Overview
- The City Council voted to require a 60-day outreach period and place navigation tents at camps before most closures, create a six-month indoor winter shelter, and begin planning a permanent shelter modeled on Minneapolis’s Avivo Village.
- Council members estimated the full package could cost about $10.8–11 million and proposed modest city spending this year plus up to $2 million from the HRA next year while seeking county, state and private partners to cover remaining costs.
- Mayor Kaohly Her’s office said it is reviewing the plan’s viability and affordability and has not committed to full implementation, leaving final funding and operational decisions unresolved.
- The resolution responds to this summer’s Pig’s Eye Park clearing that pushed people to other sites and helped swell the Shepard Road encampment to more than 400 residents, highlighting that removals have redistributed unhoused people rather than ended homelessness.
- Advocates and experts note the plan stops short of creating new permanent supportive housing, a gap made starker by a reported waitlist of over 1,000 people seeking shelter or housing help and by the city’s roughly $26 million budget shortfall.