Homeless camp off Bruce Vento trail forcing advocates to explore new approaches

Long Vang, who goes by the name Lonely, first pitched his tent alongside the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary two years ago. The spot seemed peaceful, tucked back near railroad tracks on the edge of downtown St. Paul.

The 43-year-old, who has been homeless for 15 years, quickly invited homeless friends and acquaintances to join him. More and more people showed up, creating a sprawling encampment of an estimated 60 people, about half of them Hmong.

“It’s the best place I’ve seen so far,” Vang said. “We formed a bond with each other. We learn from each other. We help one another.”

It’s that sense of community — that feeling of family among the camp’s Hmong residents — that’s making it hard to find housing for many of the adults, city and county housing advocates say.

Finding landlords willing to take dozens of unrelated adults, some with criminal records or chemical addiction, is proving difficult. But unless they move to a single property together, some of the camp’s Hmong residents say they would rather stay in their tents, officials say.

“Many of the constituents who are there don’t want to leave unless they can do it together,” said Keith Lattimore, Ramsey County’s director of housing stability. “We’re meeting with landlords about bigger multifamily spaces ... but we’ve got to have more space. We’ve got to have more landlords willing to come to the table.”

In many ways, officials say, the problems that prompted people to pitch tents and string tarps along the Vento trail are common to such encampments throughout the Twin Cities. With so many people living paycheck to paycheck, homelessness is often just one financial crisis away.

Others, who face mental illness or substance use and abuse, prefer to live outside — especially in summer — rather than follow the restrictions of shelters. Still others feel safer encamped with friends and family members, said Kahari Smith-Brewer, coordinator of St. Paul’s Homeless Assistance Response Team.

Some have lost necessary documentation for housing and other services, he said.

But after a different site was closed last summer, the camp along Bruce Vento trail swelled to include a large group of Hmong residents, many of whom are friends but unrelated, Smith-Brewer said.

“In my experience, they tend to move together,” he said.

Mai Chong Xiong, a Ramsey County commissioner representing the East Side of St. Paul, said a large group of Hmong residents choosing to live in a camp “is unusual. Usually, families choose to live together.”

Extended families banding together to share resources is not unusual in the Hmong community, said Xiong, the first Hmong American elected to the County Board. Her family banded together with her stepmother’s extended family on the East Side years ago.

She said she suspects that zoning restrictions limiting how many unrelated adults can live together, as well as a shortage of housing for very large families, have contributed to what’s happening in the Vento camp. Many there tell officials that they’re doing just fine.

“They’ve built a community,” Xiong said.

She said she has heard no calls to remove the camp, which mostly is out of view just south of the Bruce Vento trailhead and north of the nature area, now named Wakan Tipi. Xiong said her main concern is ensuring that the residents of the camp have access to basic needs: “clean water, a restroom, just public health.”

Long-term, however, she echoed Lattimore’s call for larger and more flexible housing options.

“I am just very hopeful that we can have partnerships with landlords,” she said. “We need help finding more than four-bedroom homes at affordable rents that can be subsidized.”

Smith-Brewer’s team of two inspectors and two outreach workers tries to visit the Vento site daily and conduct weekly cleaning there. There are currently no plans to disperse the residents, he said, unless a public safety problem arises, such as crime or repeated complaints.

Thursday afternoon, a man lugged a large catfish back to his tent. A nearby grill was at the ready to cook the catch for dinner.

Vang said he hopes to get a job and permanent shelter, though he worries about doing so without a support system. When people have left on their own or in small groups before, he said, they usually come back.

As Vang spoke, Chue Yang, a friend from his youth, stopped to visit. He waved to another friend, dropped off some laundry detergent and offered to bring cooking oil next time he came by — to fry the fish, Vang joked.

“Instead of coming down here and trying to give money, I just come down here and give them my time,” Yang said. “Sometimes, we need that positive conversation.”