Minneapolis city officials are hoping to have a Navigation Center open in early December to help people living at the Hiawatha homeless encampment find more permanent shelter. John Tribbett is with the St. Stephens Street Outreach Team and has been helping at the encampment. He says significant challenges remain and “transition weather like this can be particularly dangerous because like last week we had a day where it was humid and in the mid-upper 70s, and then it drops almost 40-degrees and there’s rain. This is really prime time for people to really experience illness.”
Tribbett says while it’s beneficial in a way that the encampment has been so high-profile, he says it’s “simply the visual manifestation of an ongoing issue that’s been in our community for many, many, many years, and so in that way, it is bringing attention, but the emergency, unfortunately, is not just at the encampment, it’s also in all the different places that people are sheltering outside.”Last week the Minneapolis city council passed a measure to expedite the creation of the Navigation Center on a site partly owned by the Red Lake Nation. Here is more with John Tribbett: