Tag Archives: encampment

Florida criminalized homelessness. Then came hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Originally published in Vox on October 7, 2024.
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In the wake of Hurricane Helene, a devastating Category 4 storm that has ravaged the Southeast, leaders rushed to restore homes, infrastructure, and power for millions of people. And now, another life-threatening storm, Hurricane Milton, a Category 5, approaches the Florida coast. Amid the overwhelming destruction and the mounting chaos expected from these back-to-back storms, and a death toll of at least 227 people across six states, one group risks being overlooked in the scramble: the homeless population, those already vulnerable before the storm.

Disaster relief for people who were homeless prior to a hurricane has always been lacking, as FEMA, the main federal agency tasked with providing aid, has a policy that explicitly excludes those unhoused people from most forms of help, including housing and direct assistance. In recent years, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has stepped up to try to plug some of those gaps in social safety, but a new bill moving through Congress threatens these efforts.

These dynamics have grown more pressing as major hurricanes increase in frequency and the number of unsheltered Americans continues to grow. In June the US Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, greenlighting local governments’ legal authority to clear out homeless tent encampments even if a city lacks any available housing or shelter for the unhoused person to stay in.

Since then, more jurisdictions have passed laws criminalizing homelessness, part of a broader effort to crack down on those sleeping outside. Just this month a new law in Florida — that bans sleeping on public property anywhere in the state — took effect. While the law includes exceptions during emergencies like major storms, those protections end when the hurricane order is no longer in place.

In practical terms, this means that when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis or a county official lifts Florida’s emergency hurricane order, Floridians who were homeless before Helene and Milton — roughly 31,000 people — could face new criminal penalties. Local homeless advocates say there are countless questions and rumors circulating about how the new law will be interpreted and enforced in the wake of climate disasters.

Most people experiencing homelessness were aware the new anti-camping law was set to take effect, according to Martha Are, the executive director at the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. “Some people are already trying to relocate their encampments to harder-to-find areas,” she told me in mid-September, about a week before Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region.

Leaders like Are have little idea yet what to expect, and she hears unofficially that most jurisdictions are in wait-and-see mode, watching to see which city gets sued first and what the judge who reviews that lawsuit decides. (Under the new Florida law, any citizen or business can sue beginning in January if they feel the anti-camping ban is not being properly enforced.)

“It’s going to be a challenge for how leaders actually enforce these [anti-camping] laws, like if I’ve lost my house from a hurricane and I’ve lived in that town for a decade, will I be found in violation of the law and are they going to arrest me?” asked Noah Patton, the manager of disaster recovery at the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “These laws create significant complications, will really make aid more difficult to sort out, and what I have been saying is it makes a community less resilient to disasters.”

Moving homeless people to safety when a hurricane hits is difficult — and the anti-camping laws make that harder

It’s always a stressful scramble to try and reach homeless people when a hurricane is coming. “A lot of people have phones but they don’t have data, they aren’t getting texts,” said Kelly Young, the CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston and Harris County.

Typically, homeless outreach workers will try and go out to spread the word, and existing homeless shelters will work to make extra room, sometimes allowing people to sleep in places like the kitchen and hallways. Unhoused individuals can usually seek refuge in convention centers and public schools, or at newly-erected Red Cross emergency shelters. Some governments and nonprofits arrange transport for unhoused people to get indoors, while others leave it on the individual to figure out their own travel.

“We had up to 13,000 people at George R. Brown Convention Center after [Hurricane] Harvey and there was no distinguishing between the homeless versus people who had just lost their homes and needed a place to be,” said Larry Satterwhite, who leads the Houston Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security.

Not everyone experiencing homelessness gets the information they need, and not everyone living outside feels comfortable going to a shelter, said Eric Camarillo, the executive director of SALT Outreach, which works with unsheltered homeless people in Orlando and central Florida. Some people fear losing their personal belongings, while others may have had traumatic prior experiences at shelters.

