Brooks: For this homeless Hennepin County family, a home of their own

Last year, Frankey and Robert were one of 500 families in Hennepin County without a home.

This year, they’re home.

Music filled their two-bedroom apartment and a big smile spread across 3-year-old Robert’s face as his mother checked the laundry, then cued up one of their favorite songs. You know it’s alright, it’s OK, the Bee Gees assured them, I’ll live to see another day.

They didn’t have much furniture for the apartment yet, which just meant more room for dancing. Outside, the skies were gray and snow was just starting to fall on Hopkins. Inside, Franchesca Smith, who goes by Frankey, laughed and watched her little boy boogie. Safe and warm and home at last.

Staying alive. Staying alive.

“Sometimes I’d get really, really down,” Frankey said. On the bad days, when they were sleeping in shelters or temporary hotel rooms, she held on to Robert — and he held tight to her.

“‘Mommy can’t get up. Mommy can’t get off of the couch or out of the door without a magic big hug,’” she would tell her son. “So every morning, he’d climb onto the couch with me and say ‘It’s time for the magic big hug so you can get up.’”

She looked out for Robert, Robert looked out for her, and their community looked out for them both.

If it feels like nothing good is happening in the world right now, know this: More than half the families who were homeless in and around Minneapolis at the start of 2024 were housed by the start of 2025.

“Everyone deserves housing,” said Danielle Werder, senior department administrator for Hennepin County Housing Stability. “We believe everyone can move into housing, and we believe that it is our job to help them get there in a way that works for them.”

The county operates a shelter-all policy for families, meaning that any eligible family that asks the county for help should be under a roof by that evening — a policy sorely tested in the past few years as pandemic assistance dried up just as Minneapolis ended its moratorium on evictions.

“We got really creative with the resources we had,” Werder said. Some families just needed a little extra money so they could chip in for groceries while they stayed with a relative. Some needed help finding affordable housing near family, work or child care. Some needed wraparound support and on-site social workers to help as they settled in.

“We asked people what they wanted. We asked people what their barriers were,” Werder said. “We’re trying to make the experience of homelessness very brief and nonrecurring.”

Homes for half the families who need them isn’t enough, but it’s not nothing. And for 11 of the past 12 months, Werder said, more families have moved out of Hennepin County shelters than into them.

Including Frankey, 37, who left a home that no longer felt safe two years ago with little more than Robert’s teddy bear and the clothes and paperwork she could carry.

“I think he likes his home,” Frankey said.

Soon, the family would visit the county’s Bridging warehouse to pick out furniture for the apartment — maybe a couch, maybe a table and chairs, maybe some bed frames for their new mattresses.

“It was journey and I wanted to give up so many different times,” Frankey said. “But the fact that I had him and I couldn’t give up is what kept me going.”

As one family was making a home, dozens of Hennepin County staff were out in the cold on Jan. 22 for the annual Point In Time count, trying to determine how many more people will need their help this year.

“There’s a lot of national news right now that homelessness is hopeless, it’s on the rise, there’s no solution, things are bad,” Werder said. “We don’t really highlight that there are things that work. … And yes, it’s hard, and it’s not a magic bullet, and it’s a slog, and it’s complicated. But it’s happening and it’s working.”