Joe Soucheray: On a cold winter’s night, no shelters open?
Minnesotans should excel at keeping people warm, especially homeless people.
There are certain things that Minnesotans should be good at: making a hotdish, attending the State Fair, plowing snow, wetting a fishing line, following road construction detour instructions and complaining about the Vikings if they blow it in the playoffs.
These are givens and I’m sure people can add their own inalienable truths. You live in Minnesota and you get these things straight.
Where Minnesotans should not just be good at it, but excel, is keeping people warm, especially homeless people. We should be No. 1 in world rankings. This past week, mid-week, the wind howled out of the northwest, gusting to 50 miles per hour, making the temperature below zero. Tough day to be out, not to mention after dark. This was Wednesday and we got one of those once- or twice-a-year winter winds that bent the trees and rattled gutters and made creaking ghostly sounds in flues and vents. And that was inside a house with a working furnace.
Outside was not fit for man or drug addict.
Ramsey County has operated several warming centers, at Newell Park Building, at Phalen Activity Center and at the Union Gospel Mission. Union Gospel Mission was open until their 9 p.m. curfew.
Absent anyone from the Ramsey County Shelter and Diversion team telling me otherwise, Newell and Phalen were closed.
Closed.
Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher apparently knew the shelters were closed and sent out vans to the known pathetically inadequate camps in St. Paul and brought people to the county Law Enforcement Center.
“We had 90 people,’’ Fletcher said, “mostly men but also one dog and one cat.’’
They might have had 91 people but one of the vans detoured to the hospital with a terribly stricken fellow, by health, by life, by the cold, who didn’t make it and died of a heart attack.
Repeated calls to the Ramsey County Winter Warming Space office – “open nightly from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. through Feb. 28’’ – resulted in being placed on hold and being told all lines were in use. That’s understandable. It’s cold and I certainly couldn’t be the only one calling.
It is speculated by people who know such things that attorneys for the city and attorneys for the county are close to finishing an agreement or a policy or whatever and the shelters will open later this month. The wheels of government are bogged down by lawyers, too. It’s probably isn’t as simple as getting out there and unlocking the door.
What presumably might be at issue are questions about liability and whatever documents need to be in place to take people off the hook in the event of calamity. Or, it could be finalizing agreements with private vendors. Taxpayers, who often wonder what they are getting for their exorbitant taxes, might be wondering if the small print couldn’t have been settled in, say, July.
Later this month? If that is the case something was forgotten. This is Minnesota. Decembers are rarely balmy. And we excel at keeping warm, or should.
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