Navy veteran Alyssa Koeppen felt some added satisfaction on Tuesday as she listened to Hennepin County officials announce the county had “effectively ended” homelessness among veterans.

Koeppen, 54, became homeless and had to sleep on friends’ couches on-and-off after 13 years living abroad in the military and returning to Minnesota. But then in September, Koeppen secured rental housing through a Hennepin County program. She said that in recent months she’s noticed a reduction in the number of veterans she meets on the street who are homeless.

“We’re getting housed, and that matters,” Koeppen said.

She joined dozens of others at the celebratory event Tuesday morning in the Hennepin County Government Center where county officials declared they had made major progress with finding housing for veterans.

That assertion does not mean there will be no future veterans who become homeless. Plus, the overall rate of people experiencing homelessness in the county and state has increased to their highest levels, according to this year’s Point-in-Time Count.

But for any veterans who become homeless, the county says that period will be rare, brief and nonrecurring. The county is also helping veterans overcome homelessness at a faster rate than those who are becoming homeless, officials said.

Hennepin County had 69 veterans experiencing homelessness at the end of September, a nearly 60% decrease from August 2023, according to data provided by the county. Five of those 69 homeless veterans remain unsheltered, the county said. Neil Doyle, director of the Hennepin County Veteran Service Office, said he’s proud of the achievement, but also recognized there is much work to be done.

“Today’s announcement doesn’t by any means mark an end to this critical work,” he said to the crowd on Tuesday. “We are only pausing for a moment to acknowledge this key milestone.”

Chauvin is then interviewed in the film about his training with maximal restraint technique and shows a page from a department training manual about the technique. The lawsuit argues that, “In the film’s deceptive framing and editing, Collin and Chaix lie about the nature of Blackwell’s testimony with the hope that the viewer will believe that Blackwell perjured herself by stating that the MRT was not part of police policy. In reality, Blackwell testified that she did not recognize the technique used by Chauvin as any technique officers are trained to use, including the MRT.”

The lawsuit notes that the film concludes later that Blackwell “turned her back on the city of Minneapolis and implies that Blackwell’s testimony was responsible in part for a whole host of public safety concerns.” That includes a spike in crime, a dramatic drop in the ranks of sworn Minneapolis police officers and “general deterioration of the city.”

“The Fall of Minneapolis” has currently been viewed 2.8 million times on YouTube, where it is available for free, and the lawsuit notes the film has surged back into the public consciousness after Governor Tim Walz was selected as the DFL nominee for vice president.

The lawsuit has been assigned to Fourth District Judge Edward Wahl.

Star Tribune staff writer Liz Sawyer contributed to this report.

“There are many people that have had sincere conversations about what the future is for that old Third Precinct building. JD Vance is certainly not one of them,” Frey said. “But look, let’s not hand JD Vance a prop to use in a political way.”

After the City Council directed the Frey administration to engage with the community about the proposal, the city conducted two surveys, including a “demographically representative” survey that found 63% of respondents support the proposal, with 70% support among those living within the Third Precinct.

On Tuesday, City Operations Officer Margaret Anderson Kelliher said work has been done all summer inside the building on windows, elevator shafts and doors but the city had to do another request for proposals to mitigate the effects of the fire. The next steps will be that cleanup and exterior work. Then the city will seek proposals from providers to manage and operate the community space, and an architect to redesign the building.

Kelliher said funding is available for the requests for proposals and to move forward with designs, but Minneapolis City Council approval would be needed before renovations could begin. And council approval is in question, given a pair of votes the council’s Committee of the Whole took Tuesday afternoon. The full council could take up the issue again Thursday.

Some council members questioned whether the elections center could be moved to a different city-owned building, the cost of breaking the elections center current lease, and whether the addition to the building would be a “windowless warehouse.”

The committee rejected, by a vote of 6-7, a non-binding position statement proposed by Council Members Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley supporting a city-owned, community-centered development “for the purpose of racial healing.” Chavez said it could be used to address racial disparities, homelessness, the opioid epidemic or economic development.