Above photo: Christin Crabtree.
While the city relies on encampment evictions, organizers are creating compassionate solutions for unhoused communities.
Christin Crabtree walked out of St. Paul’s Church in Southern Minneapolis feeling hope on the morning of July 24. An organizer with the local unhoused resident outreach project Camp Nenookaasi, she left the community meeting believing that locals would work together with the 80 people living in Nenookaasi’s three small encampments to help keep each other safe.
But at 6:30 a.m. the next day, residents at all three camps woke to police-enforced evictions. Officers arrived with heavy machinery to heave residents’ tents, bikes, blankets, mattresses and clothing into a garbage truck. Within minutes, residents lost access to medical records, identification, cellphones and other belongings.
“The way that our city government responds to homelessness actually perpetuates trauma, rather than interrupts or addresses it, and that’s just not right,” Crabtree says. “Eighty people were evicted with zero shelter beds available.”
In Nenookaasi’s fourth eviction since January, organizers are prepared. Caseworkers, family, and outreach groups arrived to assist residents, working quickly to store belongings in their cars before driving residents to a new encampment site several blocks away. A truck dumped concrete rubble on the lot to prevent the encampment’s return.
Organizers with Camp Nenookaasi say the situation is untenable for the city’s unhoused residents. They’re pushing local elected officials to decriminalize safe outdoor encampments, keep encampment evictions to a minimum, and protect residents’ rights and dignity during necessary evictions.
And in the meantime, they’re finding creative ways to help protect residents – such as building yurts to protect unhoused individuals during Minnesota’s cold winters.
Rebuilding From Ground Zero
Organizers hope evictions will become less frequent through two policies scheduled to go before city council in October. Ninth Ward City Council Member Jason Chavez, whose own family faced eviction and homelessness when he was 13 years old, introduced both ordinances.
Chavez’s website reads that the Humane Encampment Response Ordinance will “provide storage of belongings, date of eviction, public health measures and services, minimal police response, and the guarantee of housing in case an eviction occurs.” The Safe Outdoor Space Ordinance will “legalize small, safe and regulated outdoor encampments that are healthy, secure, staffed, and resourced for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.”
But organizers can’t afford to wait for legislative solutions.
“When an eviction happens, [the county outreach teams] can’t find their people, and the relatives outside can’t find their case manager. Maybe they lose their phone,” Crabtree says. “Those evictions really disrupt any progress that happens.”
Meanwhile, a decentralized network has sprouted to care for unhoused residents, where relationship-building is the basis of care.
One year after its launch, Camp Nenookaasi offers a range of legal, moral and practical support to help residents self-organize. The Autonomous Yurt Union constructs yurt-inspired structures with wood-burning stoves to house residents in cold weather. Other initiatives like Let Everyone Advance with Dignity and Sanctuary Supply Depot provide essential services and supplies.
Crabtree estimates that in the past year, Camp Nenookaasi has housed over 250 people and sent around 50 people to treatment, preventing fatal overdoses. She’s seen a drop in the number of unhoused residents locally, which organizers believe means people are reconnecting with their family and finding housing.
“We’ve had people that were unhoused who went, got sober, and are coming back and trying to bring recovery into the camps to the people they used to live with,” Crabtree says. “Those are the things that give me hope, seeing those connections, and talking to people that used to live at the camp who are now six months sober and got their kids back.”
Camp Nenookaasi began in August 2023 after an encampment at South Minneapolis’ Wall of Forgotten Natives was evicted. A family friend of Crabtree’s overdosed there, spurring her to action alongside Nicole Mason (an enrolled member of the Red Lake Ojibwe Nation), who organized around finding Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. While all people are welcome in the new encampment, Nenookaasi has a mostly Indigenous population that focuses on cultivating cultural practices for healing. Greater Minnesota’s homeless population is disproportionately Indigenous: 24% of the homeless population in 2023 identified as Native American.
“We’ve been able to help build a relationship between housed and unhoused neighbors. It’s very easy to see an encampment or an unhoused person and be like, ‘Thank God that’s not me,’ and it’s very easy to ‘other’ them,” Crabtree says. “You get to know people, you get to really see somebody, and you can’t turn your head away anymore.”
Yurts: A Flexible Solution
A few months after its inception, Camp Nenookaasi moved to Jules’ neighborhood. Jules, who requested that we use just her first name to protect her safety, learned to construct wooden yurts along with her partner after the 2016 Standing Rock protests, where they stayed with a friend who used them to house protesters. Using YouTube tutorials of Mongolian-style yurts, they learned how to construct the collapsible yet sturdy structures.
After meeting residents and members, Jules set up a yurt to see if the Camp was interested in using them as winter infrastructure. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and the Autonomous Yurt Union was born.
“AYU started in close collaboration with that camp and with the ongoing struggle against settler colonialism and in support of Indigenous sovereignty on these territories,” Jules says. “How ridiculous that Indigenous people lack stable housing on their own homeland. As camps get cleared, it contributes to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and relatives, and there’s all of this interconnected violence related to colonialism.”
The Autonomous Yurt Union raised money to build 20 yurts, each of which cost around $400 to make, and led an ongoing series of Build Days where anyone can learn to construct the yurts. According to 22-year-old member Day, the presence of the sturdy, stove-equipped yurts provide an anchor and community space for residents.
“When people are evicted, they’re just forced to ride the transit system endlessly throughout the day,” Day says. “But when we set up a yurt, that allows us to connect them with some of our harm reduction organizations, or with their caseworkers. There’s now a consistent place that they can stay — sort of an anchor.”
In the past year, the Autonomous Yurt Union has built, deployed, and repaired over 100 yurts for encampments across the city. In the summertime, residents prefer tents to withstand the heat, so the group builds yurts for winter and distributes water when temperatures push past 80 degrees. Year round, members offer eviction aid and help scout for the next city property location.
“Rather than just coming and trying to resist the cops, they will allow us to help residents deconstruct the yurts in about 10 minutes,” Day says. “You can just take the roof off, take the tarp off, and then it folds right up. It seems to be less traumatic, because most of the tents are unsalvageable during an eviction, but the yurts are very salvageable. It can just go from camp to camp to camp for months, as long as they’re repaired.”
What Can The City Do Differently?
Meanwhile, organizers continue demanding the city does more to support unhoused residents. In Minneapolis’ Encampment Response budgets, around $490,000 is designated to provide bathrooms and other services to encampments. But organizers say they haven’t seen evidence of that spending.
“If you look at their budget, they have an allocation for bathrooms. They’ve spent not even half of it for the year,” Crabtree says. “They don’t provide water, they don’t provide harm reduction services. They just don’t do anything.”
Chavez requested the line-by-line budget on behalf of Nenookaasi, which showed that only $15,000 out of the $65,000 bathroom budget has been spent. According to Crabtree, she’s only seen one member of the city’s Homeless Response Team team drop off water once.
Meanwhile, Nenookaasi residents attend city council meetings and testify to local media outlets. Several individuals sued Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey in January then again in March to block the city from evicting encampments. It’s a move similar to the case in Grants Pass, Oregon, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in June that camping bans do not violate the Eighth Amendment.
The upcoming ordinances may change the way unhoused residents are treated, but members of the Autonomous Yurt Union and Nenookaasi stress that criminalizing unhoused residents is not a sustainable solution. For now, organizers will keep showing up to fundraise, distribute supplies, skillshare and support their neighbors.
“We may have had the people that came up with the initial AYU idea, but the people outside are building patios on them, and adding doors and floors,” Crabtree says.
“These things make me hopeful — seeing people engage actively in harm reduction, take ownership of their living space and advocate for themselves with us.”