Mark Finley set up his tent just three days ago in St. Paul’s Lower Landing Park, overlooking the fast-moving waters of the Mississippi River. Finley, 59, recently of Phoenix, Ariz. and Santa Monica, Calif., said he was visiting his brother in a treatment program and had no intention of sticking around, but he acknowledged he didn’t have the Greyhound fare to return west.

As he enjoyed a donated lunch dropped off by volunteers on Friday, a man and woman stuck their heads out from a second tent erected not far from his own. Just down Shepard Road, tenants of two additional tents near Sibley Street organized their camp.

With the numbers of outdoor homeless encampments once again on the rise, Deputy St. Paul Police Chief Jeremy Ellison, who will soon serve as interim police chief, joined St. Paul Fire Chief Butch Inks at the state Capitol this week, but not to plead for more funding for police cars or fire trucks.

Instead, their ask was for up to $14 million from the projected state budget surplus to house the homeless.

“Bottom line, our personnel are begging for help with the unsheltered,” said St. Paul Fire Deputy Chief of Operations Steven Sampson, in an interview. “The only skill-set our units really have is picking these individuals up and leaving them at the hospital, and that’s not the only help these individuals need.”

“If the resources aren’t there, it’s somewhat of a futile effort,” he added. “Our run numbers are at astronomical levels. We’ve doubled in approximately 10 years, and unsheltered residents are approximately 11 percent of our call volume.”

The police and fire officials were joined by St. Paul Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher, as well as letters of support and concern from the president of the St. Paul Downtown Alliance — a business advocacy coalition — and the outgoing president of the Greater St. Paul Building Owners and Managers Association, as well as Ramsey County officials.

St. Paul’s latest census of unsheltered residents found 63 people sleeping in tents at 38 active camp sites, including 47 men and 18 women. That’s the largest number of tent communities in nearly two years, an alarming uptick that raises the specter of the early days of the pandemic, when green spaces like downtown Kellogg Mall Park were overwhelmed by homeless residents.

In 2020, those encampments drew frequent emergency calls for police and fire services, and led to more than one serious injury and even a death when propane tanks exploded.

“We can’t shut down encampments, we can’t relocate folks, unless there’s a place to put them,” said Jesse Mollner, senior commander for the St. Paul Police Department’s Central District.

Finding housing solutions “is in the interest of not only all the city agencies involved with outreach, but it’s in the interest of the police department,” Mollner said. “Otherwise we’re just kind of spinning our wheels. These folks need a long-term solution, not just an overnight bed.”

The 54 tents recently tallied by outreach workers in St. Paul are still a far cry from where things stood two years ago, but things may get worse.

By December 2020, the first pandemic winter, some 380 people were living outdoors in the capital city. With Ramsey County’s pandemic-era emergency shelter programs expiring as federal relief grants run dry, the St. Paul mayor’s office has teamed with downtown business advocates and public safety officials to call upon the Legislature to keep those programs afloat in order to avoid a repeat of the winter of 2020-2021.

“Many of the office buildings had challenges with homeless people entering their buildings and causing damage,” recalled Joe Spartz, the president of Greater St. Paul BOMA, in a May 3 letter to state Sen. Jim Abeler, chair of the Senate Human Services Reform Finance and Policy Committee, and state Rep. Tina Liebling, chair of the House Health Finance and Policy Committee.

Spartz described how downtown Treasure Island Center on Wabasha Street, which provides office space for state employees and houses the Minnesota Wild’s practice facility, “was extremely hard hit by individuals using stairwells and hallways as restroom facilities. We can’t allow this unhealthy situation to repeat itself in 2022.”

Now, with office workers gradually returning to in-person work, it’s “a critical time for our downtown and its thousands of businesses,” said Joe Spencer, president of the Downtown Alliance, in a May 16 letter to Abeler and Liebling.

“It is the worst possible timing for our city to experience a surge in homelessness and encampments,” Spencer wrote. “We can’t afford a return to the conditions of 2020 without devastating downtown and the economic engine it provides to the state and region. Ramsey County has a model that has proven successful, but it needs assistance from the state to continue that success.”

The city and county proposal — up to $14 million-per-year for five years — spans four different types of housing services, much of it coordinated through Ramsey County’s “Heading Home Ramsey” partnership with social service nonprofits. The funds would boost single occupancy housing for single adults, family housing, day services for the homeless and a “Familiar Faces” intervention program for frequent fliers before the criminal justice system.

Otherwise, to keep the county’s temporary shelters afloat, the city may have to leech shelter funding from its affordable housing programs, effectively undermining its own longer-term solutions to homelessness in order to salve an immediate crisis.

“If we make the investment in caring for and producing resources for vulnerable people who are struggling, the impact is we have less encampments, we have fewer challenges for our businesses and for our judicial system, and we’re not cycling through crisis after crisis,” said Tincher, in an interview Thursday.

So far, city and county efforts have won some backing in the DFL-controlled House through a bill sponsored by state Rep. Rena Moran, DFL-St. Paul, though compromise language has whittled the proposed funding down to $8 million. They’re still working on the Senate, despite some bipartisan backing. Republican Senator Dave Senjem is a Senate sponsor.

County officials have called homelessness a regional problem unfairly shouldered by the two core cities. They noted that surveys of the 1,800 homeless residents housed through Ramsey County’s emergency shelter programs as of Jan. 29 showed a majority claimed their last permanent residence was outside of Ramsey County.

In fact, recent St. Paul and Ramsey county residents made up no more than 43 percent of the total.

The 1812-era encampment and demonstrations will take place at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park Visitor Center on N. Dixie Hwy.

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