Rakyia Kennedy-Marshall finally feels a sense of relief for the first time in three years.
Times have been tough for the 36-year-old, her husband, Marcello, and their children. The family became homeless in October 2017 and has stayed wherever they could land on any given night — in a car, a music recording studio and more recently at temporary shelters in Dakota County.
This past spring, Marcello was laid off from his job because of the pandemic. Six months ago, the couple welcomed their fourth daughter while staying at the Dakota Woodlands shelter in Eagan.
“It’s been very, very hard for us,” Rakyia said.
Then the family got the break they needed. On Oct. 1, they became the first residents of Cahill Place, a new 40-unit apartment building in Inver Grove Heights that’s unique to the county because it provides permanent supportive housing for families who are experiencing homelessness.
And its opening could not have come at a better time, according to county officials who say the COVID-19 pandemic has brought on an increase in homelessness.
Last week, Cahill Place housed eight families, and another two are to move in this week. By January, the building should be at capacity with up to 200 people living in its two- and three-room apartments. Rent for families will be covered through a combination of a third of their monthly income and Section 8 vouchers.
Cahill Place is a partnership between Duluth-based Center City Housing Corp., which owns the building and provides the supportive services; River Heights Vineyard Church, which sold land to Center City at 75 percent of the appraised value; and several governmental and nonprofit agencies.
Construction and project financing for the $13 million apartment building — located on Cahill Avenue north of 78th Street — came from the Dakota County Community Development Agency, Minnesota Housing, Minnesota Equity Fund and the Metropolitan Council.
Dakota County Social Services will pay for the 24-hour on-site support services, which are estimated to total $650,000 annually for residents.
Supportive housing developments like Cahill Place are the single greatest housing resource need for families experiencing homelessness in Dakota County, said Evan Henspeter, social services director.
“Services include things like on-site child care and early childhood learning experiences, job search assistance, connection to case management and a whole range of support that is really intended to help families not just find stability in their new home, but also to thrive,” he said.
ADDRESSING A GROWING PROBLEM
Dakota County is seeing a steady increase in people experiencing homelessness since the start of the pandemic.
In the first quarter of 2020, the county’s street outreach team had contacts with 296 people living outside. In quarter three — July, August and September — the number rose 83 percent, to 459.
“That’s a big uptick, and that’s a concern,” said Madeline Kastler, the county’s deputy director of housing and community resources. “In addition, we’ve seen a parallel increase in the number of families requesting to get onto our family shelter wait list.”
Kastler said the pandemic-induced homelessness can be blamed largely on the competitive housing market, which has resulted in a shortage in vacant apartment units, and a decrease in shelter capacity across the metro area as congregate shelters have had to reduce the number of people they help for safety reasons.
Emergency shelter is an extremely important resource to get people off the streets, Kastler said. During the winters of 2017 through 2019, the county worked with a group of four churches that hosted 24-hour temporary shelters on a rotating schedule.
But in April the county transitioned to a hotel-based shelter due to safety concerns of the congregate shelter approach during a public health emergency. The county now has 104 hotel rooms throughout Dakota County that serve as temporary shelter space.
The county will use its $1.6 million in CARES Act funds to pay for the hotel rooms and connect them with additional help such as mental health and chemical dependency services. When that federal coronavirus relief funding expires Dec. 1, the county plans to use a combination of levy dollars, federal COVID-19 response dollars and state grant money with the goal of getting through 2021.
“We’re really thankful that we’ve been able to create and maintain hotel shelter capacity for the moment because we understand that the pandemic is not going anywhere any time soon,” Kastler said. “It’s not a forever solution, but for right now we’ve got the partnerships with the hotels and we have that capacity, despite the fact that we could use more.”
Eviction prevention is a big piece of the housing continuum puzzle, Kastler said. Due to the economic impacts of COVID-19, she said, there is a significant risk of housing loss when the statewide and federal eviction moratoriums expire.
So in late July, in order to help people stay in their housing, the county started a program and with county and state CARES Act funding to make more than 500 rent and utility payments — totaling $850,000 — for people in need.
“Eviction prevention services are the cheapest and least traumatic part of our homeless response system and one that we are putting a tremendous amount of emphasis on right now,” Kastler said.
CHANGING THE WORLD
The idea for Cahill Place first came to Peter Benedict, a pastor at River Heights Vineyard Church, five years ago while he was on a run on church property.
“I felt like God said, ‘You could use this land to serve the community and change the world.’ So I brought it up with our council, staff and volunteers, and everybody loved the idea of trying to figure out a way where we could sell it,” Benedict said. “We’re not in the business of making money; we’re in the business of serving.”
Benedict reached out to the Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing and told them River Heights would like to sell three acres at below value to someone who would carry out the church’s mission of serving the community. MICAH connected Benedict with Center City Housing Corp., which was already in discussions with Dakota County on creating a place that would offer permanent supportive housing for families.
Standing in the lobby of Cahill Place this past Wednesday, Benedict said he nearly cried a few times earlier in the day during a virtual grand opening of the apartment building.
“And I’m not a crier,” he said, “but it feels pretty amazing. It’s tremendous to be here and see the lights on and people moving in.”
People like Rakyia Kennedy-Marshall, who said she is “so thankful and appreciative” that she now has a stable home for her family and that they can take advantage of everything that Cahill Place has to offer.
“This next journal of my life being at Cahill is going to be so much better because we have the workers on site, we have the daycare on site and the girls can play on site,” she said. “It’s just all this help that I’m going to take advantage of.
“I’m trying to be a better me. I just don’t want to look at the place. I want to feel like the place — new, too.”