Tammie Pollard’s rock collection glitters on a window ledge in the sunlight of her room. The 55-year-old particularly likes rocks with crystals or minerals.

“Whatever that catches my eye, it winks at me,” Pollard said. “So I pick it up and bring it home.”

For Pollard, home is the Family Service Center run by Catholic Charities Twin Cities in Maplewood. It’s one of two family shelters in Ramsey County for people who have nowhere else to go.

Pollard moved here last fall after a fire drove her from the apartment she’d shared with her two granddaughters. She said she spent three weeks on the streets before the Maplewood spot opened. She called it a blessing to find the room before the winter season turned bitterly cold.

“It’s my home away from home,” she said as clutched a large blue winter coat she got when she moved in. “It’s warm in here and I have a window view and [it’s] secure. I can’t complain.”

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With the season’s first subzero temperatures set to descend on the Twin Cities this weekend, housing advocates worry many others won’t be as lucky as Pollard to find a warm bed. Counties and nonprofits have struggled to keep up with the rising need for shelter among families and people 55 and older, and the weather ratchets up the stress.

Homelessness among families with children in Minnesota rose 27 percent from 2022 to 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Wilder Foundation’s 2018 homeless survey found older adults made up the fastest growing segment of Minnesota’s homeless population.

For those families who aren’t able to access shelter before the worst of winter hits, it can be deadly.

“We had periods over the fall of 2023, in particular occasions, individual nights when we actually couldn’t meet all the requests because we simply didn’t have available space for families,” said David Hewitt, director of housing stability for Hennepin County. “And that was a new situation for our community.”

Hewitt said the county has had to quadruple the size of its systems in the last 18 months because of the shortage of affordable housing. That includes finding space for 490 families and 900 children. 

Even then it isn’t always enough. Hennepin County has a “shelter all” policy, but for the first time Hewitt said they had to open up warming spaces as a contingency option for winter. 

‘Lucky to have gotten this place’

Families with children have priority for beds in a shelter, but sheltering families can mean hard decisions have to be made. Hoang Murphy, CEO of the Minneapolis emergency family shelter People Serving People, said the ideal is to maintain family units together but that sometimes there isn’t enough room to house large families in the same space.

“Are they going to split their families so that they don’t freeze to death?” Murphy said. “Those are hard, impossible choices that any family [shouldn’t] have to make. And it’s doubly hard when families have to potentially split up as a matter of basic survival.”

Murphy said his organization has also seen families staying longer in their shelters. They used to stay around 60 days; now the average is 80.

“Most of our families do have jobs, they are working full time, they are trying to find a place to live, it just simply is just not available,” Murphy said. “The market just is not available to them to find a place that is affordable for them.”

Across the metro area, there are long waitlists for families seeking shelter. Courtney Prescott just arrived at the Family Service Center after being on the wait list with a 2-year-old child and one on the way.

“I had been waiting,” Prescott said. “And so I was lucky to have gotten this place for sure, especially out of Ramsey County, because I know that a lot of their shelters are full.”

According to the county’s website, Ramsey is 15,000 units short of affordable housing.

Keith Lattimore, director of housing stability for Ramsey County, said his office is seeing an influx of people needing overnight shelter in winter. Last year, the county started providing warming spaces and transportation for people seeking shelter and their warming spaces have seen as many as 600 people.

“It’s not the most glamorous of what we can provide,” Lattimore said. “Certainly, we’d love to do more, but we have to be realistic about what we have available to us.”

Lattimore estimates that Ramsey County needs at least $10 million to maintain its current shelter and housing supports.

He believes more focus should be put on advocating for funding and policy designed to prevent families from getting to the point of needing shelters or transitional housing, but that’s work behind the scenes.

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“I think it is very visual when we see families that might be unsheltered. That pulls at the heartstrings of all of us Minnesotans,” Lattimore said. “But there’s also those individuals who’re on the verge of being homelessness that we don’t see. And it’s just as much work to try to make sure we advocate for those resources.”

Twin Cities housing stability leaders said the only thing they can do when shelters are full is hope people donate, advocate and help their neighbor if they’re struggling this winter.