Neighbors Voice Frustration and Outrage After the City of St. Cloud Allows Lincoln Center Homeless Shelter to Reopen with a Temporary Permit

(KNSI) — Residents on St. Cloud’s east side flooded the city council chambers Monday night to express their frustration and outrage after the city allowed a temporary hybrid tent shelter on the property of the Lincoln Center Homeless Shelter.

Lincoln Center is a low-barrier homeless shelter that began operating during the pandemic when cities were forced to find temporary housing for homeless people. It was forced to close on May 8th after failing to comply with several issues, including installing a sprinkler system.

An administrative order on August 18th allowed an encampment that popped up near Veterans Bridge off East St. Germain Street to move back to the east side. Officials claim they couldn’t remove the encampment without offering a place to go and issued an emergency order, so the city gave Lincoln Center a temporary license to operate until November 1st while it works to comply with a planned unit development. The permit allows homeless people to live outside in tents but use bathrooms and showers at Lincoln Center.

Since homeless people started returning to the neighborhood, area residents and businesses say many of the issues they’ve been dealing with over the last two and a half years are again rearing their ugly heads. It includes numerous assaults, overdoses, trespassing, public urination and more. Companies say their employees are scared; some have spent thousands on security upgrades and fencing.

Council Member Karen Larson told KNSI News after the meeting she doesn’t support allowing encampments and voiced concerns about how the hybrid model affects the neighborhood. “You can’t have the cure be worse than the disease. You can’t make public safety, on balance, worse, because of what you’re doing with sheltering. How much benefit is there to this particular shelter? In conjunction with what it’s costing the neighborhood?”

Larson told us she feels the city needs a plan before temperatures drop if the center isn’t compliant by November. “[What] the city needs to do is put itself in a position where it can help fulfill those needs. Perhaps in Stearns County, perhaps in another shelter, that does not itself generate a culture that is problematic and then goes out into the neighborhood.”

Larson says the city is working diligently to try and come up with a solution but says it is a complicated issue with no easy answers. Mayor Dave Kleis confirmed the city is looking at all options short of funding and operating a shelter. He says the city isn’t interested in providing social services but could partner with a third party to support such services.

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