‘Until we have to move again:’ The journey from one St. Paul encampment to the next
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Not long after St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her announced the city would shut down the Pig’s Eye Park encampment, citing health and safety concerns, Marty Johnson knew what was coming.
He had been through this before. Still, when the morning of Aug. 5 arrived, he stood in the middle of the encampment in disbelief.
Johnson toed the patch of dirt where he and his longtime partner Chalsea Diver used to share a tent, then scanned an emptied out spot where a neighbor in a wheelchair could “barely get around and out.”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” Johnson said. “How come he couldn’t get into a home right away and he’s still in this mess?”
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The last Johnson heard, that man ended up at another encampment, about five miles away near Shepard Road and hidden in the woods near the Mississippi River. It’s where Johnson planned to go, too, and where an influx of residents, with no other plan, ultimately moved as a result of Pig’s Eye getting shut down.
In the weeks leading up to that closure, Assistant Mayor Cedrick Baker said the city was committed to making sure that "if anybody needs to be inside, they can be inside.” But only four recently displaced Pig’s Eye residents are known to have slept in shelter the night after it closed, according to a Ramsey County spokesperson and Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities. An estimated 100-200 people had been living at Pig’s Eye.
The majority, including Johnson and Diver, did not get indoors. The couple, like so many encampment residents, had needs that can't be immediately addressed by shelters — so despite the risks that accompany living outside, they saw no better option while awaiting a more permanent spot inside.
It’s also unclear how much shelter was available that night.
Johnson planned to go to the Shepard encampment as soon as his ride returned. Diver was already there with the first of their belongings. She had hitched a ride with a volunteer who promised to come back for him. But because Johnson didn’t have a cell phone, he had no way of knowing how much longer he would be left behind to watch the old camp wither.
So while he waited, he walked their dog Twin around the perimeter of the shrinking camp, taking it all in.
“Half of us people have been out here for so long,” he said. “It’s just, where do we go and where do we start?”
Johnson and Diver had been together for 12 years, going in and out of job and housing instability — a shifting path detoured by struggles with drug addiction and poverty, but always with the companionship of one another.
The first time Johnson and Diver ended up at a big encampment was in 2025, after they got evicted from a supportive housing apartment for families. It was a subsidized apartment for sober living.
The couple said they were blamed for a domestic fight in the hallway that they had nothing to do with, and were at odds with the landlord who wouldn’t fix poor conditions at their home.
They were ultimately evicted for owing less than $500 in missed rent, setting back the progress they had made to stay together with their daughters, who are now 9 and 10 years old.
After that, their kids went to live with his sister, and the couple landed at an encampment at Jackson Street and Maryland Avenue, before it got cleared out after a deadly shooting. They tried to stay with his sister and her boyfriend for a while, but the two bedroom apartment wasn’t a good fit for six people. That’s when the couple landed at Pig’s Eye.
Soon after, a woman with RADIAS Health who came by the camp offered them help finding housing, he said. But she told them she couldn’t guarantee anything. They had to wait.
“Here goes that list again,” he said. “Everybody keeps saying a list, but nobody knows anything about it. We’re either at the top of the list or the middle of the list or the bottom of the list. We don’t know.”
The “wait list” is the coordinated entry list. It’s for those trying to exit homelessness and find housing that often includes additional support, like mental health care or treatment for substance use disorders.
There are currently 2,668 individuals and families on the waitlist.
In the days leading up to the clearing, Johnson saw someone who appeared to work for the county and asked them again about housing, but they told him they weren’t able to do anything about that and gave him a location downtown to visit.
“I’m always hoping something comes up,” Johnson said.
On the day of the encampment clearing, it hadn’t.
‘Why are we all here still then?’
While Johnson waited for his ride, Assistant Mayor Cedrick Baker acknowledged to reporters that many were headed to the Shepard camp. He said the city was “giving them the options of the shelters that are available and that they have access to.”
“We want to make sure that they understand all of the options that they have, and we also know that there will be some individuals that will just not take us up on our offer,” he said, adding they would continue to try and connect with people.
Johnson later laughed at Baker’s suggestion. He said no one had offered him shelter.
“Why are we all here still then? That’s what I would ask him,” he said. “Unless this is what they’re calling shelters out here.”
How much shelter space was available the Wednesday of the clearings is unclear. When MPR News called the county’s shelter hotline, an employee said they were unable to see the numbers as they usually could, due to the encampment closure that day. Later, a county spokesperson told MPR News to ask the Wilder Foundation, who redirected MPR News back to the county. The city did not respond to a request for specific numbers before the publication of this story.
However, there were at least 20 beds available at Union Gospel Mission, one of St. Paul’s three adult emergency shelters, according to Kelly Larson, a marketing specialist at the Mission.
Those beds were for men only, did not allow pets, did not have a space for safe substance use, and could only grant each person a single locker to keep their belongings.
For Johnson and Diver, those requirements meant it wasn’t an option.
From one encampment to another
By mid-afternoon the day of the Pig’s Eye encampment clearing, the population at the Shepard encampment had more than doubled, and would continue to increase over the coming days. A month earlier, about 30-40 people had lived there.
In a previously unoccupied section of the woods, Diver, Johnson’s “other half,” looped twine around a tree to hang rain-soaked clothes to dry. Diver wanted to lay down, but there was so much more to do. She hadn’t slept the night before, instead making sure everything was ready for the Pig’s Eye volunteers to start shuttling before sun-up.
“I’ve been up moving, moving, moving,” she said.
