No pitchforks in Minnesota – but not enough money

Following on the previous post about approaches in homelessness:

Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative works to provide a combination of housing and supportive services to help move into employment or deal with the other needs. For more on Beacon’s programs, see Sheila Regan’s recent article, Beacon offers hope to low-income renters.

Homeless youth face a special set of challenges: Cynthia Boyd’s MinnPost article features Lina Warner, who tells her story of couch-hopping and using YouthLink’s drop-in services to get through years of homelessness. The article’s focus is $4.2 million in funding from the Homeless Youth Act, passed last year by the Minnesota legislature.

The common theme in discussing policies and homelessness in Minnesota is that we know what to do, but don’t have the money to do it. That’s also a theme in this year’s bonding initiative for Heading Home: Minnesota’s Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness. Governor Mark Dayton has proposed bonding of $50 million, the largest amount of bonding dollars ever, according to a blog post by Beacon director Lee Blons. But, she notes, that’s only half of the amount called for by Minnesota Housing Commissioner Mary Tingerthal in the Heading Home plan.