Sarah Tripple walked through Washington County’s first homeless shelter on Wednesday morning, stopping often to point out some of her favorite features — and struggling to rank them against each other.

Washington County Community Services Division Manager Sarah Tripple shows off a fully accessible residential room. (Claudia Staut / Pioneer Press)

“This is a fully accessible room,” said Tripple, division manager of Washington County Community Services, walking into a spacious room with its own bathroom, a double bed, side table, desk, desk chair, dresser and lounge chair.

“The trend we’ve been seeing is that the folks coming into our program are trending older and have more physical disabilities, so when we designed this building, we wanted to make sure that we were as ADA compliant as possible,” she said.

The room — one of two in the Stillwater shelter that is fully accessible — features a wide doorway, grab bars in the bathroom and a “roll-in” shower, she said.

“The windows open, so they can get some air in here,” Tripple said. “And they have a thermostat that they can move a couple of degrees one way or the other.”

Down the hall of the $12 million Emergency Housing Services Building, located on 1.5 acres on the south end of the Washington County Government Center campus in Stillwater, is a lounge area and game room with a TV. A quieter lounge area and library — complete with books from local libraries — can be found on the second floor.

‘We’ve been negligent’

The shelter, which will open the second week of December, will provide short-term emergency housing to individuals over the age of 18. With 30 private rooms, each with their own bathroom, it will provide adults experiencing homelessness a place to stay while county officials help them find permanent housing and employment, Tripple said.

The average stay is expected to be around 90 days. The shelter will be staffed 24/7 and residents will have access to social-service support, transportation assistance, well-being support, legal help and help in gathering essential documents. There is a computer lab for job searches and workforce development, a commercial kitchen and shared dining area, storage space and parking. Each room can be locked; residents will have access to their room via a key card, Tripple said.

On any given night, an average of 166 people in Washington County experience homelessness, according to county officials. Historically, as many as 54 residents each year have had to seek shelter outside the county.

“I think we’ve been negligent as a county in providing this service,” said Commissioner Fran Miron, who represents the northern part of Washington County. “Ramsey and Hennepin counties have been doing most of this work for some time, and I know a lot of our people that need emergency housing have been going into those counties to secure that. Now we’ve stepped up to the plate, and we’re doing the work that’s necessary.”

Miron said the county’s population will be judged on how well the “most needy among us” are treated. “I’ve heard the gospel readings in church many, many times,” Miron said.

Commissioner Bethany Cox, who represents the Stillwater area, was one of the featured speakers at the shelter’s ribbon cutting on Wednesday morning. “Homelessness does not discriminate,” Cox told the audience. “It touches individuals and families across our county, often during the most vulnerable moments of their lives. This building stands as a testament to compassion backed by action. The idea for this facility grew out of the pandemic, and when we had to quickly adapt and use hotels to shelter our most vulnerable residents, we knew there was a better way. That experience taught us valuable lessons about flexibility, about dignity, and the importance of safe spaces.”

County officials have been using Asteria Inn & Suites in Stillwater, which is just a half-mile west of the site, to provide emergency housing. Most of the 11 people currently being housed at the hotel are 60 and above, said Jennifer Castillo, Washington County’s director of community services. The oldest person served by the program has been 80, she said.

Related Articles

St. Paul City Council bans cryptocurrency kiosks

‘Give to the Max Day’ aims to raise millions Thursday for nonprofits, schools

Two arrested after glue found in locks at St. Anthony Starbucks

St. Paul Parks Conservancy to absorb Great River Passage Conservancy

MNDOT to hold public meetings on Robert Street project

Older people can sometimes be harder to find housing for because of fixed incomes, mobility issues and difficulty finding employment, she said. “In Washington County, we’ve really been seeing the aging population, and we’re really starting to see that in the area of homelessness,” she said.

The new shelter is a “symbol of bringing humanity back to our community,” Castillo said.