Next, they would have to retrieve another load of belongings from the entrance to the Shepard camp and finish setting up their tent. Better yet, as she finished the laundry, shouts echoed off a hill in the distance.
“Oh, great,” she said. “More fighting.”
Everyone was on edge, she said. There was the sudden influx into a camp that already had its own social order, then the leftover tension from the morning’s clearing. There was also the fear of being uprooted again, with murmurs across the camp of when that might happen (St. Paul officials said they planned to give residents notice but had yet to set a date).
Diver had a feeling the instability would only strain people more.
“It’s just going to drive the homeless into chaos to where people already don’t like us for one reason,” she said. “It’s just going to drive us to be that person that they don’t like.”
Diver already hated what people assumed about her, she said. This wasn’t how she wanted to live. She had OCD and always felt compelled to keep things clean — which wasn’t exactly the easiest setup for being homeless. She kept hand-sanitizer within easy reach in her backpack, and the dirt ground swept perfectly smooth.
But until she could have her own place, emergency shelters wouldn’t work either. Most shelters separate by gender and she needed to stay by Johnson’s side. He was always there to alleviate her PTSD and her anxiety. They both had ADHD and navigated it together.
Twelve years ago, they had met through a mutual friend when they both lived on the Fond Du Lac reservation and worked at a casino. They had been attached ever since, and though they weren’t legally married, she was “the wifey,” to him. They had their ups and downs, and the extra instability had percolated into more disagreements than ever before, Johnson said.
“But at the end of the day, we’re still right there with each other,” he said.
And he would never leave her. He considered returning to treatment for his drug addiction, but he couldn’t find anywhere that accepted couples. He once got partway through a treatment program, before quitting to be with her.
“That’s the one thing I’m always thinking about. It’s like, if I do this, what’s going to happen with her?”
He was planning on asking the outreach workers who came through the encampments if they knew of anywhere that might take them both. He wanted to be free of the drug addiction, but it felt impossible to just quit otherwise. Going without felt like getting hit by a truck, he said.
And it helped cover up decades of trauma and pain, like was the case for many people out there, he said. From a young age, life got real quick, and the hurdles never seemed to relent. At one point, he seemed bound for college basketball, but that was another lifetime away.
He said he grew up getting beat up by different family members. His mom and stepdad were drug users who would leave the house for days on end, forcing Johnson and his sisters to grow up fast. By the time he was 21, a neighbor friend had him hooked on harder stuff.
Johnson wanted to keep his daughters protected from that kind of life. When they would come down to Pig’s Eye to visit, he would play with them in the parking lot, but made sure they stayed away from the rows of tents. That wasn’t a life they needed to see, he said.
There were many specifics they didn’t know, “But they know mommy and daddy are trying to get a place right now.”
Once that happens, he said he hoped more would fall into place.
Still, he had a way of bringing light into even the roughest of days, and a natural warmth about him. Perhaps that was why people gravitated to him and Diver.
“Hey, who all remembers Jeepers Creepers? The movie Jeepers Creepers!” he yelled out, stepping away from his unpacking for a moment.
He pointed toward another campsite in the distance. A wide-brimmed hat rested atop a tarp, draped ominously over a branch like the monster in the 2001 movie. He and Diver recited a scene, ad-libbing where they forgot the words, until it was time to gather their last load of belongings.
The work wasn’t over yet.
‘Until we have to move again’
The end of the road leading toward the Shepard encampment had the shuffle of college move-in. Volunteers helped new residents unload trucks and cars, while moving wagons rattled nonstop. A single St. Paul police car stayed parked, but allowed people to settle.
The last of Diver and Johnson’s belongings baked in the sun. Between the apartment eviction and the first sweep, they had lost most of their belongings, like the beads Diver used for her art and the shoes she had collected for years. So what they could hold onto felt especially precious.
It was another reason shelter wouldn’t have worked for them. They wouldn’t have been able to keep all of it. Johnson said at least this time the city gave them time to grab everything before they left — a pleasant surprise.
Near their belongings, an older man with a full head of white hair offered the couple his help. They each lugged heavy bags and cushions over a set of train tracks, then organized the items on a baby carriage and wagon, which they yanked through shifting sand, then down a series of slanting dirt paths.
They took a longer route to avoid passing a bigger dog, but Twin had his own ideas for where he wanted to go.
“Hold on, buddy. Hold on. Hold on, please,” Johnson said to a barking Twin.
They reoriented themselves, re-situated the balancing act, and kept going. Diver hurt herself holding a wooden bench over her shoulder.
“I just messed up my arm!” she exclaimed.
Johnson stopped.
“You know I can’t do anything until I figure out if you’re OK.”
When they finally traversed the bumpy trails, past tents with new neighbors and others they recognized from Pig’s Eye, they dropped their belongings.
It was the first time Diver had been able to properly sit down since the day before.
She slowly tugged off her shoes.
“So much for brand new socks,” she said, peeling the damp, once-white socks off her aching feet.
They looked forward to a full night's sleep, without the daily wake-up call of a train horn blaring as it passed by the Pig’s Eye encampment, and they predicted they would hear less sirens at night.
Down here, tucked away in the woods, it was quieter — almost too quiet for what they were accustomed to. Twin seemed to like the trees and the space. He was already calmer than earlier that morning.
Johnson pulled off his shoes, too, letting his aching feet breathe.
“I think it’s going to be a good place for a little bit,” Johnson said.
His shoulders dropped with exhaustion.
“Until we have to move again.”
