U.S. Senator Tina Smith, MN Housing Organizations Unveil New Legislation to Build More Homeless Shelters, Upgrade Aging Shelters and Permanent Supportive Housing

In Minnesota, more than 6,500 people stay in shelters every night, with many shelters operating at or near capacity

WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) unveiled new legislation to help more people find a warm and safe place to sleep by increasing the capacity of homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing across the nation, while making critical repairs and upgrades to aging shelters and permanent supportive housing buildings. The Building and Maintaining Homeless Shelters Act would provide $1.5 billion in much-needed federal support over the course of five years. More than 8,300 people experience homelessness on a daily basis in Minnesota, and around 1,800 people can't find any shelter and are often forced to sleep outside.

"Homeless shelters and permanent supportive housing providers are being asked to do more with less at a time when homelessness is on the rise in big cities and small towns. It's not sustainable, and it's past time the federal government stepped in," said Sen. Smith. "This new legislation would increase funding for communities to build new shelters that meet their citizens' needs while also providing major upgrades to aging shelters. It would mean fewer people on the street and connecting more people to resources to find a place to call home."

"Addressing homelessness requires a full continuum of care, but services cannot succeed without adequate physical infrastructure. Minnesotans navigating homelessness know all too well the exhaustion of a system lacking physical capacity, for both shelter and Permanent Supportive Housing, the long-term solution that actually ends homelessness," said the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless. "Senator Tina Smith's Building and Maintaining Homeless Shelters Act delivers the capital support that shelter and housing providers desperately need to acquire properties, repair aging facilities, and build new permanent supportive housing units. This bill directly transforms the experience of those navigating housing loss by turning immediate crisis response into lasting stability and creates a real, permanent path home."

"The Minnesota Tribal Collaborative enthusiastically supports the Building and Maintaining Homeless Shelters Act. This bill would address some of the funding gaps that tribal nations experience when trying to provide a continuum of housing and services to our communities," said Christina Olsen with Minnesota Tribal Collaborative, which consists of 10 Tribal Nations working to prevent and end homelessness for American Indians in Minnesota. "American Indians are 30 times more likely to experience homelessness than non-Hispanic white persons. These racial disparities can be traced back to the historic trauma caused by the U. S. government's policies on American Indians. This bill starts to address these historical wrongs and will ensure that future generations of American Indians do not experience homelessness and instead thrive."

Nationally, more than 700,000 people experience homelessness. Last year, around 415,000 people stayed in emergency shelters and hundreds of thousands of Americans used permanent supportive housing to prevent homelessness. The Building and Maintaining Homeless Shelters Act will create a new grant program to help cities and towns respond to homelessness. These grant dollars could be put toward:

• Purchasing property to be used for a new shelter or permanent supportive housing.

• Rehabilitating aging shelters and making critical maintenance repairs to shelters and permanent supportive housing such as replacing old HVAC systems, repairing windows, replacing roofs and exterior modifications to improve safety and accessibility.

• Addressing other physical infrastructure needs to expand homelessness response capacity such as mobile health clinics, day centers, rapid rehousing and safe parking programs where people can legally sleep in their vehicles in monitored parking lots.

• Converting commercial buildings like hotels or motels into shelters or permanent supportive housing.

Sen. Smith has long been a strong advocate for solutions to homelessness as the top Democrat on the Senate Housing Subcommittee. She introduced the first bipartisan homelessness response legislation in decades, the Reducing Homelessness Through Program Reform Act, to cut red tape and create local solutions for addressing homelessness. She also introduced the Housing for All Veterans Act, legislation to permanently end veteran homelessness.

Sen. Smith also led her colleagues in condemning the "harmful and potentially illegal" changes to a program that helps people who previously experienced homelessness find more stable and permanent homes. The changes were specifically targeted at the Continuum of Care (CoC) and CoC Builds programs, which help keep 3,600 Minnesotans off the streets.

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