“Instead of just requiring our neighbors to pick them up by their bootstraps or work harder, this is really embracing the fact that these are our neighbors, these are our community members,” she said. “They’re down on hard times, and we need to wrap ourselves around them and help them, and that betters the whole community.”

Eligibility — and pets

People tour the Great Hall inside the new Washington County Emergency Housing Service Building in Stillwater. (Claudia Staut / Pioneer Press)

Residents will be referred to the shelter by the Washington County Homeless Outreach Services Team and must meet eligibility criteria, including being over 18, passing a criminal background check, no active substance use and agreeing to actively participate in a housing plan. Anyone accepted to the program must be physically present and unsheltered in Washington County for at least a night before their stay commences; no walk-ups will be allowed.

Stepping Stone Emergency Housing will staff the building around the clock; the annual operating amount for the shelter is $1.4 million.

Residents may stay with partners or family members — there are seven double rooms in the shelter. They also will be allowed to keep their pets on site, a feature that Commissioner Karla Bigham says is key.

“People will not separate from their pets, even to get assistance,” Bigham said. “It’s very important that if we’re going to help all people experiencing homelessness, that we need to make sure that they are together with their pets, so that they get those services, and they’re not choosing one or the other.”

Said Castillo: “The last thing we want to do is erode any of the natural connections or supports that they have. We never wanted to have people make a choice of losing something by coming here. We wanted to make sure that this was an added value to their lives.”

The shelter features a “trauma-informed design” to reduce stress and nurture healing, said Emily Timm, an architect at LHB.

Related Articles

Woodbury man gets 30 years in federal prison for extorting minors after coercing sexually explicit videos

Afton native Jessie Diggins will retire following this season

Oak Park Heights ‘Taco Bell Mom’ Brenda Foley marks 30 years

MnDOT denies permit for Stillwater Lift Bridge tug-of-war before Vikings-Packers rivalry game

Stillwater: Community Thread’s Holiday Hope program again expects high demand

“We’ve incorporated a lot of natural light and natural materials like wood,” Timm said. “We used wood wainscoting in the lobby to generate a warm environment. We try to avoid triggering colors that might be too harsh, such as bright, bright reds and oranges that tend to be more triggering for some people, so we take that into consideration. We’ve used softer tones that are more neutral and calming and more natural.”

The two-story shelter includes laundry facilities on both levels. There also is a “hot box” room, or heat chamber, which can be heated to 140 degrees. Because clients could bring along bed bugs or lice from previous living arrangements, everything coming into the shelter — including outside donations — will be treated in the chamber upon arrival, Tripple said.

Heat treatments are effective because bed bugs and their eggs die when exposed to high temperatures, she said.

The University of Minnesota has removed the leader with its physicians group from a vice presidential role following the announcement last week that the group and Fairview Health Services reached a deal to fund the U’s medical school.

The University of Minnesota President’s Office informed Dr. Greg Beilman on Wednesday that his interim appointment as the vice president for clinical operations had been ended, according to a spokesperson with University of Minnesota Physicians, also known as M Physicians. Beilman will continue to serve as interim chief executive officer of M Physicians.

M Physicians is a nonprofit and is governed by its own board of directors. Last week the group came under strong criticism from university leadership after the announcement last week that it had reached a 10-year agreement with Fairview.

A previous deal between the U and Fairview is set to expire in 2026.

The university, in a statement Wednesday, said the move was in response to their concerns over the agreement. A resolution passed last week by the U’s Board of Regents condemned the deal which appeared to have been reached without input from U administration.

“The Board of Regents at its Nov. 13 meeting unanimously passed a resolution directing the University to address concerns resulting from the recent actions of M Physicians leadership involving individuals serving in dual roles at the University of Minnesota and M Physicians,” the statement said. “These personnel changes were in direct response to those concerns and will help ensure the integrity of ongoing negotiations between the University, M Physicians and Fairview Health Services.”

