Peace House, a decades-old south Minneapolis community center, facing volunteer shortage

On Portland Avenue above Interstate 94 sits a little green house, the Peace House, where figures gather each morning before the doors open and breakfast is served to those who can't afford food and don't have anywhere else to go during the day.

Lately, the crowds have grown. One day last month, a record 244 people passed through Peace House, crowding the main room and exacerbating friction among a diverse clientele dealing with acute challenges of poverty, hunger, addiction and depression since COVID-19.

The cost of supplies and insurance have soared, yet Peace House has fewer volunteers than ever. Retirees who used to donate their time left during the pandemic and haven't returned, reducing the volunteer ranks from 40 a week before 2020 to 22 today, and forcing the nonprofit to hire more staff. Even so, there are only two staffers at any given time to monitor things, pick up litter around the property and try to keep clients from trespassing onto neighboring yards.

Peace House's projected expenses this year are about $400,000, but its projected revenue — from state grants, private foundations and individual donors — is about $300,000. At the rate it's spending down its reserves, Peace House will be bankrupt in 18 months, Executive Director Marti Maltby said. He believes more volunteers could reverse the spiral, and is asking residents to step up.

"The more volunteers we have, the more we can connect with the individuals who walk through our door, get to know their names and make them feel welcome," he said. "When we can make those connections, our community members want to see Peace House succeed, so they are more careful about not making us look bad to the neighborhood."

Some of the regular clients go out of their way to help collect garbage because they understand how fragile Peace House's welcome in Ventura Village is, Maltby said. But it's an ongoing battle because there's an influx of new people who don't yet feel an attachment to the organization.

"There are a lot of individuals who are just trying to get their needs met, and they don't really care about the places that are providing the services because they're trying to survive," he said. "And unfortunately, homelessness attracts predators too," he said; drug dealers and sex traffickers tend to orbit encampments and shelters.

"We're trying to balance all those different dynamics, being a welcoming and safe place for the community members who come here while also being a good neighbor and protect the neighborhood from some of the darker elements," Maltby said.

The community center will turn 40 next year, and Kat Countryman, who is homeless with four cats that she brings to Peace House in a stroller, said she'd been going there just as long. She is deeply unsatisfied with its current conditions, she said — namely drug use in the bathrooms, the unsolved theft of her suitcase and tents proliferating in the alley. As she was speaking, someone set off a firecracker on the back patio, prompting Countryman to curse.

People still come, despite the frustrations, she said, "because for most of them, this is the only place they can come," she said.

Another regular, Joy Rindels-Hayden, has been visiting twice a week for 10 years because she "wanted to have a place to be with people in the daytime." A wheelchair user, she spent long hours at the State Capitol last year advocating for bus safety measures for people with disabilities. Her friends at Peace House watched her testify and sent her notes of support, Rindels-Hayden said, which kept her spirits up.

"We have some people that are problematic, we have some people who are on drugs," she said. "They're trying to get a better handle on things, and the fact that we've had steady staff has been a big help. Before that, there was a lot of turnover, and that's not ever good when you're trying to support a population ... emotionally."

Peace House, founded by Sister Rose Tillemans of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, offers three meals a day; Loaves and Fishes rents the building in the evenings and serves dinner. Clients can receive haircuts, hand massages and group meditation. Conversations are led by staffers on topics such as existing in public places as a homeless person, staying hydrated in the summer heat and the availability of public toilets.

Antoine Thornton, who has played dominoes at Peace House with a group of friends he's known for more than a decade, turns his nose up at meditation time. He has problems with the bathrooms too, how there are only two and how long people keep them occupied. There are racial tensions, he said.

But if Peace House were to close, Thornton predicted its clientele would crowd nearby 1800 Chicago Avenue, Hennepin County's walk-in behavioral health center, or "they might be putting these tents up, or they'll be right on the sidewalk, nobody knows."

"Everyone who walks through this door right now, in the last three years, has been through very tough problems," said Lloyd Peoples, another Peace House dominoes player who helps his brother run Massie's Mobile Mission, a nonprofit supplying homeless people in St. Paul with food, clothes and hygiene products.

"Our community is kind of flooded with drug addiction on a major scale. This place over here is doing the best they can, but when it comes to your drug addiction, it makes it very difficult. They're balancing a lot of different people with different needs here in this house."

Hennepin County Commissioner Angela Conley dropped in on meditation time last month to provide information about the county's cooling centers, including every library. She also wanted to see how Peace House was holding up after hearing it had been receiving larger numbers of daily visitors than ever.

"We have to be honest with ourselves ... fentanyl is taking over everything, and we have to have a response that recognizes that," Conley said. "Unfortunately, we have bulldozers, we have concrete and we have [high-barrier] shelters. We have to be willing to change the way we think about unsheltered homelessness, change the way we think about the providers who support people who are unsheltered, and then make dollars readily accessible to keep their doors open."