Obviously, that’s starting to change now, which is a welcome sight for everybody. What the neighborhood has experienced over the past year may not be an increase in statistics so much as in the visibility of certain behavior, with skyways, fast food restaurants and libraries closed. I think some of the concern in the neighborhood was because of seeing an increase in nuisance activity and crime related to the pandemic. The biggest difference between these people and anyone else is that they don’t have the money to have options to go places. For these people, everything is highly visible, everything is public-their relationships, their maladaptive behaviors, any chemical dependency or mental issues they might struggle with. During COVID, the people who were out and about did not have any place to go during the daytime before we were here. How do you respond to those complaints, and what should be done about them? There have been residents and local business owners raising voices in recent months about increases in crime in the blocks surrounding the Freedom House location since it opened in January. We want to take people at their word in a world where they are too often met with distrust and help them problem solve. We believe in radical hospitality, which means we aim to say yes. It would help homeless people enormously if they didn’t need to travel from, say, the town in which they live in South Dakota-or Edina or Bloomington-to the Twin Cities so that they can get a shower, charge their phone, and wash their clothes.īut as essential as the tangible things we offer are-the showers, the food, the coffee, the clothes and laundry machines- they’re all secondary to the human interaction, to looking someone in the eye, remembering their name and asking how they’re doing. Paul from all over the state and region to get these resources. If more places like this opened, the volume and activity would go down here. The more places that exist like Listening House, the better off we are. Many homeless people have overnight jobs, and since shelters typically close during the daytime hours, there isn’t another place for these people to go to sleep and get ready for the next shift. Showers and sleep are two crucial parts of our role, though there is a lot more to it than that. How to you view the role of Listening House in St. I wanted to be a part of a model to help people that could be replicated. I learned from my experience that people need autonomy, they need choices, and it’s not up to people like me to decide what those choices are and how much autonomy you get. I decided I wanted to have a hand in building institutions that were good to work and volunteer at and in making sure nonprofits didn’t fall into traps of paternalism and repeat cycles of white supremacy. Eventually, I went back to school for a masters in nonprofit management, and I saw how much I liked the business side. I transitioned after that to working as a property manager for a building called the Archdale which offered services for homeless people and runaway youth, then worked in the disabilities sector. It’s difficult to maintain a sobriety program, for example, or to take your meds, if you don’t have a home. Without that help, people often end up homeless. I saw that the difference between my situation and the people living there was financial-it was $1,000 to get your car fixed or access to a basement to crash in. I got a job working the front desk at the Hotel Continental in downtown Minneapolis, which was transitional housing for single adults experiencing homelessness. It was exciting, but I found I didn’t have time for anything else that was important to me, so I decided I wanted to get a job I could punch in and out of while I made up my mind about what I wanted to do with my life. I had been working part time for a political affairs firm, doing polling and advanced teamwork with organizations like the White House and Secret Service. I was a political science major in college, unsure the direction I wanted to take. What drove you to get involved in working serving homeless people? Molly Jalma, executive director of Listening House, joined the organization in 2020 after working in housing and social services outreach throughout the Twin Cities. Paul Fire Department’s “Freedom House” building (296 W. Paul that provides hospitality and resources to homeless people during the day, a time when most shelters shut their doors, opened in a new location last January in the St. Listening House, a nonprofit based in St.
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