Avivo Breaks Ground on St. Cloud Homeless Shelter

(KNSI) – Avivo Village broke ground Friday on its new homeless shelter off 1st Street South in St. Cloud.

It will welcome its first guests in late summer or fall 2026. Avivo is not a name most St. Cloud residents had heard of before March 2024, when the shelter began to be discussed, but it has a long history of working in the city. President and CEO Kelly Matter says her organization has been here since 1989. “We have a training program here where we provide job training skills and employment, and then help people stay employed…And then in 2013, Avivo became the sole provider of MFIP [Minnesota Family Investment Program] services for Stearns and Benton Counties. It’s a mandated program where people that are receiving public assistance need to work to get off of public assistance.”

Avivo’s first shelter was started during the pandemic in the North Loop of Minneapolis. Matter talks about what her organization learned from that effort. “Most of what we learned is around design, everything from showers to how many washers and dryers get used in an emergency shelter…to how you design the hallways for people coming and going.”

It will have 48 units, enough to help a significant portion of the area’s estimated homeless population of 450 and 500 people. Matter says the premise is simple. They want people who are down on their luck to come inside and get some rest. She says those who stay at their shelters are often initially exhausted.

Staff quickly transition to taking proactive steps to change their fortunes. “But then we begin immediately partnering with them on an individualized plan to find permanent housing…and that includes taking care of medical needs, dealing with mental health and physical health issues.”

The site was once owned by St. Cloud, a roughly one-acre parcel next to a retaining pond. Transferring the land was just one step of a full-court press put on by the city to get the facility here. Avivo was initially looking elsewhere, according to Matter. “It wasn’t on our radar. We were focusing on a second Avivo Village in the Twin Cities. But then the need came to us from the city.”

The project was made possible primarily thanks to state funding, over $7 million approved by the state legislature through the Minnesota State Legislature and administered by the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Homelessness, Housing and Support Services Administration.”

St. Cloud allocated hundreds of thousands of dollars in Statewide Affordable Housing Aid and federal Community Development Block Grant funds to help with the design and preliminary phases of the project.

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