“The face of homelessness is not the same as it was 50 years ago,” Camarillo added. “These are single moms who can’t afford day care, these are seniors in their 70s and 80s on fixed incomes who can’t afford their rent increases, and youth and young adults.”

The new anti-camping laws are intensifying the already tumultuous disaster response situation, as many homeless people living outside now try to become less visible to avoid jail time. The punitive laws are also expected to increase distrust between local government and homeless individuals, making it even more difficult for people to accept help if they are found.

“These laws exist, in my opinion, to push people away and out of sight which makes our job tougher,” said Eric Samuels, the president of the Texas Homeless Network. (Texas passed its statewide camping ban in 2021.) “And if people are badly hurt and they’re miles from public view because they don’t want to get a ticket, then emergency crews might not be able to get out to help.”

Disaster aid for those already experiencing homelessness faces an uncertain future

FEMA has the primary responsibility of providing disaster relief and works with states and local communities to manage emergency shelters, which are mostly run by the Red Cross. FEMA prohibits housing assistance from going to those who were already homeless — “because the need for housing was not caused by the disaster,” as their policy states — though homeless individuals may qualify for temporary transportation, funeral, child care, and medical aid.

FEMA policy does permit those who lived, pre-disaster, in “non-traditional forms of housing” like “tents, certain types of huts, and lean-to structures” to apply for a few months of rental assistance. But to receive this FEMA money, applicants must obtain verification of their pre-storm situation from “a credible or official source” which, according to Patton, makes accessing the aid virtually impossible.

“People do not apply,” he said. “It’s an exceptionally burdensome and administratively difficult process.”

Recently, in light of this, and after years of advocacy by housing organizations, HUD stepped up to establish the Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) program, using unspent funds from another emergency grant program. RUSH aims to help those who were homeless prior to a storm or other climate disaster, and the first grants were deployed in the wake of Hurricane Ian in 2022.

“We were very pleased to have the ability to launch the program because we see that people who are doubled up or experiencing homelessness during the disaster often don’t access FEMA funds or receive support from FEMA for long,” said Marion McFadden, HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for community planning and development. “By providing funds specifically for these situations, we’re filling in gaps.”

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The other way HUD comes in is through its Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program (CDBG-DR), which is a highly flexible, long-term disaster aid program that can be used to provide months of rental assistance and build new affordable housing well after FEMA is gone. However the program is not permanently authorized — meaning it relies on periodic appropriations from Congress, which are often delayed and insufficient. The Biden administration has called for Congress to permanently authorize CDBG-DR, and a bipartisan bill in Congress has called for the same.

Yet a separate bill currently moving through Congress seeks to move much of this longer-term disaster recovery work back over to FEMA, something low-income housing advocates believe will threaten those who are homeless before a hurricane.

“We are concerned that the bill, as written, may lead to the misuse of scarce federal recovery funds and prevent critically needed long-term recovery assistance from reaching low-income disaster survivors,” more than 35 national housing advocacy groups wrote in a congressional letter in late September.

McFadden, of HUD, said there’s “a real role” for her agency to play in supporting communities after disasters. “We are making billions of dollars in grants every year and we understand the unique needs of low-income people and of low-income housing,” she told Vox.

FEMA was noncommittal when I inquired about the agency’s plans for unhoused individuals during a disaster if Congress granted them new authority, or whether they’d reconsider their stance on aiding the pre-disaster homeless.

“If additional or new authority is passed by Congress and signed into law, FEMA would then develop guidance necessary to implement the new authority,” an agency spokesperson said. “FEMA would focus on supporting communities’ recovery in addressing needs resulting from a disaster and adhering to the intent of Congress in approving any new authority.”

As climate change escalates, communities across the US face increasing threats not only from hurricanes but also from heat waves, floods, and wildfires. Advocates have been petitioning FEMA over the last year to expand its criteria for disaster aid to include heat and smoke, emphasizing the need for more adaptable responses to these challenges. The nation’s severe shortage of affordable housing worsens the struggles of both the newly displaced and the long-unsheltered, and addressing these intertwined crises of climate resilience and housing stability has never been more urgent.

