St. Paul tears down homeless encampment, requests support for unsheltered people

Vang leaned into the blue and gray tent he’s called home in recent years, grabbed a piece of clothing and held it over an open fire to watch it burn.

The 54-year-old who declined to share his last name is from Laos but grew up in Wisconsin. He moved to Minnesota after losing his job and often slept in the homeless encampment near Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary in St. Paul after growing tired of shelters' schedules and waiting for beds to open. But he and others awakened Thursday to crews telling them to leave: The city is closing the encampment and asking residents to find shelter or go elsewhere.

“They’re out here helping,” Vang said of city workers and volunteers cleaning the site. “Which is good because it really did help us — otherwise we’d be in trouble with this temperature.”

City officials publicized plans to close the homeless encampment in early January, posting eviction signs explaining that the area has become a health and safety risk. A December email from St. Paul’s Homeless Assistance Response Team suggested that a growing number of safety incidents, such as uncontrolled fires and assaults, reached critical mass and prompted the city to close the site.

As Vang and others packed their belongings into trash bags, trucks and trailers, members of the St. Paul Fire Department checked residents for frostbite and offered mental health support and transportation. Outreach workers stepped over pennies, toys, car bumpers and discarded winter clothes to fetch more than 20 propane tanks from tents in the camp.

The winter breeze carried the smell of burning wood and cloth. Beeps and grinding wheels from skid-steer loaders hoisting broken tents mingled with the rip of tarps tearing under outreach workers' knives. As Familiar Faces worker Sam Stoltz knocked at a tent, a man’s voice wavered from a nearby tent.

“Sorry ... today’s the day of the move,” Stoltz said. “Let us know if you need any help.”

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter attended the camp closure Thursday morning, touring the site while speaking with volunteers and peering inside abandoned tents. Carter said more could be done to help unsheltered residents, and more support could go a long way.

“At about the height of the pandemic we saw a tenfold increase in a matter of a couple of weeks in the number of people in our community who are sheltering outdoors. That’s a national phenomenon,” Carter said, adding that the city has built a network of resources to support people. “This is where we absolutely need regional support and statewide resources, because otherwise we’ll always be chasing our tails.”

St. Paul City Council Member Cheniqua Johnson, whose Ward 7 includes the encampment area, said she wonders if St. Paul takes on more than its fair share of work with unsheltered people in the metro and called on leaders in other cities, as well as Ramsey and Hennepin County, to pitch in more.

“We can’t only be the only entity serving the encampments hands-on,” Johnson said. “It can’t just be on our backs to do this.”

Johnson said she wanted to make sure people seeking shelter were treated with dignity. She does not support reflexive closures of encampments but said safety concerns within the camp were becoming serious. Johnson said she also had heard worries from the Wakan Tipi Center, the Dakota cultural center under construction nearby.

“This encampment is going to close. People are going to be displaced. That’s a very harsh reality,” Johnson said.

Although many residents want permanent shelter, different barriers such as health needs, family concerns and uncleared warrants keep them from finding a home, while others prefer life in tents over emergency shelters. Since the camp’s closure was announced, city officials and local organizations have sent outreach workers to press camp residents into considering shelters or housing.

Lam Truong, a social worker with the U.S. Veterans Administration, has spent months working with people in the camp, including an Army veteran who he said had been living near the nature center for about four years.

Truong said his client had been reticent to go to a shelter because he wanted to live with his partner and their pets. Most shelters have separate spaces for men and women, Lam said, and can’t accommodate animals. Many people also do not like that they cannot set their own schedules in most shelters and have to leave at a certain hour in the morning.

After months of visiting, Lam said he was able to get his client and his partner beds in Avivo Village. They were approved to move in on Christmas Eve.

“They’re doing really great. They’re super happy,” Truong said. “His goal is to go to treatment, and after completing treatment, he’ll be on his way to housing. Him and his partner together.”

Truong, who has done street outreach in St. Paul for more than 25 years, said the city’s approach to homelessness is unique because different government agencies and nonprofits cooperate well. “We’re all trying to work together.”

With the cold snap coming later this week, Truong said he is worried about unsheltered people getting frostbite and the burn-like wounds that can result.

When encampments close, not all residents find shelter. Some people who lived at other encampments have set up shelters in the Vento Nature Center in recent weeks.

Outreach workers said they had seen a recent influx of Spanish-speaking people in the camp, which had been predominated by Hmong and Karen residents, and wondered if those new residents had come from camps in Minneapolis that burned this month or others that have been closed.

Many unsheltered residents like Vang are moving to the encampment near Fish Hatchery Road. Though he said the area is bigger than the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary encampment, advocates worry the location puts residents far from resources like a bus stop, gas stations and the Listening House daytime community center.

Unsheltered people have been camping at the Fish Hatchery Road site for the better part of a year, said Dawn, 58, who has been living at the hatchery camp since the summer and asked to only be identified by her first name.

The camp near the fish hatchery is much smaller than the Bruce Vento encampment, Dawn said, but she worries about an influx of new people, saying she has heard stories about violence in the Vento camp.

Dawn said she knows how difficult it can be to lose everything in a clearance.

“I don’t know how many times we’ve lost all our stuff,” she said.

Being shuffled from camp to camp has added to the stress of homelessness.

“Everybody’s goal here is to have a forever home,” Dawn said. “But how can you get a forever home, when they put so much stress and expectations and rules on us?”

Vang hopes if more encampments are closed in the future that officials give residents more notice.

“Four or five years ago when they announced that [camp closure], they had outreach people come out and interview us to help [with] sick assessments and help us with shelter,” Vang said. “But this year when this situation came up, I was hoping that those people would step up to do that and none came until yesterday. ... I am a little bit disappointed on that part on [outreach workers].”