The resolution

The University Board of Regents last week passed a resolution in response to the agreement, saying the physicians group acted “unlawfully” in the matter. Regents said M Physicians, the 1,200-member group practice for the medical school, overstepped its authority in the matter.

The resolution called for the M Physicians to negotiate with the university on the issue. It further stated that “the University is now obligated to take actions that will sustain the eminence of the Medical School and to enable the University to meet the health needs of all Minnesotans.”

Fairiview, in their announcement last week, said it and M Physicians “have executed a binding agreement which includes a detailed term sheet and expect to complete a definitive agreement by the end of 2025.”

The deal was hailed by Attorney General Keith Ellison who had been pushing the U and Fairview to reach a deal before the 2026 deadline. In September, Ellison directed M Physicians officials to begin a direct negotiation process with Fairview, according to M Physicians.

Beilman to continue other roles at the U

Beilman began his role as interim vice president for clinical operations on July 1. He also was elected by the University of Minnesota Physicians Board of Directors as interim chief executive officer of M Physicians at the time.

Beilman will continue in his roles as professor of Surgery and the Owen H. and Sarah Davidson Wangensteen Chair of Surgical Research at the U’s Medical School and as a general surgeon with the Department of Surgery.

Minneapolis-based Fairview owns health care facilities on the university’s Twin Cities campus, including the teaching hospital for the medical school.

Talks to extend the partnership between the university and Fairview have been ongoing since February 2024, with the two trying to reach agreement on a new health care model. The U medical center, which educates some 70% of the doctors and nurses in Minnesota, was sold to Fairview in 1997.

Related Articles

MN lawmakers hear about impact of canceled federal higher education grants

UMN Board of Regents: U physicians group acted ‘unlawfully’ in reaching Fairview deal

Fairview Health Services, UMN Physicians partnership draws criticism from U administrators

How two Minnesota cookbooks helped a generation of home cooks and students

Annunciation ties unite Gophers, community in grief and hope

The collections of the Minnesota Historical Society include more than 250,000 objects.

A new gallery that opened Wednesday is highlighting 25 of those objects as a kind of sampler.

The public is invited to view “The Stories We Keep: 25 Objects from MNHS,” the inaugural exhibit in the History Center’s new Collections Gallery.

Putting these objects on display — and sharing the stories behind them — is part of an effort by the St. Paul-based Historical Society to illustrate the breadth and depth of its collections, which of course go beyond objects to also include manuscripts, oral histories, audio and video recordings and more.

“This is part of a larger initiative to provide access to our collections,” says Christine Jones, senior director of experience development, of the new exhibit.

Here are five of the 25 objects on display through August:

A kayak of milk cartons

The new exhibit was inspired by a challenge the curators took up for the 175th anniversary of the Historical Society, when five curators were asked to choose five objects that reflected the “breadth, depth, diversity and surprise of Minnesota history and all of its people,” drawn from MNHS’s collections.

Their picks — including a dress fashioned out of butter cartons — appeared in the Winter 2024-25 edition of Minnesota History magazine, but the dress wasn’t available for this exhibit: It’s currently on loan to the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum for an exhibit called “State Fairs: Growing American Craft.”

But, local curators found a replacement with this milk-carton kayak.

“So this was built for the first Minneapolis Aquatennial milk carton boat race in 1971 and it was raced every summer until 1977 and then the maker, David Garron, put it in his garage,” says Jennifer Huebscher, curator of photography and moving images. “It did have a second life when his son cleaned it up and raced it in the 2001 race (and it won).”

This kayak illustrates dairy history through logos and slogans (“Every body needs milk”) as well as other familiar logos (from Dairy Queen to the Target Bullseye).

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s letter

A young F. Scott Fitzgerald’s letter to the St. Paul Public Library in 1919, responding to a query about his published works, is one of 25 objects featured in “The Stories We Keep: 25 Objects from MNHS.” (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Not many Minnesotans would be surprised to see a copy of “The Great Gatsby” on display at the Minnesota History Center, as it was written by our hometown great, the late F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived and played among the mansions of Summit Avenue.

