More than 200 homeless passengers ride Metro Transit’s Green and Blue lines overnight to stay warm.
On a Friday night in early January, St. Paul City Council member Mitra Nelson joined newly elected Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley to ride both light-rail lines into the early morning and meet many of those passengers.
They shadowed Monica Nillson, a longtime advocate for the homeless, and members of Metro Transit’s Homeless Action Team, a group of officers who offer homeless passengers housing vouchers and rides and referrals to emergency shelter.
For the second year in a row, St. Paul and Ramsey County have jointly organized the Winter Safe Space, a 64-bed overnight shelter in downtown St. Paul.
The following interview with Nelson has been edited for length and clarity.
When did you set out?
Friday night (Jan. 4) at 11:30 p.m. I got my warm winter clothes and my coat and my hoodie, and I got in my car and I went to work. I’ve been moving my apartment, and it was just this weird timing thing. I happened to have to move, and the one time we could all meet was Friday night.
A place to be-thank you to St. Paul City Council Member Mitra Nelson and Hennepin County Commissioner Elect Angela Conley for spending the night on the trains bearing witness to the number of unsheltered people because shelters are full in the region. @voteconley @mitrajnelson pic.twitter.com/znAHfxdBkP
— Monica Nilsson (@monicamnilsson) January 5, 2019
Metro Transit Sgt. Brook Blakey met up with us at the St. Paul Union Depot to explain what’s going on. We walked to the platform, and she said hello to someone she knows there. There’s regular groups of people. They have their schedule worked out for where they can be and when, knowing which libraries will let you stick around. There’s an inventory of knowledge.
Where did you go?
At the Mall of America, there’s a transit center where a lot of folks seek shelter for part of the night because there’s clean bathrooms, there’s a security presence, it’s well lit, there’s places you can charge your phone, it’s enclosed — it’s not a platform. I was standing on heated light-rail platforms for much of the evening, and even with that button you can push to turn on the heating, it’s not great from a warmth standpoint. There’s a bunch of people who knew each other. For some people, they’ve literally been experiencing years of being homeless. Every person I talked to except for one or two were long-term, chronic, struggling to find housing.
Was there one person in particular whose story stayed with you?
I talked to somebody who was just full-on employed. He was a chef at an area hotel. He had a bag with him of his belongings. He could have been any person out walking in Minnesota right now, just your average person. He said, ‘I know right now you wouldn’t assume I was homeless from how I look.’ Michael had a job at a hotel, and he had a locker there, and that’s where he could store his bags.
Then he said, ‘I live on the light rail.’ He very specifically said, ‘I live on the light rail.’ He said he’d been riding the trains for six months. He’d been trying to get into shelters, and everything is full all the time. There’s two glaring gaps — available shelter space, and the other is actually affordable long-term housing. A lot of homeless people, they’re unbanked (lacking bank accounts). … So the barriers to entry are hard, even when there are affordable units. Most of the stuff we’re building right now is not for the (very poor).
You were elected last August on a renters’ rights and affordable housing platform. You’ve also embraced lessening zoning restrictions on the construction of new, market-rate multi-family housing, which is often a far cry from affordable. Now you’re talking about shelter beds?
People will say we need more affordable housing, but right now, tonight, people are riding the train because there isn’t shelter space. We have to help people have both. If you put 25 more outreach workers out there right now, and they connected with everyone riding the train, they would still refer people to the same places, which are full.
We do have to create some market-rate housing to soak up some of the demand that we’re seeing, but it doesn’t change the fact that we need much more aggressive affordable housing. It impressed upon me we need an “all hands on deck” approach.
It’s a tricky thing I’ve tried to articulate. If we do not create more housing for people at all levels, the market-pressure forces people down and out. If we’re not willing to create more homes at every income, the folks seeking high-end housing take the next most available level, and the people who need that even more get that taken from them, and they take the next most available level, and on and on and on. The people who are the most marginalized are the ones who suffer the most.
The night came full circle when John from Red Lake came up to me & we started talking.
He’s from Hiawatha encampment staying here in Saint Paul.
Our communities really are so deeply connected across these issues. There has to be a regional strategy. We are all in this together. pic.twitter.com/wJpIAvmajr
— Mitra Jalali ⚡️ميترا (@mitrajunjalali) January 5, 2019
How did the night end?
At 3:17 and 4:17 a.m., that’s when the last trains come, and that’s when they disband everyone. They say “You can’t stay on the train.” We were out for four hours. I was struck by us getting on the trains at midnight, and it was freezing cold, and we weren’t even out on that cold of a night. I experienced a small fraction of what they go through every night.
Commissioner Conley was literally sworn in on the following Monday, and she came off a weekend of meditating on people who are experiencing homelessness.
Did you have any epiphanies? If you had to sum up your observations in a single sentence, what would it be?
Growing our community without displacement, Hennepin County is struggling with that. Ramsey County is, too. The gap I’ve seen is the city and county working together more closely, and I think right now there’s an appetite for it. I think that there’s an eagerness to work on those things together.
My one sentence, my one epiphany would be, we need a regional strategy. This is a top priority for me, and I know when we collaborate together, we can make a difference.
