fentanyl. We know that people are really struggling here in Minnesota as well. What is it like to serve people who are in a place of a substance use disorder? Are you able to serve them, John? And where-- what should happen to better serve that population?

JOHN COLE: We provide them with a warm space, and we provide them with food, and we try to connect them with the existing services to be able to help them to reduce the harm that they experience in but also to get to the point where they can enter in into treatment.

Sadly, there are not enough supply to meet the demand, and our staff are really challenged to deal with that, coupled with those persons who actually have both issues of mental health and chemical addiction. What really needs to happen is, we really need to invest resources, not only in curbing the supply of fentanyl and all the synthetic opioids that are poisoning our population but also to be able to provide the measures, the resources available so that people, when they say they are ready, can get swift and immediate access to detox and to the treatment resources that are available. And our system is not set up for that currently.

NINA MOINI: Matt, I want to talk a little bit about some solutions because when we hear from people, substance use might be one issue. Sometimes there's not space. Sometimes people have a family unit. Sometimes people don't like the rules or the hours of the shelters that are around. What would it take at the state level to pump enough resources in to make a significant difference here? Are you trying to get more support at the state legislature this year?

MATT TRAYNOR: Yeah, I'm glad you asked this. We should all be proud as Minnesotans advocates in the legislature for what happened in 2023. There is a package of bills passed called the Pathway Home Act that drastically increased the amount of funding for some of these programs John is talking about.

But the state has been so under funding these programs for so many decades that, for example, the emergency services programs, the state's most effective tool for shelters to operate, which includes a lot of flexibility to do what's needed. Prior to that 2023 victory, the entire budget was under 2 million and were eventually going to get up to that budget being over 73 million.

So legislators are recognizing this as a need. They're putting their political clout behind it. But as an example, we also got 100 million in shelter capital funding to build more and preserve and enhance the ones that we have. We got 100 million for that, but there's 360-some million requested. So the need is huge. So when it comes to the solutions, I do have a few things for folks to really think about.

NINA MOINI: OK, good.

MATT TRAYNOR: You need-- yeah, yeah, you need persistence, right? We definitely need that. But I also think how we advocate can be just as important as what we are advocating for. So we need folks that are skilled, that have been homeless in their past, so they know the solutions, and they need to have the skills to do so. So that's what MCC has been focusing on, and we've seen tremendous success that not only are they speaking at events, but they're literally writing legislation.

They're literally going into their communities asking what needs to be done. And then a couple other things that people can do is build relationships with your legislators before the session starts. It's such a difference when this happens when we go to the capitol and talk to lawmakers.

And then, John was also getting at the complexity. We can't end homelessness exclusively through homeless and housing programs. It's got to be the entire-- it's got to be our economy. It's got to be education. It's got to be our tax system. So we need to expand where homelessness is talked about.

NINA MOINI: And to your point-- and Matt, I'll, I'll throw this back to you-- this is not just in one area of the state, correct? This is a statewide problem. It's not just in the Twin Cities. You mentioned earlier that some of our older population is struggling and that rate is growing, which might surprise people. But if you think about the population and getting older, there are just more people and more people to face. So anything you want to say about just statewide what the outlook is?

MATT TRAYNOR: Yeah, it's everywhere in the state. MCH-- that's acronym for Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless-- we, in 2017, decided to have a legislative agenda focused on unsheltered homelessness, and most of our travel was done throughout Greater Minnesota, and outside of housing, the second most common thing that we talked to shelter guests was, we need more shelters. We need better services. I need to see a caseworker sooner than what I'm able to. And that's literally in every part of the state, no matter how big or small your region is.

As an example, Hibbing, they developed a new shelter. It's an amazing one, called the Home on the Range. They were able to expand from four beds to about 60, but they still have thousands of turnaways every year. So that's rural Saint Louis county. It's still a problem everywhere.

NINA MOINI: Thank you both for coming on today and lending some much needed perspective. Matt and John, really appreciate you both.

JOHN COLE: Thank you.

MATT TRAYNOR: Thank you.

NINA MOINI: That was Matt Traynor, the director of advocacy and interim executive director of the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, and John Cole, the executive director of Chum, a homeless shelter in Duluth.