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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Layers of Trauma: Homeless Families in Greater Minnesota

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Monday, August 16, 2010   

BEMIDJI, Minn. - Nestled between three Native American reservations in the poorest region of Minnesota, Ours to Serve House of Hospitality in Bemidji started as a single-adult shelter in the 1980s. By 2007, they had seen such a dramatic increase in homeless families, that the shelter decided to refocus and serve families exclusively.

Most of the families seen at the shelter are headed by very young single mothers, says Rebecca Hoffman, the shelter's executive director. For them, homelessness is not about a downturn in the economy or lost wages, she says.

"Homelessness is about layers and layers of trauma. About eighty-five percent of our mothers have experienced a severe physical or sexual assault during their lifetime, and most of them experienced that as a child."

Hoffman says many end up at the shelter because they flee abusive relationships. Because they often have no rental history, no work history, no high school diploma, or any sort of education beyond high school, their earning potential is extremely limited. She says this population largely falls through the cracks because housing policy isn't geared toward helping them.

The shift in state funding towards ending long-term homelessness has come at a cost to the families she serves, Hoffman adds. Last year, she says, the state's emergency shelters saw a 30-percent cut in funding for operations.

"That is a significant blow to shelters that already operate on just a bare bones budget."

She says rural Minnesota has been hit particularly hard by the policy shift because the homeless in those areas struggle to overcome additional barriers to stable housing, such as education and reliable transportation that gives them access to jobs.

Thanks to bonding dollars made available through the efforts of a former state representative, they are building a new shelter, Hoffman notes. While they are thankful for the new facility, she says her operation is still too small to meet the local demand, turning away as many as 1,000 people each year.

"We're turning away families with children. In the summertime, you see a lot of families coming in where the children are just full of mosquito bites and welts all over their bodies because they have been living outside with their families in really substandard conditions."

Hoffman is hoping that policymakers understand the importance of all programs that provide solutions to ending homelessness.

"We need to have programs like our short-term shelters working in conjunction with programs that have a more lasting and long-term impact on people's lives. There's not just one single solution to how we remedy homelessness."





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