Citing safety concerns, St. Paul officials to clear encampment sheltering dozens of homeless people

A field on St. Paul’s East Side that has become one of the city’s largest homeless encampments will close as officials say the area has become a public safety risk.

City officials posted signs announcing the closure around the encampment near the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary. Residents must take their tents, clothes and personal items when leaving the area on Jan. 16, or else crews may “remove and dispose” of remaining items.

On Wednesday, camp residents, city workers and volunteers packed plastic crates of belongings, tents and a few generators.

The camp’s residents had built up a maze of shanties — more solid than tents — made of tarps, pieces of tents and cast-off plywood, fencing and doors. Some dwellings had multiple tents nested together, with propane heaters and remnants of campfires inside the cramped spaces. Icy trails wound around fire pits, dozens of bicycles and a few piles of canned peas, untinned and frozen on the ground.

Logs crackled from an open fire as some residents warmed fingers over the flames. Outreach workers scrambled between tents to check for trash, personal belongings and people in need of help or transportation.

Many tents were already abandoned Wednesday. Outreach workers said they have helped some camp residents find shelter since the closure was announced, and other residents have moved to other encampments on the East Side.

Outreach workers from Radias Health and People Inc. have worked to connect the encampment’s residents with shelter and resources since, and Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher said outreach workers with the city’s Homeless Assistance Response Team (HART) will continue such work through the closure. Tincher added that HART will also store some unsheltered residents’ belongings because they have little left.

“I think COVID and the pandemic economically impacted a whole lot of folks, and sort of pushed individuals who were on the margins out of the shadows,” Tincher said. “At a basic level, these are our neighbors. They’re residents of the city, and so our approach is with every interaction we want to start with and stay in a space of, ‘We want to be helpful. We want to connect you to resources. We want to provide support.’”

In 2023 people started settling on the field near the sanctuary south of Interstate 94 between 4th Street E. and E. Kellogg Boulevard. What began as a few tents boomed into dozens, and by late 2024, city officials counted at least 32 people and around 40 tents in that area.

As it grew, so did reports of uncontrolled fires and assaults. The city’s Department of Safety and Inspections started planning to close the camp over a month ago.

“[P]ublic safety incidents at and around the Bruce Vento encampment have reached a level that requires the encampment to be closed,” read a Dec. 9 email from the city’s Homeless Assistance Response Team to several city and nonprofit staff.

The camp has seen large fires this winter, according to the city, with several tents burning.

“In an effort to provide as much outreach as possible, now is the time to start identifying (to the extent that there are) housing options, shelter referrals, and alternate locations for those who may not transition inside,” the email said.

St. Paul has counted more homeless residents sleeping outside this year than in the past two winters, when numbers typically hovered between 110 and 120 unsheltered people, according to the city’s weekly tallies. This month, the city counted 148 people sleeping outside.

John Tolo, executive director of the SafeCity Community Outreach Program, a crime reduction partnership aiming to connect at-risk people with what they need to thrive, said the Bruce Vento encampment is “the largest” he’s been around, adding that it’s well-organized thanks to leaders among those living there.

Tolo said the encampment was ideal for unsheltered people, placing them in walking distance of a gas station, bus stops and the Listening House daytime community center. Some may move to a growing encampment near Fish Hatchery Road, he said.

“It’s good because it’s not near any residences and there’s not going to be trouble, but policing it and everything seems like just a tough situation because it’s so far out of the way of everything,” Tolo said. But connecting unsheltered people to resources has built the trust they need to try permanent housing, he added.

“So finding resources especially in this next week or two, having access to resources like that, is really helpful.”

Officials across the Twin Cities have run through a gamut of means to address homelessness. Some employ unsheltered people to clean light-rail stations. Others erected fences to deter people from staying in one area too long.

For Safety and Inspections Director Angie Wiese, helping unsheltered people builds trust where little or none may have existed.

“Our unsheltered neighbors aren’t used to people caring about them. They’re used to people wanting them to go away, and we have, through HART, really established that we care about them,” Wiese said. “We will continue to care about them wherever they end up. We call it relentless engagement: We won’t stop.”