Packed St. Paul Chapter Bus Tour Brings Housing Crisis to Life
Over 50 people gathered at First Lutheran Church on a sunny and crisp October 24th, Thursday morning. We were brought together for the first MICAH St. Paul Chapter Affordable Housing Bus Tour. The Chapter, which kicked off in February of 2019, had built a focus on Fair Housing and Youth Homelessness, and quickly grew to include several congregations and organizations that regularly attended our monthly meetings.
This was a special day; we were going to view and review several different facets of the “affordable housing” problem. We began with opening remarks by MICAH Organizer and Policy Coordinator Patti Whitney-Wise, who had led the planning for the tour and welcomed all to be there. Patti works with the St. Paul Chapter, and is our Policy Advocate at the State Capitol.
Junail Anderson spoke of her struggles to find affordable housing. She now serves on MICAH’s Board and many other organizations to help solve this crisis.
She introduced Cheryl Peterson, the Executive Director of Listening House, which operates in the basement of First Lutheran Church.
Listening House, formerly downtown, had moved into the First Lutheran community two years before. The move was fraught – local opposition led to a restricted zoning ruling which led to a lawsuit which led to new rules on the ability of churches to do their missions. Free from these concerns, Listening House practices hospitality for adults during the week, from 9 30 am to 4 pm most days. They have between 40 and 140 guests every day, who come in to get wash, food, assistance getting services, and most importantly, a listening ear. Their guests include people who are homeless and people who are not; neighbors who want to share the welcome of the church.
After Cheryl spoke, we boarded the bus and went down the hill to First Baptist, home of the Project Home Day Shelter. Project Home is the family ‘church basement’ shelter that MICAH had founded 20 years ago as a stopgap – and was now a regular part of the Ramsey County homeless program. Two congregations a month would volunteer space for 40 people, often with other congregations assisting with food and volunteers, and the family would stay at the congregation overnight and then during the day they would visit another shelter. The longtime provider of that shelter had been running on a wing and a prayer (and about half the funding they needed) and were no longer able to continue – and gave folks about a 6 week notice that the shelter would be closing, right at the beginning of the school year. The St. Paul Chapter sprang into action along with others, ringing the Ramsey County Commissioner’s phones off the hooks urging adequate funding for this program. Interfaith Action, formerly the St. Paul Area Council of Churches ran the overnight shelter, and working with the county, were able to transition to running the day shelter as well, at least for a while. We heard from Sarah Leigl, the Executive Director of Project Home, about the families they served and the need for continued support.
Moving through downtown St. Paul, we passed by several properties that had been affordable but were no longer. John Slade, our other East Metro organizer, narrated the sad tale. Bigos Management bought Park Place apartments, and stopped accepting Section 8, a loss of 60 units. The Viking removed all 25 of its tenants for an ‘upgrade’ that resulted in 200% rent increases. Catholic Charities $100 million revamp of the Dorothy Day Center and Higher Ground was full the day it opened. The Xcel Energy Center took $60 million in city funding, provided no affordable housing, and is the playground of a very profitable hockey team.
We were welcomed at the Western U Plaza development by Nieeta Presley, the executive director of the Aurora St. Anthony Neighborhood Development Corporation, the African-American based community development group operating in the historic Rondo neighborhood. The development was built in and around the historic Old Home Dairy building at the corner of University and Western, a station stop on the Green Line. Combining affordable housing, historic preservation, transit-oriented development and culturally specific development, the city block includes both affordable and market rate housing, along with retail space. We heard from Nieeta about the project as well as hearing from several of the residents, who praised the building, the location, and the sense of community created there.
We then drove to Maxfield Elementary School – part of the St. Paul Promise Neighborhood, which was a program that focused on the low-income, racially diverse neighborhoods of Frogtown and Rondo. Anne McInerny, who is the lead of Project Reach, let us know that they had been able to use Promise Neighorhood funding to get rent assistance to 50 families. Project Reach is the St Paul School district’s program to focus on the homeless and precariously housed students in the district. Laura Cole, the Maxfield social worker, came on the bus to talk about some of the 2100 homeless students that have been identified in the St. Paul public school system.
On the way from Maxfield to our next location, we heard from Bill Johnston, an active MICAH member from House of Hope Presbyterian. Bill talked about the lack of housing supply, which has been a problem, while at the same time for-profit projects with no affordable housing get subsidies from the City of St. Paul. This is one of the points on our MICAH St. Paul Chapter Fair Housing Agenda: if we are to fund a project it should help those who need it most, not those who are looking to simply maximize profit. We should require all apartments built to have 20% of their units affordable to people, and that affordability should reach to families of four making $20,000 a year or less.
Our last stop was the Payne Avenue Salvation Army outpost, where Capt. Jared Collins welcomed us. Over 100 people a day are served meals, have access to assistance including clothing, washing, help getting services, and more. Melissa Brannon, a member of the Bus Tour planning team and a program staffer at the post let us know more about the situation of the guests there, and Lorleena, one of the guests spoke about the impact their assistance had – it helped her move off of the streets and into her current apartment
After this we came back to First Lutheran, as MICAH’s Executive Director, Sue Watlov Phillips, spoke about our state and federal work, including the Lead Safe Home bill.
The tour was ambitious and covered a lot of ground, but when we are dealing with the depth of the housing crisis – from youth homelessness to fair housing to affordable homeownership – there is a lot of ground that we need to cover. And we are ambitious too –in St. Paul we aim to have clear and measurable process to fulfilling our mission – that everyone, without exception, will have a safe, decent, accessible and affordable home.