Update, October 7, 5:40 pm ET: This story was originally published on October 3 and has been updated with the current death toll of Hurricane Helene and new information as Hurricane Milton approaches the Florida coast.

Cities are asking the Supreme Court for more power to clear homeless encampments

Originally published at Vox on October 10, 2023.
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In 2018, a federal court issued a consequential decision about homelessness in America: People without housing can’t be punished for sleeping or camping outside on public property if there are no adequate shelter alternatives available.

The Ninth Circuit’s decision, Martin v. Boise, said that punishing homeless people with no other place to go would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Ever since, cities and states have struggled to comply with it, crafting convoluted policies like a new camping ban in Portland, Oregon that prohibits homeless camping during the hours of 8 am to 8 pm.

As municipal backlash to Martin grew, so has the nation’s homelessness crisis, especially in the nine Western states under the Ninth Circuit’s jurisdiction, where some 42 percent of the country’s homeless population now lives.

The Supreme Court declined to hear Martin in 2019. But they now could reconsider the decision. A petition was filed in late August concerning a similar case in Grants Pass, Oregon, a city of 38,000 people. In 2022, the Ninth Circuit decided it would be unconstitutional for Grants Pass to fine homeless people sleeping on public property if there was nowhere else for them to go. The city is challenging that decision.

The Supreme Court hasn’t indicated whether it will hear this significant case, a step it will likely take at the end of this year or early next. Supporters of the Martin decision say there’s no reason the high court should take up the request, as there’s no clear disagreement among circuit courts to resolve. In the half-decade since Martin came down, there have been dozens of cases affirming it, including in the Fourth Circuit in Virginia, and federal lower courts in Ohio, Missouri, Florida, Texas, New York, and Hawaii.

But a bipartisan coalition of cities and states is pressuring the Supreme Court to intervene. In the last month, dozens of local governments have filed briefs pleading with the court to reconsider Martin, including liberal cities like Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Seattle.

Some in the court system have also signaled they’d like to see the case overruled. This summer, when the full Ninth Circuit declined to review the Grants Pass v. Johnson decision issued by a three-judge panel in 2022, 16 judges dissented, arguing both cases were incorrectly decided. “Martin handcuffed local jurisdictions as they tried to respond to the homelessness crisis; Grants Pass now places them in a straitjacket,” one dissent read. A state judge in Arizona also recently urged the Supreme Court to take up the matter, arguing Martin and Grants Pass both “tie the hands of cities that seek in good faith to address the growing homeless encampment epidemic.”

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom also filed a brief in August urging the Supreme Court to reconsider the cases. While Newsom insisted he is not objecting to the “narrow” Martin decision that people experiencing homelessness should not be criminalized for sleeping outside when they have nowhere else to go, the governor argued cities need more clarity on implementation, and that lower courts have interpreted Martin too broadly.

Despite Newsom saying that he’s not seeking to overturn Martin wholesale, homeless advocates say this is naive at best, since that’s what the lawyers representing Grant Pass are asking to do.

“Newsom and the other briefs that aren’t asking for a full overturn of Martin — just clarity around some of these restrictions — are fooling themselves, perhaps willfully so, and are being willfully ignorant of the consequences of their involvement,” Eric Tars, the legal director for the National Homelessness Law Center, told Vox. “The petitioners in this case are asking for a full overturn, that’s the question they have presented to the Court and that’s what they’ll be arguing for.”

Theane Evangelis, a Gibson Dunn attorney and lead counsel for the city of Grants Pass, told Vox they do believe Martin and Grants Pass are “legally wrong” and “are hopeful the Supreme Court will grant review and undo these harmful decisions.”

