Hamline-Midway group launches campaign to address neighborhood problems

The Hamline Midway Coalition held its first town hall Thursday night, drawing a crowd of about 350 people and a bevy of media outlets to hear what state and local elected officials were doing about the most pressing problems of the neighborhood, which has the highest share of opioid overdoses in St. Paul outside of downtown.

Several attendees were longtime residents of Hamline-Midway, recalling decades of relative peace before 2020′s civil unrest and global pandemic ushered in an era of fentanyl addiction, unsheltered homelessness and break-ins of homes and businesses.

Jack Kachmarek, who leases a house near Snelling and University avenues, said he used to get dozens of rental applications. Now he has just one family, who wants to leave because they're afraid for the safety of their son, who walks to school and back past scenes of public drug use.

Kachmarek said he can't seem to sell the house, either. He's hoping to offload it in the winter, when the bitter cold might keep the drug users from lingering outside.

"I just had them put up safety lights last night that cost me $1,000," Kachmarek said. "I had to add cameras last year for $1,000 and there's still people hanging around. Somebody was actually shot in the alley and ran through my yard two years ago. Since then somebody was found dead in that alley. So that's what we're facing."

At the top of many audience members' minds, including Kachmarek's, was a widely circulated September police report by officer Andrew Lewis and Sgt. Princewill Agbara. In the report, Lewis argued at length that Kimball Court, a supportive housing building for people exiting homelessness owned by Beacon Interfaith at 545 Snelling Ave. N., was "the hub for most of the narcotic traffic in the Western District."

"Kimball Court has security, but it has done nothing to slow the traffic of narcotics both from inside and outside of the building," Lewis opined in the report. "Many of the properties owners that I listed previously have struggled to remove the problems from their properties by posting department trespassing signs, and evicting problem tenants, Kimball Court has not. As soon as squads leave the area dozens of unsheltered persons line up waiting outside the building to buy and sell narcotics."

Court records show Kimball Court filed five evictions last year against tenants accused of assaulting other residents, staff or construction contractors.

Asked earlier this week whether it was fair to blame the area's opioid crisis on Kimball Court, Western District Chief Stacy Murphy said, "I wouldn't say it's a Kimball Court issue. It's a bigger issue, right? It's a public health issue. We're really coming up against mental health and the chemical dependency issues, which are across the city."

Held in Hamline University's Bush Ballroom, the town hall was billed as an opportunity to hear from Sen. Sandy Pappas, Rep. Leigh Finke, Rep. Samakab Hussein, Ramsey County Commissioner Rena Moran and St. Paul Council President Mitra Jalali about how they were helping residents.

The questions, prepared by the Hamline Midway Coalition, focused for the first hour on littering, the loss of ash trees, heat waves in the summer and how the city was developing a workforce to maintain native landscaping.

Residents applauded the pivoting of topics to homelessness and addiction in the second hour. As the legislators flaunted the state's $1 billion investment in housing last year, Jalali said the city was supporting an upcoming expansion of Kimball Court because it's a place where people can get stably housed before they might choose to get drug treatment.

In response, resident Andrea Suchy-Shinn, who had distributed copies of Lewis' police report to everyone at the start of the meeting, shouted that Kimball Court was not a stable place. Multiple disruptions followed, with attendees booing, demanding to know how Beacon intended to secure its planned expansion of Kimball Court and accusing meeting organizers of punting the discussion.

Moran, who emphasized the many meetings she has with other jurisdictions, asked that residents take a broader view of the opioid crisis and advocate for more state dollars for public health in the upcoming legislative session.

"We do not have enough beds to house people," she said. "We cannot arrest our way out of this issue. … What are we going to do with individuals who have been declared incompetent, and we have nowhere to send them?"

Justin Lewandowski, organizing director of the Hamline Midway Coalition and a former Beacon staffer, acknowledged that many participants had specific concerns about Kimball Court. He said the coalition has scheduled another meeting from 6:30-8 p.m. Nov. 7 at Hamline University's West Hall, Room 240, to discuss the building.

Representatives from St. Paul police, Beacon Interfaith and Jalali are expected to attend.

"We are angry. Who's not angry? I would be worried if we weren't upset about these things, but we have hope and we have strength in each other. Am I right?" Lewandowski asked.

Resident Teresa LePiane said all the other issues that the coalition touched on, including the desire for increasing vacant building fees, more affordable housing construction and public transit ridership, were legitimate neighborhood concerns. But she had expected a town hall about the most pressing problems of the neighborhood to have included the quality of life in and around Kimball Court.

"The quality of life in our neighborhood has gone down hill radically over the last couple years, since Beacon took over Kimball Court, and I hold them primarily responsible for the chaos, for the open drug use," she said. "That's a dereliction of their duty to us, and I feel like the City Council are not hearing us."

James Walsh contributed to this report.