So the curators dug a little deeper into the collections and found a letter that was written earlier in Fitzgerald’s career.

“So in this particular letter, he wrote to Dawson Lobuston of the St. Paul Public Library, this was in 1919, and he’s confessing, ‘I haven’t really gotten any writings yet except my book, which is to be published,’” says Huebscher.

“That book was ‘This Side of Paradise,’ which was Fitzgerald’s first novel,”  Huebscher says.

That novel, a classic in American literature, was first published in the spring of 1920.

The staff at his local library must have seen that Fitzgerald’s star was rising.

“In this letter that’s on view, he’s indicating that he’s following up on Lubuston’s request for a list of published works, likely for consideration for the library,” Huebscher says. “So there weren’t any major publications at that time, but the fact that he’s reaching out to Fitzgerald as a local talent and that Fitzgerald was happy to engage, we’re seeing kind of an early look at Fitzgerald and how folks locally interacted with him and responded to his talent.”

Dakota-language hymnal

The colorful, beaded cover to a Dakota-language hymnal features elements of Ojibwe and Cree beadwork styles. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Some objects come with a bit of mystery, like this hymnal cover.

“We don’t specifically know who created this particular hymnal cover because, for things like this, you did not sign it,” Huebscher says.

Here’s what we do know: The colorful, beaded cover to a Dakota-language hymnal features elements of Ojibwe and Cree beadwork styles.

“A lot of Native women used these church-sponsored spaces, these women’s gatherings, to build and reinforce community ties and it’s surmised that this book cover might have been made in one of these groups,” says Huebscher.

“And what’s really great in the exhibit is that this piece is displayed next to the Minnesota Wild hockey mask that was featured in 2023 at the Minnesota Wild’s Native American Heritage Night. That mask was designed by Mdewakanton Dakota artist Cole Redhorse Taylor. And so you’ve got these floral motifs on both items that highlight a lot of Native crafts and using their art to make things beautiful and meaningful.”

Prince’s purple fabric

Through one of her binders, Marliss Jensen, a master dyer, shares the story behind Prince’s signature shade of purple. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Prince didn’t work alone. It took people behind the late pop star to help him become as “Prince” as possible.

Marliss Jensen, for example, with her binders of fabric samples. One of those binders is now on display.

“It’s a costume binder — and we actually have several of them in the collection — and they come from Marliss Jensen,” Huebscher says. “She worked and lived in Minneapolis, she’s a master fabric dyer, she’d work with her clients, including Prince, to find the perfect shade of colors for costumes. And so for his stage costumes, particularly ‘Purple Rain’ but he used her for numerous costumes, they worked together to find the perfect shade of purple.”

“Purple Rain,” now a musical, started out as Prince’s album and movie in the 1980s. Prince, who died in 2016, grew up in Minneapolis and lived and worked at Paisley Park in Chanhassen.

The fabric tells a story.

“So what we have on display is one of those books and in it you’ll see fabric samples and notes that Marliss Jensen made — what the fabric was made of, what it’s going to be used for — and so you can really follow how these costumes were pieced together,” she says. “It’s really neat because while everyone knows Prince, it’s interesting to see him through the angle of a Minnesotan who worked on his costumes.”

Rondo joy

Over a five-year period in the 1960s, Earl McGee took thousands of images of St. Paul’s Rondo neighborhood. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical Society)

Earl McGee, a photographer, educator and civil rights leader, lived and worked in the Rondo neighborhood of St. Paul.

His photos of everyday life in Rondo in the 1960s are displayed via a binder and some of the photo contact sheets.

