Minneapolis community leaders rally to end homelessness

In 2006, Hennepin County Commissioners and the Minneapolis City Council banded together in an effort to end homelessness in the city by 2016.

The ten-year plan, called Heading Home Hennepin , is an organization with a coalition of nearly 70 county leaders that aims at reducing poverty levels, increasing aid and providing adequate housing opportunities for the county’s homeless.

Officials said the organization will develop 5,000 new housing opportunities in ten years. Homeless shelter operators say the goal to end homelessness entirely is unlikely.

Project coordinator Cathy ten Broeke said initiatives will ensure that housing needs are met and secured for Hennepin County’s homeless population.

In 2007 and 2008, the plan provided 1,128 housing opportunities through existing and new housing units. The county constructed 198 new units over that time.

One new unit, Nicollet Square on Nicollet Avenue, celebrated its groundbreaking on Thursday.

Ten Broeke said it is the first new construction for youth in the ten-year plan.

The ten-year plan houses the city’s homeless through new and existing housing units and is largely funded through federal stimulus grants.

“We’ve been very successful this year in getting people housed through the existing market,” she said.

“One of our strategies is to sustain what’s already there and develop new [housing] opportunities so that people can have a place to call home,” she said.

Hennepin County and the city of Minneapolis received a $6.5 million stimulus package this year for homelessness prevention to be used over the course of three years.

Hennepin County Commissioner Gail Dorfman said there are more than 100 committees working to end homelessness within the ten-year plan including a healthcare committee and street outreach committee.

“Homelessness has been in Minneapolis since the early 1980s,” she said.

Although the plan has provided hundreds with housing, ten Broeke said there are setbacks that limit the organization’s ten-year plan.

She said unallotted cuts from Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s administration have “crippled” the organization’s ability to transfer people from shelters to housing.

City shelters such as Listening House in St. Paul have seen significant increases from ten years ago.

Executive Director Rosemarie Reger-Rumsey said the single-adult shelter serves around 220 individuals per day, which is a 40 percent increase from five years ago. Of those served, about 82 percent are male.

Reger-Rumsey said fewer job opportunities and landlord foreclosures account for much of the increase.

Criminal history, lack of employment and mental illness is the reason for most single-adult homelessness, she said.

“We are seeing more people who have a complicated mental illness than in the past,” Reger-Rumsey said.

State cuts to medical care programs for the poor have left Hennepin County with up to $40 million in uncompensated care, ten Broeke said.

“In my mind this isn’t just about funding programs, it’s about investing in solutions,” she said.

Reger-Rumsey said she doesn’t believe Hennepin County homelessness will end by 2016.

“I’m not even hopeful it will happen in Ramsey County,” she said. “I think that it is on the radar … I think it’s beyond the capability of city government to address it. [Government] is limited as to how much it can put into homelessness from a dollar perspective.”

Reger-Rumsey said volunteer numbers have increased since she started at Listening House.

“We have tripled our volunteer core in the ten years I’ve been here,” she said. “We do have a very engaged community out there willing to help serve.”