The Grants Pass v. Johnson case is about whether it violates the Eighth Amendment to fine or arrest unhoused people

Five years ago, about six weeks after the Martin decision was decided, three homeless individuals filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Grants Pass, Oregon, arguing that the city’s laws and customs — like its anti-camping ordinance — punished them for their status of being involuntarily homeless.

The lead plaintiff was Debra Blake, who had been experiencing homelessness for about a decade and was continually racking up hundreds of dollars in fines and fees for sleeping outside and allegedly trespassing. By 2020, Blake owed over $5,000 in penalties for living outside. In their lawsuit, attorneys representing the plaintiffs noted the dearth of affordable housing and homeless shelters in the city, and blasted Grants Pass’s arguments that unhoused people could simply leave and go elsewhere. Blake died a year later at 62, and so the case was renamed for another homeless plaintiff, Gloria Johnson.

In 2022, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of the homeless plaintiffs.

Opponents of the decision argued Grants Pass marked a radical expansion of Martin, since the Oregon city had issued civil penalties to unhoused people, not criminal ones. Some also alleged that Grants Pass created even further confusion for local governments, since the Ninth Circuit held that a Christian homeless shelter that had strict rules like mandatory church attendance could not be counted as available shelter in Grants Pass due to potential violations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Many cities have only religious shelters or rely heavily on them.

Supporters of the Grants Pass ruling say it neither expanded Martin nor created confusion. “I see it as a clarification of Martin,” said Tars, of the National Homelessness Law Center, saying that Grants Pass clarifies “that you have to look at the collective impact of all these different ordinances — including anti-sleeping bans or rules barring being in parks after dark — that can make it illegal to exist basically anywhere in public even if they have no other place to do so.”

Ed Johnson, the director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center and the lead attorney representing the homeless plaintiffs in Grant Pass, told Vox that the decision is being greatly mischaracterized by opponents. “The opinion is exceedingly narrow and puts no limits whatsoever on a city’s ability to prevent permanent or even established encampments,” he said.

So is it a violation of the Eighth Amendment to issue tickets and fines against people experiencing homelessness?

Lawyers representing Grant Pass say no, emphasizing that enforcing local regulations should not be considered cruel and unusual punishments.

“I think the entire idea that it could constitute cruel and unusual punishment to arrest someone for sleeping on the street is incorrect,” added Timothy Sandefur, the vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, a conservative legal advocacy group that filed a brief urging the Supreme Court to take the case. Sandefur told Vox that “it’s true” that arresting someone for a status like being homeless is wrong, but he argued it would be at most a violation of due process, not of the Eighth Amendment.

Homeless advocates in support of Martin and Grants Pass say ticketing, fining, and arresting unhoused people if they have nowhere else to go is indeed a violation of the Eighth Amendment. In a brief filed to the Ninth Circuit in support of the unhoused plaintiffs, lawyers with the Fines and Fees Justice Center argued that civil penalties frequently trap unhoused people in cycles of poverty and homelessness, ensnaring them in debt that prevents them from securing housing at all.

And given the insufficient number of shelter beds, the practical outcome of rules barring rest under a blanket on any publicly owned property or rest in a car overnight in a public park parking lot “effectively function[s] as a city-wide prohibition of homelessness” that “punish[es] their very existence.”

Overturning Martin and Grants Pass could have implications for forced treatment

As public frustration with tent encampments has grown, a movement urging a “get tough” approach has emerged, arguing that the costs of allowing tent cities to proliferate are too steep and that waiting for cities to build enough new housing before acting is unacceptable. Some argue that public officials have grown complacent with the homelessness crisis, and rely on Martin as an excuse to maintain the status quo.

In efforts to both crack down on encampments but comply with the Ninth Circuit decisions, some cities and states have pushed more punitive legislation, like bills to make camping a felony, or criminalize sleeping outdoors on public property except within designated areas. The question of whether these laws are constitutional under Martin remains an open question. Leaders recognize they probably can’t ban camping everywhere given the court rulings, but they’ve been looking to see if they can ban it in most places instead. If Martin was overturned by the Supreme Court, however, officials would likely feel much more empowered to resume city-wide anti-camping bans and prosecute those who violate them.

