Early Thursday morning, officer Dean Koehnen sat in a van at the edge of St. Paul’s largest homeless camp. He had orders, which would kick in in an hour, to help clear it out.
“They’ll have to take me away in handcuffs,” yelled camp resident Matt Cromey, sitting on a concrete step beside Koehnen’s police van, a couple hundred feet south of the Cathedral of St. Paul.
After a few minutes, Cromey got up and walked to the police van’s window, to argue that campers had done all they could to police themselves, to pick up trash until the nearby bins were overflowing.
“Our hands are tied,” Koehnen said softly.
“I know your hands are tied,” Cromey said.
“We’ll have some vans here … I don’t want ’em to take your stuff. Can you pack? Let’s go work on that.”
A minute later, Cromey was walking to his tent, and began packing.
He was one of a couple dozen.
AN ORDER TO VACATE
By late morning, St. Paul Department of Safety and Inspections Director Ricardo Cervantes stood at the top of the hill overlooking the camp, a good distance from the tents, for a news conference.
Cervantes — who stated last month that there wouldn’t be evictions — offered a list of reasons that the campers would be cited for trespassing, and possibly arrested, if they remained on the Minnesota Department of Transportation property that day, or tried to return.
It wasn’t safe. There had been several fires, and concerns about additional ones. Also, trash and even a tent had fallen over the overlook, onto the highway.
Plus, the landlord — the Minnesota Department of Transportation — had requested the eviction. A department spokesman called the decision “mutual” with the city, for safety reasons.
In the end, Cervantes said, the city needed to — and was working on — increasing shelter capacity, a long-term issue that wouldn’t be solved in a matter of weeks.
Fliers outlining the 10 a.m. vacate order had been distributed throughout the camp two days before.
While for years, if not decades, there have been campers on the hill below the Cathedral just north of the Interstate 35 ramp at Kellogg Boulevard, the camp’s population markedly increased over the summer, at its height having as many as 50 tents and twice as many people.
That population dropped somewhat when city officials began conducting weekly cleanings — mandating campers to temporarily remove their tents so the area could be hosed down and trash removed.
It dropped even more as temperatures dipped, and a county overnight “safe space” shelter opened Nov. 1.
Still, about 20 tents remained Thursday, most of them occupied.
NO ARRESTS
All told, the breakdown was relatively quiet. But tensions were high.
One 31-year-old camper who asked only to be identified as “E.B.” was six and a half months pregnant.
“I’m tired,” she replied to outreach workers when they asked how she was.
“It’s a good community. A lot of people care about you here,” she said. “They say it’s a hazard because it’s cold, but we got so many tarps and blankets, it’s not.”
Throughout the day, Officer Koehnen was the diplomat. In the past he’s paid money out of his own pocket to put homeless veterans in hotels. In plainclothes Thursday, he stood and talked with campers as they packed.
He was able to offer one camper, at least, good news: The man qualified for an apartment voucher. His partner, who declined to be named, brought along a pair of Gore-Tex-lined boots he wasn’t using, and gave them to a camper who had only tennis shoes.
No arrests were made. Camp residents — who had been breaking their tents down weekly — seemed accustomed to moving.
Where they would go was another thing.
By noon, as Minnesota Department of Transportation workers were bolting shining, metallic “NO TRESPASSING” signs to the guardrail of I-35’s overlook, five groups of residents were asked by a reporter where they would go. They started with the same answer.
“I don’t know.”
There were vague ideas. A pair asked police to drop them off on St. Paul’s West Side, where they had a storage facility. Another said by a nearby Burger King. A couple would head to Minneapolis’s much larger Hiawatha Avenue camp. One private group claimed they were taking five families there.
Nobody mentioned the shelters touted by city officials when they mentioned the evictions, both in the fliers and during the Thursday press conference. Both Catholic Charities’ Higher Ground shelter, as well as the Union Gospel Mission, have been full for months.
And both have policies where current residents can retain their spots; newcomers must wait in line for hours in the off-chance that a current resident does not show.
The county’s safe space — which would expand from 50 to 64 beds Thursday — has consistently been at capacity, as well.
Cervantes said the shelter numbers were “dynamic,” and added, “My worst worry is somebody’s going to die, going to freeze” at the Cathedral Hill site.
When ranking officers at the scene were asked if police vehicles would drop any campers in Minneapolis, Deputy Chief Matt Toupal said, “Absolutely not.”
Greg, a homeless man riding a bike a block from the camp, had a different opinion of the camp breakup than its residents.
“I think they should move anyway. There’s a lot of drug activity in this area. A lot comes with it,” he said.
Greg said he stayed at the camp until his tent burned down, and now squats in apartment building laundry rooms where he can get access to them.
As he packed his tent into shopping carts, Cromey talked about Mayor Melvin Carter, who had visited the camp weeks ago to assure residents he would work for them.
“First the mayor said he was with us, now he’s against us,” said Cromey.
“We were faced with two decisions, neither of which we were comfortable with,” Carter said Thursday of issues surrounding the camp.
Carter said he was uncomfortable with eviction, but added, “I don’t think our goal should be to make people comfortable in homelessness. Living in a tent in a Minnesota winter is not ideal or safe for anyone.”
Carter said his initial goal was to help identify some options for campers. Pointing at the safe space, he says he did that.
But the bigger problem, Carter said, is long-term.
“I’m certainly not one to argue that we’ve got enough resources. That’s why the budget I’ve proposed has historic investments in housing,” Carter said, adding that he plans to spend time at the Capitol to push for additional such investments by the state.
In his proposed budget, Carter asked for significant money to go toward low-income housing — creating a one-time “Housing Trust Fund” of $10 million, plus an additional $2 million annually.
