St. Cloud City Council Losing Faith in Lincoln Center Homeless Shelter Management and Leadership

(KNSI) — The St. Cloud City Council says it has lost faith in the leadership of Lincoln Center homeless shelter and is fed up with the crime connected to it.

Council Member Dr. Karen Larson asked for the item to be added to Monday night’s meeting agenda and told KNSI News the situation is worse than the homeless encampments because it limits the city’s ability to enforce laws and support the homeless. “One of the issues we’re running into now with the permitted shelter is that the city has lost some of its ability to act because it’s a private enterprise. And so the question is how do you handle the problem that has been created when that private enterprise is functioning in such a way that there are significant difficulties?”

Larson says she puts most of the blame on the center’s management, primarily Executive Director Harry Fleegel, and the nonprofit Homeless Helping Homeless, whose board oversees the shelter. Larson says Lincoln Center is harming other places with similar missions. “The issue now, with the ongoing problems with Lincoln Center, are beginning to give homeless services a bad name elsewhere in the city. And that’s a real problem.”

She says that will make it hard for other programs to serve the homeless.

Council President Jeff Goerger spent time on three afternoons and five evenings observing the shelter and was shocked by what he saw. “I witnessed blatant drug dealing in front of the building, almost on a constant basis. And I mean, every couple of minutes, every five minutes car were pulling in, people get in the car, get out, money would change hands, packets would change hands. I mean, I saw it with my own eyes.”

He says that wasn’t the worst of it. “I saw what I believe was prostitution going on in front. People came out of the building, went into vehicles, spent some time in and came back out. So how do I know what that is? Well, because I’m not stupid.”

He says there is no effort whatsoever made to conceal any of it.

Area businesses and residents have gone in front of the council and voiced concerns and complaints over theft, trespassing, harassment, drug use, assaults, vandalism and other public safety issues.

On February 6th, the city council held a study session with Fleegel about Lincoln Center’s issues, and he agreed to open a line of communication with other neighboring businesses. Officials say that communication never took place, and the shelter has yet to do much to improve since it opened in 2021.

City officials reported there were 43 police calls made related to the shelter between January 1st and 26th. The calls include three assaults and an overdose death. Councilman George Honots says he got the police call logs which showed there were 53 calls for police between February 1st and March 8th.

The council has asked for a special or closed-door meeting with its lawyers before next month’s city council meeting to go over all possible actions they could take. Some of the options the council wants to find out if it can legally do is go after the property owners for nuisance property violations, try and revoke the conditional use permit, which it is operating under or other legal challenges. In February, the council was told by its legal staff that any changes to the conditional use permit would need to be agreed to by both sides. The council could revoke the CUP, but that requires a long process, and the city would need to prove substantial noncompliance with the agreement. The St. Cloud city attorney said proving that is a very high bar because the center has the same property rights as any other landowner. The city’s staff says it isn’t aware of any successful CUP revocations in St. Cloud.

They hope to hold the meeting with its attorneys again on March 27th, but that date still needs to be finalized as of Monday night’s meeting.

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