Upcoming expansion of Kimball Court Apartments fuels anxiety in struggling Hamline-Midway

The proposed expansion of a supportive housing complex in St. Paul's Hamline-Midway neighborhood has neighbors questioning the nonprofit owner's ability to manage it.

Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative wants to upgrade Kimball Court, a historic former hotel that was nearly taken over by trespassers in 2022 before the nonprofit housing provider instituted 24/7 security and clawed back control.

But amid an uptick in 911 calls this year, nearby residents are distressed about the nonprofit's ability to manage a larger facility as Hamline-Midway continues to struggle with the aftershocks of 2020′s civil unrest, when the neighborhood suffered the heaviest damage in St. Paul.

"It's not a NIMBY neighborhood," said Brian Mondy, a local resident who has participated in community meetings about mitigating drug use around Kimball Court. Most neighbors understand the need to help people struggling with homelessness and addiction, he said, but are coming from "a place of desperation" for Hamline-Midway — a neighborhood replete with vacant storefronts and more overdoses than anywhere in Ramsey County outside of downtown St. Paul, according to the county's Opioid Response Initiative.

"If Beacon was going to do [the expansion] right, and it was going to be this great housing resource for people, then I think a lot of people would be like, 'Awesome, great, we want that here,' " Mondy said. "The concern is, given what we know about them, will it be? If it's not, we don't seem to have that much recourse."

Beacon Interfaith provides more than 750 units of deeply affordable housing for Minnesota's most vulnerable people. It has owned the 76-unit Kimball Court, a century-old former hotel, since 2010. Kimball Court follows the Housing First model, an evidence-based strategy favored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to get people off the streets and into basic housing without requiring sobriety.

Just before COVID-19, Beacon proposed adding 22 new apartments as part of long-overdue rehabilitation plans. City staff received nine letters of support from neighbors and six in opposition to Beacon's application for a permit. Then the pandemic arrived and everything was put on hold.

Along with every other major provider of affordable housing, Beacon found its clientele hard-hit by mental health crises, the opioid epidemic and slower economic recovery than in better-off segments of society. Annual police calls to 545 Snelling Av. reached a high of over 400 in 2022, when a broken security system allowed nonresidents to come and go as they pleased and the building became a drug market in full view of neighbors.

A staff whistleblower video on YouTube displayed photos of graffiti on the walls inside Kimball Court and sewage in the bathrooms. Beacon acknowledged the troubles in a blog post, apologizing for becoming "part of the problem" in Hamline-Midway.

Beacon hired a new security company experienced in working with chronically homeless people. It promised a zero-tolerance policy for drug dealing on the premises and more neighborhood clean-ups. Police calls plunged to a pre-pandemic level of 113 by the end of 2023.

Signs of decline

But this summer, residents are complaining of old problems intensifying across the neighborhood. There's overt drug use in the crannies of the vacant CVS at Snelling and University avenues. Midway Books has begun to keep its doors locked and buzz in individual customers.

The funeral home across the street from Kimball Court is for sale after staff predicted that the despair in the neighborhood would force it out of business after more than 100 years. With five months left in this year, police calls at Kimball Court are back up to 112.

In the midst of this, Beacon is again pursuing plans to expand Kimball Court onto the vacant property next door at 555 Snelling Av. It aims to start construction by December.

That has neighbors worried, said Andrea Suchy-Shinn, a neighbor and manager of a small rental property near the apartments. Over the years, she said, many in the neighborhood have wondered whether people struggling with addiction were receiving meaningful services at Kimball Court.

"Beacon shouldn't be allowed to expand until everyone can say, 'This really helps people and doesn't cause more harm,'" Suchy-Shinn said.

The proposed expansion is under review, said Casey Rodriguez, a spokesman for the city's Department of Safety and Inspections.

He said neighbors don't have an opportunity to weigh in because recent zoning code changes allow supportive housing facilities in that part of the city without the need for a conditional permit. Residents would have the chance to appeal after the site plan is approved, Rodriguez said.

Beacon says expanding Kimball Court would help further stabilize it, said Kevin Walker, the agency's vice president of housing development. The expansion would create offices for the on-site service provider Avivo, which now works out of an apartment, as well as common spaces for residents to socialize indoors. There will continue to be 24/7 security, Walker said.

"This building was not fundamentally designed to serve this population that we're trying to serve," he said. "We want to reconfigure the building to better deliver on what a best practice design would be to run a high-fidelity harm-reduction building like this."

Honesty about reality

Beacon CEO Chris LaTondresse met the Star Tribune at Beacon's newest supportive housing apartment, Bimosedaa, in downtown Minneapolis, presenting the neatly refurbished building with its rooftop hangout and community kitchen as examples of what he hopes to bring to Kimball Court. Bigger picture, he said, is that Beacon must improve the quality and safety of its housing stock to continue fighting against the tide of unsheltered homelessness.

"It's not a straight line to get there, especially against the backdrop of evolving community needs and all of the complexity that goes into delivering something like this," LaTondresse said. "We never in the past had to have 24/7 on-site security in order to do this Housing First model. It's a new cost of doing business and there's no public funding sources."

Justin Lewandowski, organizing director of the Hamline Midway Coalition and a former Beacon staffer, acknowledged there were signs of hope within the organization, including its new CEO and a freshly formed workers union determined to right conditions.

In the past, he said, Beacon was too fixated on good public relations and not honest enough with the community about its challenges, breeding mistrust and causing some of Kimball Court's residents to feel demonized by their neighbors.

"One of the things we absolutely need to do is to create more space to talk about the realities that we're facing," Lewandowski said. "A lot of neighbors, had they known about the conditions inside of Kimball Court, would have rallied behind their neighbors in that building in a way that would have been transformational."

On Thursday afternoon, Kimball Court residents sat on their front steps, watching rush-hour traffic snarl Snelling. Kevin Burg and JJ Lopez, both of whom had moved in less than a year ago, said the stoop is where they sit for lack of common space inside.

Longtime residents recalled Kimball Court becoming a "trap house" a couple years ago, Lopez said. These days, he finds it safe, modest but normal. He doesn't have many complaints.

"It's better than sleeping outside," said Burg, who used to live on the streets of Minneapolis.

Beacon representatives will attend a community meeting with the Hamline Midway Coalition on Aug. 28 to provide an update on efforts to improve neighborhood relations.