Hope Street offers homeless youth in Minneapolis choices that go way beyond a new set of clothes

Young people come to Hope Street with almost nothing. So this Minneapolis youth shelter tries to give them everything they might need for what comes next.

Food. Shelter. A ride to school. A job referral. Health care. Counseling. Love. Patience. Shoes. Shampoo.

Catholic Charities' Hope Street for Youth serves young people between the ages of 18 and 24 who have experienced homelessness and trauma. Five of the 30 residents living at Hope Street today are still in high school.

"Love and consistency goes a long way. Sometimes that's all our young people need," said LaTasha Mays, senior program manager at Hope Street. "Some of them just need to be told 'I believe in you.' "

For many, the journey from a bleak past to a bright future starts at the closet.

Lexx, 23, looked around the old closet one last time — a couple of storerooms crowded with racks and stacks of things a young person might need for a fresh start. Pajamas. Work clothes. School clothes. Winter coats.

Like most who go to Hope Street, Lexx picked out five days' worth of outfits when she first arrived. She carried the clothes — along with necessities like soap, deodorant, towels and toothpaste — back to the room that would be her home until she was ready to move out and move on.

She doesn't remember the exact outfits she chose. But she remembers the kindness.

"I don't come from much," Lexx said. "I don't come from somewhere where people are just nice for no reason."

We're only using her nickname in this story because Lexx is a young woman with a future as bright as her smile and she doesn't need this column to be the first result that pops up when future employers or graduate schools do a Google search.

Hope Street never felt like a homeless shelter to Lexx. It felt like family.

A place like this, she said, catches people "while their lives fall apart a little bit [and] holds them up, keeps them going. They walk with you. They let you know you're not alone. There's no staff here I don't really trust with every fiber of my body."

And now it was moving day. After a lot of hard work, Lexx was ready to go and move in with her childhood best friend. A tidy stack of clothes and housewarming gifts from Hope Street — pots, pans, a waffle maker she won in a raffle — were stacked neatly by the door of her room. As she moved around the building, other residents called out congratulations or came over for a hug.

With Hope Street's help, Lexx has a job and a support network. For the first time in a long time, she's looking forward to the future, starting with her first dinner in her new home. Lexx hasn't done much cooking yet, but she and her roommate were texting back and forth excitedly about which of five recipes they wanted to try first.

Lexx is moving up. The closet is too. A grant to Catholic Charities Twin Cities from the downtown Minneapolis Kiwanis Club is funding a closet makeover that will ensure the 30 youth who sleep at Hope Street every night have access to a brand new, seasonally appropriate wardrobe.

A designer from California Closets spent hours measuring and sketching the storeroom, planning built-in closets and drawers that would make the space both useful and beautiful. It's one thing to tell young people they deserve better than their rough start in life. It's another thing to show them.

Mays, who took over at Hope Street just six months ago, knows that they're catching vulnerable youth at a critical time. She had worked with older unhoused adults and knew that more than a third of them became homeless for the first time around age 18. Mays was homeless herself as a teen — living proof that it's possible to set yourself on a different path.

Three Hope Street residents are applying to colleges now. They're talking to counselors, getting healthy, getting jobs, making plans, looking out for each other.

"Our young people are fighters. They have grit. They want to do more," Mays said.

Some days, it's her job to sit with a young person and remind them they are worthy, again and again, until they believe it. Once you "align them on the right path, where they need to be, they take off," she said.

Bags packed, waffle iron in tow, Lexx set out on her new adventure. Someone new would be moving into her old room at Hope Street before nightfall. She walked through the building again, past art painted by other residents, past poems and inspirational sticky notes posted on the walls. She added a few slogans of her own: Be nice. Be kind. Stay positive. Live.

"This is my love note to Hope Street," Lexx said. "I'm just 23, but there was a big portion of my life, about five years, where I just existed. Now I am experiencing how to live."

If you want to send Hope Street a love note of your own, Catholic Charities Twin Cities has a donation wish list for people in need: cctwincities.org/donate/wish-list-for-people-in-need/.