MINNEAPOLIS — School's back, but for Volunteers of America High School students, it's online...again.
This as a homeless encampment has popped up in front of the school.
In a statement, VOA Minnesota and Wisconsin President Julie Manworren said, "We acknowledge that there is not an easy solution to meeting the needs of the people who are encamped on the grounds of the school and nearby neighborhood... At the same time, we cannot accept that this dangerous situation is tolerable for anyone involved – least of all our students and teachers."
The statement continues to say they've reached out to law enforcement, city, county and state officials.
"While we are frustrated by the increasing violence and lawlessness around our school building, we remain hopeful for a shared solution."
And while a solution may not be so singular, finding transitional shelters for people facing homelessness is a part of it.
Avivo Village is such a place.
"It's a transitional shelter in a sense once you move in here you work with a case manager and you identify what outcomes you wanna work towards, you work with that case manager to secure permanent housing out in the city," Justin Labeaux said. Labeaux is the street outreach manager at Avivo Village.
Ever since their phased opening in March, Avivo has sent outreach managers like Labeaux to connect with unsheltered folks.
"It's been a challenge with the pandemic that throws some wrinkles into things, it is a growing issue," Labeaux said. "We opened Avivo Village with 100 units here and it's at capacity, it hasn't seem to make too much of a dent in the houselessness issue in Minneapolis."
And while some folks from the very specific area outside of the VOA school are currently residing at Avivo, Labeaux also says it's not just a simple matter of running out of room.
There's also having to navigate whether certain individuals want to be rerouted to shelters.
"Do they feel safe there, and do they have past experiences that makes them not want to go back? Or if they lost some of their belongings at different shelters," Labeaux said. "There's no bad shelters, but there's just different shelters that are right for different people."
And in terms of a bigger picture, Hennepin County says they're using money from the American Rescue Plan to beef up what they can do to address this evidently growing need.
"The board just funded a two-year encampment response as encampments have more prevalent, a really coordinated response system hasn't totally been growing with that in parallel," Hennepin County Human Services Area manager of the Office to End Homelessness Danielle Werder said. "We need to go back to the basics and create a really great infrastructure, a coordination, service focused so people can get the services they need to move from the streets to housing or from shelter to housing."
We reached out to Mayor Jacob Frey's office about the encampment. In a statement, his office said:
“Mayor Frey and City staff are working closely with Hennepin County and Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors to find stable, long-term housing options for the people living at the encampment at Franklin and Cedar, where the situation is unsafe for those within the encampment and throughout the surrounding area.”