MINNEAPOLIS — The City of Minneapolis will close Camp Nenookaasi in early January due to "ongoing public safety and health concerns," according to officials.
In a press release, the city said it intends to close the encampment Thursday, Jan. 4 with plans of adding 90 beds to the shelter system, starting Jan. 1. The city also intends to continue working with city street teams to help people find alternative housing.
"All of our community members deserve safe and dignified housing," the press release reads. "Encampments, especially in the winter, do not provide that."
The City of Minneapolis, Hennepin County and various nonprofits have been working for months to find more permanent housing for those in the camp. As of Friday, the city says they've helped connect 104 people with alternative housing or shelter options, with an additional 14 people in the process of moving.
The closing date was postponed twice after city council members and encampment organizers expressed concerns with the amount of time — and options — available for the people to find new housing.
"We need our people to recover. And we need no eviction. And we need to keep Camp Nenookaasi," the camp's lead organizer Nicole Mason told reporters earlier this month.
The city, however, maintained that the encampment is a public safety concern, most recently referencing a deadly shooting earlier this month. The Metropolitan Urban Indian Directors (MUID) as well as the Indian Health Board of Minneapolis, Inc., also wrote letters earlier this year, both of whom asked that the city close the Nenookaasi encampment.
The camp is located next door to the Indigenous People's Task Force, which provides a variety of health and educational services to Native American families, including one of the longest running Indigenous youth theaters.
The nonprofit plans to build an art and wellness center on the very land currently occupied by the camp. The sale is scheduled to be finalized in February.
"It will be called Mikwanedun Audisookon which means to remember our teachings in Ojibwe. The thread that runs through everything we do is culture," Indigenous Task Force executive director Sharon Day told KARE.
Her organization has already raised nearly $12 million to pay for the new center, which was a condition the city set before they would sell the land to the group for $1.
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