The proposed expansion of a supportive housing complex in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood has neighbors questioning the nonprofit owner’s ability to manage it.
Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative wants to upgrade Kimball Court, a historic former hotel that was nearly taken over by trespassers in 2022 before the nonprofit housing provider instituted 24/7 security and clawed back control.
But amid an uptick in 911 calls this year, nearby residents are distressed about the nonprofit’s ability to manage a larger facility as Hamline-Midway continues to struggle with the aftershocks of 2020′s civil unrest, when the neighborhood suffered the heaviest damage in St. Paul.
“It’s not a NIMBY neighborhood,” said Brian Mondy, a local resident who has participated in community meetings about mitigating drug use around Kimball Court. Most neighbors understand the need to help people struggling with homelessness and addiction, he said, but are coming from “a place of desperation” for Hamline-Midway — a neighborhood replete with vacant storefronts and more overdoses than anywhere in Ramsey County outside of downtown St. Paul, according to the county’s Opioid Response Initiative.
“If Beacon was going to do [the expansion] right, and it was going to be this great housing resource for people, then I think a lot of people would be like, ‘Awesome, great, we want that here,’ ” Mondy said. “The concern is, given what we know about them, will it be? If it’s not, we don’t seem to have that much recourse.”
Beacon Interfaith provides more than 750 units of deeply affordable housing for Minnesota’s most vulnerable people. It has owned the 76-unit Kimball Court, a century-old former hotel, since 2010. Kimball Court follows the Housing First model, an evidence-based strategy favored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to get people off the streets and into basic housing without requiring sobriety.
Just before COVID-19, Beacon proposed adding 22 new apartments as part of long-overdue rehabilitation plans. City staff received nine letters of support from neighbors and six in opposition to Beacon’s application for a permit. Then the pandemic arrived and everything was put on hold.
Along with every other major provider of affordable housing, Beacon found its clientele hard-hit by mental health crises, the opioid epidemic and slower economic recovery than in better-off segments of society. Annual police calls to 545 Snelling Av. reached a high of over 400 in 2022, when a broken security system allowed nonresidents to come and go as they pleased and the building became a drug market in full view of neighbors.