For at least a week straight starting Saturday, the Twin Cities will see daily high temperatures barely above 0.
For those who work to support unhoused residents, it will be an extended challenge, not just in the length of time with lows dipping to double-digits below zero, but it being the first major freeze in the pandemic.
“In the conversations we continue to have with folks there’s a lot of fear, and rightly so, about going indoors with COVID,” Michael Huffman, director of outreach and shelter programs with St. Stephen’s, said. “A lot of the spaces that are going to be available are congregate spaces.”
There are a number of walk-up warming spaces in the county for folks to come and go, and even though spaces have made modifications and improvements to enhance virus safety, “that doesn’t negate the possibility and the likelihood of increased risk in a congregate space,” Huffman said. “And there frankly just isn’t enough hotel space, isolation space to be able to provide that for every person who seeks shelter.”
Huffman said the St. Stephen’s street outreach team is adjusting hours for welfare checks, planning to check on unhoused folks, even at off-the-beaten-path camps, late night and early morning.
The cold snap comes on the heels of the Minneapolis Park Board’s 5 to 3 vote Thursday to stop permitting encampments. The vote ended temporary permits enacted last summer and is instead creating what’s been called an Unsheltered People’s Policy.
Huffman said those kinds of changes that disrupt the encampment community, as well as clearing them, has negative effects.
“We really do our best to advocate that those encampments are able to stay so that folks are able to hold on to the gear that they do have, so they’re able to be located by teams like ours,” Huffman said. “If the encampment is cleared out right before and we don’t know where they’re going to end up and they don’t have the proper gear, which they often accumulate because they stay outside, that’s a serious concern for us.”
If you see someone in distress, call 9-1-1. St. Stephen’s has an Amazon wishlist and is accepting financial donations to assist with overtime and hazard pay. Other mutual aid groups, like the Sanctuary Supply Depot, are collecting tarps, propane cylinders, blankets, thermal underwear and more.
Anyone needing to access shelter could consult the Adult Shelter Connect.