Demand for emergency shelter remains high in Twin Cities even as beds are added

Inside the new Simpson Housing Services shelter and supportive housing complex in Minneapolis, light streams through every window and floral murals span the walls. There’s a patio outside and a healthcare clinic onsite. 

The facility, which opened in its new space in January, has 72 shelter beds and 42 supportive housing apartments. It’s one example of multiple recent investments across the metro in more shelter beds for the region’s homeless individuals, whose numbers have remained stubbornly high since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But even as more beds have opened up, shelter bed vacancy has become a hot topic in the Twin Cities, stemming in part from St. Paul’s struggle to find housing for people cleared in August from the Pig’s Eye encampment. Confusion over the matter has been sown by prominent claims that shelter beds are “mostly empty.” 

Simpson Shelter associate director Wendy Wiegmann said that idea couldn’t be further from the truth. “The needs are always there and have been increasing,” she said.

Though exact numbers are hard to pin down, Hennepin County has more than 1,000 shelter beds for adults. A public database shows that on any given night, only a handful of those beds are available, at most.

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A spokesperson with Ramsey County said via email they do not have an equivalent public data portal to track shelter bed capacity. That said, the county announced in mid-September that it was adding a total of 55 beds at two separate shelters because its current number “was insufficient to meet community needs even before the City of Saint Paul announced its planned [Pig’s Eye] encampment closures.” 

The announcement went on to say that adult shelters were operating “at or near capacity” and that 144 families, representing 323 people, were on a family shelter waitlist. 

Both Hennepin and Ramsey counties require people who need emergency shelter either to call their county housing department or visit an in-person site to determine what kind of resources are available to them. The process differs slightly based on several factors, including age, familial status, if they are fleeing domestic violence or if they are a veteran. 

Each day, space fills up quickly and people often are turned away, said Tonya Brownlow, Simpson Shelter’s executive director. A countywide reservation system, “Adult Shelter Connect,” operates out of Simpson to coordinate shelter arrangements. “Typically at 10 a.m. you start taking calls, but easily by 11 a.m. everything’s filled depending on the day,” Brownlow said.

In 2025, 427 people were identified as experiencing unsheltered homelessness on any given January night in Hennepin County, according to its Point-In-Time (PIT) Count. Ramsey County reported 393 adults in its PIT Count from 2024, the most recent data available.

Hoang Murphy is the chief executive officer of People Serving People, a family shelter near downtown Minneapolis. Unlike Ramsey County, Murphy said that Hennepin has a “shelter all” program that guarantees shelter for people who are pregnant and families with children under 18. If family shelters are full, Murphy said the county finds alternative arrangements.

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Both counties also use the statewide Coordinated Entry System (CES) to match people to housing programs. Unlike emergency shelter hotlines or the Adult Shelter Connect, CES is designed to help individuals and families find more permanent solutions. The CES matches people with available programs based on priority, not on a first-come-first-serve basis, Brownlow said.

The system makes it so the burden of finding housing doesn’t fall completely on the individual. Still, it’s hobbled by a shortage of available options. In Ramsey, 2,790 people are in the CES priority pool for the county and are waiting for a housing referral, according to a county report for September. Residents can spend months on referral waiting lists, ranging from an average of 191 days for minors to 330 days for single adults.

While Murphy said some counties, notably Hennepin, are projecting a decrease in the number of homeless residents in the coming years, he remains skeptical.

“I do not see how we can have the inflation rates that we are having, the price of gas that we’re dealing with, the affordability crisis that we’re in, and somehow that’s going to be resolved over the next couple years,” he said.

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Originally reported by MinnPost by Maddie Robinson. Read the full story at the source.