ANDOVER, Minn. – (Oct. 11, 2018) – According to Anoka County, there were a little under 50 homeless household in 2018. That’s only counting households outside. When you look at the data including households in shelters and couch hopping, that number increases to almost 500. That’s a more accurate representation of what homelessness looks like in the North metro suburbs.
The Compassion Action Network put together a forum with Anoka County, the YMCA, the Salvation Army, and the Heading Home Anoka Housing Collaborative, to talk about the realities of homeless, and what solutions they have to come. Housing Program Coordinator for Anoka County, Michele Reid explained how homelessness looks different in our communities.
“What people don’t understand about homelessness is, it’s not necessarily the tent city,” she said. “It’s those people that you’re supporting and just and just taking them into your home for a few days and doing the right thing because that’s what your heart’s driven to do, and you want to support that family, you don’t want to see them on the streets, so in the suburbs it really is having people couch hop, living with others, and looking at, it could just be one pay check away as we’ve talked about.”
The Heading Home Anoka Housing Collaborative will also be hosting the Anoka Community Connect event, aimed at providing the homeless with actual resources.
“Heading Home Anoka Housing Collaborative started a conversation about six months ago to see how we could impact homelessness in response to the community needs assessment that we had done,” Reid explained. “Through that community needs assessment it was discovered that clients really wanted help with not only finding hosing but finding jobs, completing applications for benefits, for social security, for food stamps, insurance, things like that, what other way could we bring the community together to support the clients and give them the resources that they would need at a one day event.”
Reid said the event will provide everything from haircuts, and wellness checks to resume building and application help.
“We’re expecting about a hundred guest over the course of the day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ad we would want people to come in and help walk through those clients or the households to make sure they get the connections that they need, so if they need to get a job then they can go to that part of the building to get interviewed by a potential employer,” she said.
The event will have about 54 resources, 12 different employers and the goal is to serve 100 people, but for Reid, whoever receives help is enough.
“If we end up with 200, or 300, or 50 or even 10, it will be a successful event.”
The Anoka Community Connect will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Oct. 25 at the church of St. Timothy in Blaine. If you’d like to learn more about the event or if you’d like to volunteer you can visit the website for the event.