“He took thousand of photos in the area and some were for fun — he enjoyed perfecting his craft, trying out different angles … but he also photographed so many events: civic clubs, the Queen of Hearts ball, formal black tie events, activities at the Hallie Q. Brown Community Center where he worked for awhile, he was director of their education division and he was secretary of the Camera Club,” Huebscher says.

“So he photographed youth sports, neighborhood gatherings, parties, businesses, civil rights activities between 1961 and 1966, around the time that Rondo was being razed for the freeway construction and at the height of the Civil Rights movement as well, so that gives him special significance when you think of the Rondo community and being photographed by an active member of the community and really focusing on joy makes this collection special.”

For info on the exhibit, go to mnhs.org/historycenter/activities/museum/the-stories-we-keep.

Related Articles

In new Stillwater ‘micro-residency,’ public artists explore community and memory

Tattoo artists trained in Stillwater prison find work, community at White Bear Lake studio

Artist Dyani White Hawk finds affinity between Native, Western abstraction

New Walker Art Center exhibit brings sculptures inside the building

A roundup of Halloween events in the Twin Cities

By ALI SWENSON

NEW YORK (AP) — A U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday voted to advance a candidate openly supportive of President Donald Trump to be inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, a role that is traditionally viewed as nonpartisan.

Related Articles

Appeals court pauses order restricting use of force by immigration agents in Chicago-area crackdown

Trump urges Treasury Secretary Bessent to take Federal Reserve job

Judge to proceed with contempt probe after US flew migrants to El Salvador prison in March

Veteran FBI employee sues bureau after being fired over displaying a pride flag

Trump administration revives rollbacks of species protections from first term

The 14-13 vote in the Republican-led Senate Finance Committee sends Thomas March Bell’s nomination to the full, Republican-controlled Senate, where he is expected to be confirmed to lead the office charged with investigating fraud, waste and abuse in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The Republican candidate’s outspoken alignment with Trump and his history of working for GOP lawmakers for decades have raised questions about his independence for a role that’s intended to scrutinize and root out fraud in some of the nation’s biggest spending programs. A number of Democratic lawmakers have criticized Bell’s nomination.

His nomination also follows a pattern of Trump prioritizing loyalty in his hires across his administration, even in roles that have long been considered independent. Earlier this year, Trump ousted watchdogs across the government, including the HHS inspector general, prompting a smattering of lawsuits over whether he did so legally.

Bell, an attorney who currently serves as senior counsel for investigations on the Republican-led House Administration Committee, has said he will support the initiatives of Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if confirmed as inspector general.

In prepared testimony for his confirmation hearing, he acknowledged that the role is independent but added that he intends to “provide actionable information in support of the President’s and Secretary’s courageous and innovative change of direction for the improved health of all Americans.”

He said in response to questions that he is committed to the rule of law and “will do examinations, evaluations, inspections, investigations and audits to make sure that the programs that Congress passes are running as efficiently as possible without waste, fraud and abuse.”

As HHS inspector general, Bell would also be tasked with investigating hospitals and insurers and ensuring they follow regulations. The office has the power to enforce stiff penalties.

Bell has long worked for Republican politicians and congressional offices and served as chief of staff in the HHS Office of Civil Rights during Trump’s first term.

In 1997, he was fired from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality after a state audit showed he improperly authorized a nearly $8,000 payment to the agency’s former spokesman, according to reports from the time.

In 2016, Bell helped lead an investigation by House Republicans into Planned Parenthood’s use of fetal tissue for medical research.

On Wednesday, 60 abortion rights groups and other advocacy organizations sent a letter asking senators to reject the nomination, alleging Bell has a history of “unethical conduct, extreme partisanship, and abuse of power that has harmed taxpayers, spread misinformation, and put reproductive health care providers at risk.”

During his confirmation hearing, Bell expressed openness to further investigating abortion clinics as HHS inspector general. He said such investigations are “exactly the kind of thing that an inspector general must have the courage to do — follow the law and follow the facts even if it’s unpopular.”