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MINNEAPOLIS — Five days away from eviction date, the people who run a huge homeless encampment in south Minneapolis say they won't budge until the people at City Hall come up with more options for them.
Thursday was originally the deadline for people to leave what's known as Camp Nenookaasi, which has been on a piece of city-owed land for four months. The city extended that deadline until the Dec. 19, but organizers say they need more time than that.
"We need our people to recover. And we need no eviction. And we need to keep Camp Nenookaasi," Nicole Mason, the camp’s lead organizer told reporters at a Thursday morning press conference.
Mason's a member of the Red Lake Nation and an addict in recovery. She said she created Camp Nenookaasi as a refuge for homeless, especially those trying to recover from addictions who need a place to settle before transitioning to treatment.
The camp stretches for a city block along 13th Avenue South in Minneapolis and is enclosed in fencing with one entrance.
"If we have to leave this land, then we demand that the city gives us a piece of land that we can take our people to be safe."
Allies of the encampment have helped build it up, including large yurts with wood burning stoves inside.
But the city has grown increasingly worried about health conditions and crime. Tuesday night a 45-year-old man was shot to death in one of the tents. The campers say they feel safer there among friends than they do on the streets.
"I've been here since this camp started in the first day, and I've been more taken care of out here than I have been in a long time," a camper named Alana, who has been living on the streets for two years, told reporters.
The City of Minneapolis, Hennepin County and various nonprofits have been working for months to find more permanent housing for those in the camp. The city, working through Helix Health and Housing, had placed 40 of the campers in housing as of last week and expected another 60 by the end of this week.
The camp is located next door to the Indigenous People's Task Force, which provides a variety of health and educational services to Native American families, including one of the longest running Indigenous youth theaters.
The nonprofit plans to build an art and wellness center on the very land currently occupied by the camp. The sale is scheduled to be finalized in February.
"It will be called Mikwanedun Audisookon which means to remember our teachings in Ojibwe. The thread that runs through everything we do is culture," Indigenous Task Force executive director Sharon Day told KARE.
Her organization has already raised nearly $12 million to pay for the new center, which was a condition the city set before they would sell the land to the group for $1.
"We’ve been here 30 years, and that’s how long that land has been vacant. We’ve been negotiating with the city over this property for a decade. This will allow us to have space for all of our youth programs to operate adequately. It will give us six new clinical spaces."
Day agrees homeless addicts need help, and doesn't blame Mason for wanting to raise the issue. But she doesn't see the encampment as the solution.
"They know this will soon be Indigenous land. They continue to build up the encampment knowing that we are going to build on that land."
SOURCE: KARE 11
