Homeless shelters and warming centers are preparing to help the homeless ahead of a projected colder-than-average winter in Minnesota by the National Weather Services.
This abnormally cold winter comes as more people in Minnesota are dealing with homelessness.
Minnesota’s homeless population has increased in the past decade with the state seeing over 10,000 homeless people in 2023, according to the Wilder Foundation.
With increased homelessness and a cold winter expected, organizations like Involve MN, a non-profit group that does homeless outreach, planned as early as June to stock up on coats and boots.
Ethan Snyder, who has been an Involve MN streetout program volunteer for about five years, said Minnesota winters present a unique challenge for homeless people like more severe health risks and an increased sense of desperation.
“I’ve seen a lot of frostbite. I’ve seen people lose fingertips, lose the tips of their noses,” Snyder said. “I’ve also unfortunately come across a lot of people that have frozen to death because of the cold weather.”
While Minnesota has homeless shelters across the city, warming centers are another option for those experiencing the extreme cold of Minnesota. Warming centers are warm spaces available for homeless people during the winter months. Many of these spaces also have showers, internet service, food and hygiene products available.
There are 12 locations in Hennepin County that are considered warming centers including Hennepin County Library and the Catholic Charities Twin Cities.
Co-director of the Minnesota Homeless Study Michelle Decker Gerrard said warming centers are temporary spaces where people can stay warm with no barrier for entry.
“Everyone has their unique and individual needs,” Decker Gerrard said. “A warming center might work for somebody who works nights and needs a place to sleep during the day or has other things going on with them and they just need to warm up and have a low-barrier situation where they don’t have to jump through a hundred hoops.”
Joshua Yetman, a Hennepin County spokesperson, said the library warming centers do not make any special changes during the winter and will be open to the public.
Catholic Charities Mary F. Frey Opportunity Center is a non-profit with four emergency shelters and two daytime homeless shelters, one in St. Paul and the other in Minneapolis.
Tatyana Finklea, director of the adult emergency services division for Catholic Charities Twin Cities, said last year the organization served around 33,000 people.
“We definitely notice an increase in demand when the weather turns colder,” Finklea said. “When the weather is colder, our shelters fill up more quickly — as do the other options for those in need across the Twin Cities.”
To deal with an increase of people, Catholic Charities extends hours, gives out bus tickets and refers people to other warming centers in the area.
While Gerrard and Snyder agree that Minnesota is moving in the right direction to deal with homelessness, both want to see more structural change.
“Once we realize that we all need to be at the table, having these discussions about people are going to die and people are going to continue dying and losing their fingers and taking drastic actions of desperation to ensure that they don’t die in the middle of the night,” Snyder said. “We need to be having those conversations.”
Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the name of the Catholic Charities Twin City as Catholic Charities Mary F. Frey Opportunity Center. Its name is Catholic Charities Twin Cities.
