St. Paul mayor defends encampment strategy as emergency calls spike

After the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, shut down a major homeless encampment, another one has grown, leading to a spike in emergency calls. 

Mayor Kaohly Her is defending the city's initial decision and is calling out others, including protesters, for the role she believes they played in unhoused people not accepting services. 

On Aug. 5, St. Paul closed the Pig's Eye encampment off North Fish Hatchery Road. The city's hand was forced, according to officials, by the major health and public safety risk presented by an encampment where medical emergencies, fires, assaults and drug abuse were prevalent. 

The city and Ramsey County spent a combined $2.2 million on expanding emergency shelter access, but just seven people made use of those services, according to Assistant Mayor Cedric Baker's presentation to city councilmembers on Aug. 28. Her believes that the city did everything in its power ahead of the shutdown to get people into safer living conditions. 

"We were told specifically that we could not close an encampment unless we had beds for everybody, so we went out and secured beds," Her said. "The failure wasn't our failure of securing resources; we had the resources." 

The mayor made these remarks at an event at an event hosted by The Theater of Public Policy and moderated by Tane Danger of Danger Boat Productions. Her said that city workers had the resources to put nearly 30 people in permanent housing on the day of the Pig's Eye encampment closure. 

"We had almost 30 people having keys in hand for permanent housing. We worked on clearing their records; we worked on making sure that they could have the resources that they need to be in permanent housing. No one took us up on that, because they were told they could go to another encampment," Her said. 

It's an apparent shot at those who protested the city's actions and helped Pig's Eye residents make the approximate six-mile trek to an encampment at Randolph Avenue and Shepard Road. Her said that the early public notice about the intention to close Pig's Eye led to many people opposing the city's work. 

While Her described Ramsey County as a great partner as the process began, she and Council President Rebecca Noecker, also part of the forum on Tuesday, were critical of county and state government.

"The city is absolutely always going to step up and going to take the ball and move it forward when other levels of government fail to do so because we have no choice," Noecker said. 

The city's choice to shut down the Pig's Eye encampment drew criticism from activists and residents alike as people pushed back on a shelter system that many of them feel is too restrictive. Multiple people told WCCO that they did not feel safe accessing emergency shelters and would rather build a community in the encampments. 

At Randolph, the growing population has led to apparent problems. In the early days, residents there described tension between those who were already there and the newcomers from Pig's Eye. The population doubled to around 150-160 people, according to activists and residents.

Emergency calls spiked in the month of August at the Randolph encampment. St. Paul police shared data showing officers responded to 416 calls from January to the end of August; 219 came after Aug. 5, meaning about 52% of these emergencies happened after Pig's Eye shutdown. 

Sammy Watkins, director of chaplains with the Union Gospel Mission Twin Cities, said that he and his outreach team are working steadily to continue gaining trust. He said that the reasons someone would choose an encampment are highly individualized, and getting people to move elsewhere is a delicate process that takes time. 

"As we stand here talking about this, I believe the city and all of these organizations are trying to figure out and come up with a resolution to this real difficult situation," Watkins said. 

In a presentation to city councilmembers in late August, Baker acknowledged that the Randolph encampment is "unstable." City leaders have not shared a date as to when officials would seek to shut down that encampment, though the city stated earlier in the summer that the intention is to close each major location.