Tars, of the National Homelessness Law Center, said the major difference between now and five years ago is the emergence of a “concrete, well-funded movement” to criminalize homelessness, rather than a patchwork of local regulations decided by individual cities and towns. “Today there are groups actively working together, producing media, going on Fox News, to proactively push criminalization,” he told Vox. “That didn’t exist prior to Martin v. Boise.”

In a Supreme Court brief filed by the California State Sheriffs’ Association and the California Police Chiefs Association, the groups wrote “they, by no means, argue for the criminalization of the homeless” and are committed to “improving the outcomes” for unhoused people. Still, they said the “disastrous” decisions “impermissibly intrude” on their policing duties, and make it “all but impossible” to curb dangers associated with encampments.

If Martin and Grants Pass are overturned, it will not only have implications for clearing tents, but likely also for sending homeless people to substance use or psychiatric treatment programs.

In several of the briefs submitted by local governments, cities reported examples of homeless people “refusing help,” and as Vox has previously reported, the question of what to do with those who turn down offers of shelter has gotten entangled with broader, ongoing debates about involuntary treatment. As pressure to clear encampments mounts, many homeless advocates fear that new laws mandating treatment will be indiscriminately applied to those sleeping outside, and even more so if Martin and Grants Pass no longer provide a check on local governments’ behavior.

Some of the briefs filed to the Supreme Court in support of reconsidering Martin have already raised this issue. “Allowing people to live on the streets or in tents in a park is not a compassionate response to the problem,” wrote Sandefur in the Goldwater Institute’s amicus filing. “A compassionate response would consist of providing people with the care they need — including taking them into custody against their will if they are incapable of managing themselves.”

Asked about the connection between encampments and involuntary care, Sandefur told Vox these cases show that cities “are going to have to find a better solution than what they’ve been doing, which is largely ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.”

How The Largest Known Homeless Encampment in Minneapolis History Came To Be

Originally published in The Appeal on July 15, 2020.
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On June 7, less than a mile away from where a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, a veto-proof majority of the City Council gathered at Powderhorn Park and pledged to dismantle the police department and rethink public safety. A few days later, more than 200 homeless individuals were evicted from a hotel they had been using as an ad-hoc shelter, and about a dozen made their way to the closest park: Powderhorn. In the month since, many more have followed. City officials estimate more than 550 tents have been set up there, in what is the largest known homeless encampment in Minneapolis history.

Residents in the Powderhorn neighborhood initially jumped into action—determined to support their new, vulnerable neighbors, many of whom were Black and indigenous. But as the encampment grew, some housed residents’ became more exasperated, citing concerns about crime and safety. Their frustrations have gotten some national coverage. The conditions that led the encampment to form, however, and the government’s response or lack thereof, have gotten far less attention.

The homelessness crisis in Minneapolis, worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic, is not new. In 2018, a Minnesota-based research group found over 4,000 people experienced homelessness in Hennepin County, an 11 percent increase from 2015. The researchers cited a lack of affordable units as the main driver, and found more than half of those experiencing homelessness were languishing on waiting lists for subsidized housing.

Back in the summer of 2018, an encampment cropped up alongside a Minneapolis highway sound wall, with roughly 300 people living there by the fall. “One thing that was very frustrating about the 2018 encampment was everyone talked about this great emergency, but the emergency had been going on for years,” said John Tribbett, a street outreach manager at St. Stephen’s Human Services, a Minneapolis  homeless services group. “It was just a congregation of it that forced the public to actually see it.”

Nonprofit groups and city officials supported the primarily Native residents, who are disproportionately represented among Minnesota’s homeless. But by December those living in the encampment were moved into a so-called navigation center, a first-of-its-kind experiment in the state. The navigation center had on-site social services, lower barriers to entry than many homeless shelters, and no curfew. Within six months nearly half of its homeless population had moved into permanent housing or treatment programs, though others were kicked out, incarcerated, or back on the streets. The center shut down in June 2019.

