Poverty sucks. And, as many of you know, I believe one of its cruelest forms is homelessness.
Every night in Minnesota, thousands of people are excluded from having a home.
Children sleep in cars with their families. People living with severe and persistent mental illness survive on our streets or in encampments. Women and unaccompanied youth flee domestic violence only to find themselves in shelters, hoping they can eventually secure a home beyond their abuser’s reach. People living with traumatic brain injuries are also disproportionately affected by homelessness.
Each of these stories is different, but they point to the same reality: too many of our neighbors cannot find the housing—and, in many cases, the services—they need not simply to survive, but to build stable, fulfilling lives.
That leaves me with questions I just can’t shake: Why isn’t every child experiencing homelessness treated as an emergency? Why have we grown numb to seeing people with severe mental illness living outdoors? Why have we accepted that someone can work full-time and still be unable to afford a place to live in the community they help sustain?
When a political controversy erupts, it can dominate headlines for days. Yet homelessness—something that affects thousands of Minnesotans every single night—rarely receives the same sustained attention. Imagine if every new case of homelessness prompted a press conference where people experiencing homelessness could ask elected leaders one simple question:
“What are you doing to abolish homelessness and ensure everyone has access to safe, affordable housing?”
Homelessness, as it has grown dramatically over the years, has been made a complicated challenge. But complexity should never become an excuse for complacency. Addressing it requires more housing. It requires supportive services. It requires stronger mental health systems, better resources for people fleeing domestic violence, and policies that make housing affordable for working families. Most of all, it requires the determination to treat homelessness with the urgency it deserves.
Charity matters. Shelters matter. They save lives. But they were never meant to be permanent solutions. Our goal should be something much greater: making homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring.
This is about politics. It is about priorities. Above all, it is about political will.
It is about deciding what kind of communities we want to build: communities where teachers, nursing assistants, restaurant workers, child care providers, retail clerks, and countless others can afford to live in or near the places where they work. Communities where children don’t go to sleep in cars. Communities where people living with mental illness receive treatment and support instead of being left to survive on the streets.
I know I keep coming back to the same question, but I can’t let it go:
Why isn’t this treated like an emergency?
