For two years or more, a sizable tent community laid claim to the field south of the East Seventh Street entrance to the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary in St. Paul. Half or more of the residents of the sprawling encampment are Hmong men, but the individuals warming themselves by makeshift campfires on Tuesday morning came from all walks of life, each drawn together by homelessness.
Soon, they’ll share something else — eviction.
City officials tagged dozens of tents in the area below East Seventh Street and Payne Avenue on Tuesday morning with notices to vacate, giving residents of what’s believed to be the city’s second-largest homeless encampment until Jan. 16 to find somewhere else to stay. The notices indicate the camp is “a danger to health and safety” and encourage residents to coordinate with outreach workers from People Inc. and Radias Health, or to seek services from the Union Gospel Mission, Catholic Charities-Higher Ground, Ramsey County Housing Assistance and the Outside-In homeless outreach collaborative.
“They’re already bulldozing some of the places over there,” said a woman who identified herself only as Kaylee H., 32, gesturing toward vacant tents at the edge of the encampment, where a small skid-steer loader rolled back and forth, hoisting refuse into a dumpster.
Kaylee, who has lived in the camp for a year, said most residents have no immediate sense of where they’ll land once they’re forced to move.
“We have no idea,” she said. “We don’t have a clue.”
Living in the encampment
Most camp residents on Tuesday morning declined to share their full names or only provided aliases. A Hmong man who identified himself as Tony said this was his second winter living in the camp, and he’s seen the city during that time relocate individuals who were living in small, scattered site encampments across St. Paul, effectively consolidating them in fewer locations.
“The city kind of started pushing everyone together,” he said. “If you were in one or two tents, they’d push you down here or over to the (Union Gospel) Mission. There’s not that many isolated campers any more. When you collect everybody together, it adds up.”
Tony, 36, said it was unclear what most people’s next steps would be.
“There’s a few options that we have,” he said, as a group of Hmong men behind him gathered to warm themselves by a small fire. “But we’re not all going to be able to stay together.”
In the past year, Tony said, he’s seen the “pros and cons” of life outdoors, including campfires that grew out of control, prompting visits from the St. Paul Fire Department. Not everyone is knowledgeable about how to safely maintain a campfire. “Our main source of heat is propane, but that’s for those who can afford it,” he said.
National homeless numbers
Since the outset of the pandemic in 2020, the ranks of the homeless have grown alongside housing prices and the cost of living, exacerbated by the fentanyl crisis and other factors.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted a record 771,000 people homeless across the country on a single night last year, the highest number tallied since HUD’s “Point in Time” survey launched in 2007. Officials acknowledge that number likely represents a hefty undercount of the unsheltered homeless, and couch-hoppers moving from friend’s home to friend’s home were not included in the results.
A man who identified himself only as Sins said emergency shelters provided only temporary respite, and they were sometimes less safe. He didn’t trust his bunk mates or sleeping companions. “I worry about (expletive) like being in the shelter and something weird happens,” he said. “It’s happened to me before.”
Sins said another sizable encampment had emerged outside of downtown St. Paul off Fish Hatchery Road, within Pig’s Eye Regional Park. It probably qualifies as the largest in the city, in his estimation. And as the homeless are pushed out of the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, he said, “it’s going to get a lot bigger next week.”
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