“After it closed, what we really saw was the atomization of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness throughout the summer of 2019 and frankly up until COVID,” said Tribbett, emphasizing that displacement was routine, and homeless people were regularly “on the move all the time.”

As unsheltered people were dispersed across Minneapolis, the crisis of homelessness became easier for the city’s housed residents to ignore. The Powderhorn encampment has forced the public’s attention once again.

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After the tents went up at Powderhorn, the community mobilized to support their unhoused neighbors. Volunteers began organizing funds and coordinating daily meal deliveries, setting up laundry shifts, and donating blankets, water, and toiletries. They also began organizing among themselves to put pressure on elected officials for help.

While the Minneapolis Park Police told those living in the encampment they would have to evacuate, dozens of housed residents protested, and pointed to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and an executive order issued by Governor Tim Walz urging against homeless encampment sweeps during the pandemic. The Minneapolis Park Board relented and said the encampment could stay, and five days later, on June 17, the board approved a resolution to allow homeless people to seek “refuge space” in Minneapolis parks. By this time nearly 200 tents had been set up at Powderhorn.

As time went on, some residents felt abandoned by the government and frustrated that the bulk of care duties were falling on untrained volunteers. Encampment safety concerns grew too, with at least three incidents of sexual assault taking place between June 26 and July 5, one person threatened with a knife, and several overdoses.

“Things are very tense,” said Patrick Berry, a 41-year-old homeless individual who moved to Powderhorn in late June. “When your life is in the gutter, little things can set you off. People definitely freak out at the encampment over little things.”

“As white homeowners, I think we just assumed that the government was operating at a level of competence that it’s clearly not,” said Lily Lamb, a lifelong Powderhorn resident who has been volunteering. “I’ve called my elected officials from all levels of government and their response overwhelmingly has been, ‘What do you think we should do, what are your suggestions?’”

Alex Richardson, another Powderhorn resident who has been volunteering, said although he understands some of his neighbors are anxious about security concerns, he has tried to help them recognize that these are not new problems. “It’s just that we’re seeing it now, now it’s in our front yards,” he said. “Some people have been fearmongering, or there’s a lot of shock and disbelief since they’re used to not having to bear witness.”

On July 4, residents brought tents and camped outside the governor’s mansion in St. Paul, demanding a more organized state-led response to the homelessness crisis. “Walz just gave $6 million in relief aid to the Minnesota Zoo,” said Sheila Delaney, a Powderhorn volunteer. “I love animals, but Jesus Christ.”

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Government officials have defended their crisis response, while noting that the pandemic has put unprecedented strain on their systems. “The most critical issue is that all of our staff and services have been stretched beyond anything we’ve ever known,” said David Hewitt, the director of the Office to End Homelessness for Hennepin County, which includes Minneapolis.

Hewitt pointed out some things the government has done at the county level, including expanding shelter space, redeploying county staff to homeless services, and working to distribute $15 million in emergency rental assistance to prevent new homelessness. Between January and May, Hewitt added, the county moved more than 700 people from homelessness into permanent housing.

But he acknowledged their efforts “still fall woefully short of meeting the unprecedented need” and said at Powderhorn, they’ve been working to provide medical services and connect residents with housing options. “The daily increases in the number of people at Powderhorn Park are also not accompanied by any commensurate reductions in the numbers of people in other encampments or in shelter in Hennepin or Ramsey County,” Hewitt said.

Marion Greene, a Hennepin County commissioner, told The Appeal that the county has also been significantly scaling up funding for homelessness. “Normally we budget about $20 million per year, and now we’re spending an additional $2.5-to-3 million per month just on shelters,” she said. “I feel like there’s been really strong partnerships between the city, county, and state, and we’ve all been clear that permanent shelter is the goal.” The Minneapolis Park Board, for its part, said it has been providing portable toilets, trash cans, handwashing stations, and other onsite cleaning services. Today encampments are spread across 38 city parks, though Powderhorn remains the largest.

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The current escalation of the homelessness crisis in Minneapolis is overlapping not just with the pandemic but also with intense protests around policing and racism.

Despite making up roughly 14 percent of Hennepin County’s population, Black people represent 65 percent of those living in its homeless shelters, and 49 percent of homeless adults living in the county overall.

While a dearth of affordable housing is certainly contributing to the crisis, the lack of wealth in Black and Native communities—the result of being shut out for centuries from wealth accumulation opportunities—is another main driver. Minneapolis has one of the largest racial income gaps in the country, and Black homeownership in the city stands at one-third the rate of white families. Some federal funds flow to tribal governments, but the majority gets spent on reservation life, despite the fact that most Natives now live in cities.

One resulting consequence is that in times of need, when Black and Native individuals turn to their family and friends for help, many of their social networks struggle to absorb the added financial pressure in ways white communities more easily can. Researchers found that people of color “are not unwilling to double up, take people in, or live in another person’s home—but they do not have the capacity to accommodate the additional consumption of resources” like food and household goods. “That, in turn, strains relationships.” Less wealth means less ability to weather unexpected financial emergencies.

The criminal legal system and decades of racist policing are also notorious drivers of homelessness. Formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 more times likely to be homeless than the general public, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness reports roughly 48,000 people who enter shelters every year come directly from jails and prisons. Having a criminal record can then be a serious impediment to finding housing, which can then begin vicious cycles right back into prison. One study found that people returning from prison who lacked stable housing were more than twice as likely to end up back in prison than those with stable homes.

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Looking ahead, even those most supportive of letting homeless people take sanctuary in public parks recognize an alternative solution must be developed, with the freezing Minneapolis winter just months away. Policymakers are also worrying about thousands of new people becoming homeless if lawmakers start lifting eviction moratoriums and unemployment rates stay high. “The economic impacts of COVID-19 are further threatening to exacerbate these challenges,” said Hewitt, the homelessness office director.

Earlier this month, Minneapolis Park Board members considered a resolution that would have limited homeless encampments to 10 parks, at a maximum of 10 tents per park, with all encampments having to be cleared by Sept. 1. After protests, the park board voted 5-4 to table the resolution.

“It felt pretty par for the course, where they wanted to do something that seemed like they were taking action, but it was really more for their housed constituents to get the homeless out of sight,” said Richardson, one of the Powderhorn volunteers.

“It was just another set of reactive strategies, similar to the governor saying you can’t clear the encampments but providing no further guidance on what you can do,” said Tribbett, the street outreach manager.

Jono Cowgill, the park board president, told the Star Tribune he brought the resolution forward to help set deadlines, which he hoped would push the state to act more quickly. Cowgill did not respond to a request for comment.

Some advocates are pushing the city to create a new navigation center, similar to the one that shut down last year. One possible location is in a South Minneapolis Kmart building the city recently purchased, though even that would not be a long-term solution.

“A lot of people called the navigation center a success but for many Native people it was just a revolving door to the streets,” said Autumn Dillie, an outreach worker with American Indian Community Development Corporation. Dillie said her group has been pressing the county to build a culturally specific shelter for Native people. Greene, the county commissioner, said the government is also exploring the purchase of hotels as a way to provide shelter.

Lamb, the lifelong Powderhorn resident, says the last few weeks have been exhausting, and she worries about people becoming desensitized to the crisis. “The ability of humans to adapt to circumstances is extremely powerful and is working against our favor,” she said.

Delaney, one of the Powderhorn volunteers, agreed. “I think we’ve become accustomed to seeing tents everywhere, but we should all be revolted,” she said. “Especially in an incredibly wealthy state.”

Berry, who is still camping at Powderhorn, wants help, but not too much of it. “All I really need is a safe place to live where I can close my door at night,” he said. “And where no one will harass me.”