Star Tribune
Duluth’s Safe Bay is refuge for those living in their cars
DULUTH – Her hair still damp from the mobile shower, Lynette Ruse crossed a parking lot under briskly falling snow and opened the door to her home, a 2012 Dodge Caravan.
Inside, battery-powered lights twinkled as Ruse tended to her two tiny white dogs and lit incense sticks, a pre-bedtime ritual. All three burrowed into a makeshift bed where the backseats used to be.
They were parked in a brightly lighted lot in a run-down neighborhood. On this cold October night last week, occupants of six other vehicles in the lot settled into their nighttime routines. A hospital cafeteria worker spent the night in a Chevy Equinox. A 36-year-old with a debilitating illness went to sleep in an old RV without a working heater.
It was nearing 10 p.m., the start of the quiet period for Duluth’s Safe Bay, and one of the last nights Ruse and the others would be allowed to park overnight. The new seasonal refuge for people living in their cars closed at the end of October, as the city’s overnight warming shelter opened.
Ruse’s minivan is not only her home, it’s her workplace. Ruse, 51, delivers food for DoorDash. She said she doesn’t consider herself homeless. “Houseless” is how she describes it.
“I got my system, and I’ve got it down,” Ruse said about her adaptation to living in her minivan. “I’m proud of being able to at least carve this out.”
The Safe Bay program stems from Stepping On Up, a coalition of Duluth organizations taking on chronic homelessness amid an enduring affordable-housing shortage. Nearly 600 people used Duluth’s seasonal overnight warming shelter last winter, a place that offers mats for sleeping but not privacy. The city of about 87,000 has fewer than 200 shelter beds, and they are always full.
With counterparts across the country, Safe Bay uses the parking lot of the Damiano Center, which houses nearly 20 programs, including a soup kitchen, a free store, a mobile hygiene unit and secure storage for unsheltered people. Registered guests can park from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
Around 200 people, including children, have stayed in Safe Bay since its April opening. They prefer the dignity and autonomy that comes with private space, even if it’s a car. It’s been home to families in difficult situations, people who have lost jobs, recent arrivals from other cities, the chronically homeless. Some have stayed for weeks.
About half had never taken advantage of any resources for the homeless. Many have jobs.
“A lot of these folks have never experienced this before in their entire life,” said Anne Romberg, a Safe Bay staff member. And they sink to the bottom of a hundreds-deep housing assistance waiting list, she said.
“They’re in shock that they’re in this situation,” she said, “and you can really see how frustrating it is.”
A path to housing
Emergency options such as Safe Bay and a 24-hour “triage shelter” expected to be built next year are part of a larger plan, said Joel Kilgour, coordinator of the effort.
The triage shelter, equipped with supportive services, will likely replace the outdoor seasonal village plan announced in 2022, because real estate and staffing are hard to come by. Among other projects, the Stepping On Up coalition hopes to build 200 permanent, low-cost, small-footprint homes.
The Chum shelter has applied for $16 million in newly approved state aid to reduce homelessness, and St. Louis County and the city are also investing in projects.
The city and county regularly field complaints about discarded needles, encampments, public urination and property damage. So much of this relates to a lack of options, said John Cole, executive director of Chum.
If all these efforts are successful, the whole community benefits, he said: The number of encampments spread across the 26-mile-long city would decrease, but more importantly, people would have a better chance to rebuild their lives.
A ‘godsend’
Safe Bay guests had access to showers, gas cards, internet, supportive services, charging stations, toiletries, towels and meals served by the Damiano Center.
The six showers allowed guests to be presentable for work or job interviews.
At its peak, the parking lot played host to about two dozen vehicles, well below its capacity of 50. As the nights grew colder, numbers dwindled. The staff kept the lot safe with surveillance cameras and on-site workers stationed inside the building’s entrance where guests often gathered for coffee when they sign in. From time to time, these workers walked around the lot. Intruders were scarce.
One guest wept at the relief she felt having a safe space to sleep, said Seth Currier, executive director of the Damiano Center. She had tried sleeping in the parking lot of Walmart or other lots where activity continues throughout the night, but was too afraid. That’s a common problem, along with people calling the police if they see someone sleeping in a car on a residential street, which is legal. People sometimes drive great distances to sleep in more remote areas, using up precious gasoline.
Erik Lind, 54, stayed in the lot for a month while looking for a room to rent. He learned about it by searching the internet, after letting go of his Duluth apartment in September to travel west. When he returned, he couldn’t find anything he could afford.
Lind was rehired at his old job delivering meals to patients at Essentia Health’s St. Mary’s Medical Center, but the $19.68 he earns per hour isn’t a match for the city’s tight rental market.
Last week, his legs were swollen because he can’t fully stretch out in the reclined passenger seat of his small SUV overnight. His face was lined with exhaustion from little sleep, and his feet were cold from being covered by a single blanket. He warms up in a restroom or running his car for a bit, if he has enough fuel.
Nearly 20 guests have found permanent housing during their stays. Homeless since their trailer park closed, Sebastian Sieler and his fiancee stayed at Safe Bay since April, calling it a “godsend.” While in recovery for drug use, Sieler spent two years living in an RV, kicked out of lot after lot and racking up parking tickets. But the countdown to a brick and mortar home is on: In two weeks, they get the keys to a Lincoln Park apartment.
Ruse used to be a married homeowner, but she was divorced and moved into an apartment in Superior, Wis. She lost her apartment several months ago after her landlord became sick and sold his properties. She’s been in her van ever since.
She misses cooking and gardening, but appreciates the camaraderie formed in the lot over the summer. Folks gathered with lawn chairs to grill, and helped each other fix their cars or find something to eat. Ruse knows she will remain close to the friends she made.
Ruse will live like a nomad through the winter or stay with her adult children in a pinch. She doesn’t want to take the spot at the warming shelter of someone who doesn’t have a vehicle, unless hers breaks down. Her 21-year-old son used to share the van with her, but she was able to help him secure his own place recently.
Her biggest worry is her aging minivan, with its 167,000 miles. One problem could eat up her income, she said, already necessary for medications and other health care. She will stay in Duluth to work and be near her kids, thrilled that they are doing well.
“Now, I am just figuring myself out,” she said.
With the end of Safe Bay services, she loses routine, she loses security. She and her dogs spent the past few nights sleeping in a quiet place near the St. Louis River, but she’ll move frequently among other remote neighborhoods, parking late and waking early, hoping to go unnoticed.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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