I’m heading downtown tonight to the seasonal Safe Space shelter by Union Depot to support ppl experiencing unsheltered homelessness in our city. This one facility has 64 beds. Tonight/in general right now, ~350 ppl homeless outside in St. Paul. We have deeply urgent work ahead

Throughout the night I’ll try to share pictures as able/appropriate. First task up, prepping 64 beds worth of re-sanitized and freshly laundered bedding. This is the clean pillowcase pile I’m adding to

At Safe Space seasonal/winter shelter in downtown STP there’s a room for women, overflow room for women, room for men and overflow room for men. Each room has basic ventilation, sleeping pads are spaced out as able b/c of COVID. Here’s women’s main room

Women’s section overflow room. The shelter opens 10pm. Right now it’s 10:55pm, a few beds are left in the main and overflow women’s rooms.

Here’s the men’s section main sleeping area at Safe Space shelter downtown STP

Here’s the men’s overflow sleeping area at Safe Space in downtown STP. One shelter worker helping out tonight says she staffs 4 other sites and of about 320 folks known across all of them, roughly 70 are women, the rest/vast majority are men.

(These pictures are from earlier, we did intake when shelter opened at 10pm and now at 11pm most of these rooms are mostly full. Not photographing folks without consent/permission or in general so please hold the humanity close to mind along with what these pictures share).

I helped with intake when Safe Space opened at 10. My job was to check temperatures.

Here’s the door to the shelter. I was standing just inside, staff were just outside and the line formed where I was standing when I took this picture. It’s cold as hell just standing inside the door and outside tonight it’s 32F.

Once folks are checked in from the referral list/temp check/given a mask they head upstairs through this hallway and do a bag check

People can shower and staff help folks who want to with free toiletries & clean towels. Here’s some pictures of the supplies and areas

This therapy dog named Siri just arrived to the shelter. She has a patch that says Please Pet Me and visits the guests staying here. I fed her a biscuit treat thing. Extremely good overall, very amazing

Here’s where bed rolls are stored. In the earlier pictures you saw these on the sleeping pads/cots for when people arrive. While there’s down time, we did more laundry and stuffed more of these bags with sanitized fresh bedding to be ready to go

Great big washing machine and dryer.

It’s just past midnight here now, has been smoothly running all night, quiet. People clearly exhausted from being cold/outside for hours-most went straight to bed. Some took the chance to get a hot shower first. I’ll anonymize & share a couple interactions-talked to most everyone

A gentleman in cowboy hat/handkerchief mask had a small uncooked turkey sealed in a bag-said he got it in a giveaway. Staff asked if he wanted to keep it overnight, he shrugged it off. Reminder of similar reality-many don’t go to shelter bc their food/stuff often gets thrown away

One lady brought a whole box of White Castle sammies & said please let all the girls know I brought this food to share w/everybody. Thru the evening many came in to the small common room where 1-2 at a time can eat & grabbed food, were very grateful. Homeless taking care of e/o

Some more emotional interactions too. A woman who came up to me showing signs of physical withdrawal and told me she’s started doing drugs again but doesn’t want to anymore and is going back to treatment. She had glitter eyeshadow. We talked for a while

Ramsey County Commissioner Trista Matascastillo was working here tonight too. @TristaMatas City of St. Paul is working closely w/Ramsey County to expand shelter capacity thru sites at Bethesda, Luther, W. 7th Street. Roughly another 200 beds when you total those up. & more needed

Inbetween intakes we did tons of laundry. 64+ beds worth of bedding with backups & ongoing sanitation makes multiple industrial size roller hampers of laundry. @TristaMatas is a working mom & I’m a somewhat neurotic millennial in quarantine so yes we crushed all this laundry.

It’s 1AM now and everyone’s long asleep at this point at the Seasonal/Winter Safe Space shelter- because being homeless is exhausting, bc it’s very cold outside and being very cold is exhausting, bc a safe warm bed is what everyone wants & deserves bc homeless people are people

Once it’s quiet at the shelter the low normal staff convos noise level is broken only by the walkie talkies, which have been real-time squawking info to the staff with referrals for others in need coming in from around city - Metro Transit, SPPD, other shelters/outreach workers

In another lull I fed Siri the therapy dog another treat. There’s just 1 security officer here, then Siri came in w/another. She walks around, sniffs people hello, calms down ppl at shelter who are upset/need comfort. We don’t need overpolicing, smart therapeutic dogs get results

This was just 1 shift of a night at a St. Paul shelter. Right now, 100s of ppl are trying to sleep outside or in trains.

We don’t have to have a crisis of homelessness in MN if we end our crisis of misplaced funding priorities & lack of political will to guarantee homes for all.

We need every single level of government bringing millions and millions of dollars to the homelessness crisis — something we are routinely willing to fork out for policing the homeless or criminalizing poverty instead of just ending it

Ramsey County & City of St. Paul have devoted 1000s of hours of combined staff time & millions of dollars local/CARES/more to ending homelessness, and we cannot progress our efforts at the level of need w/o further significant resource from #mnleg & @GovTimWalz administration

One of my final thoughts for now: every single kind of person, every background, was at the shelter tonight. The homelessness crisis looks like America because we have built a country where millions of people are one accident away from being out on the street.

I’m signing off now & leave you w/this clean new pillow pile from the shelter we assembled.

After individually stuffing over 64 of these for people coming in from the cold to have a safe warm place tonight, stuffing my own pillowcase at home is going to hit a little different.