The Gordon Center Overview:

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WHAT

The Willard School (in particular, the Gordon Center) has been proposed to be used as a high-volume, short-term, high-turnover, emergency shelter. This unprecedented zoning proposal creates a lopsided women-only housing corridor on the Northside and lacked input from the community or our BIPOC leadership on the Northside. We believe this proposal is well-intentioned but ultimately misplaced. This proposal asks the Northside to divert a needed asset from the community (space for youth programming, next to a playground) to meet the County's desires for temporary housing, without regard to feedback from the community it is purporting to serve.  We hope our voices are worth the few additional months of time it will take to find another location. If there can be flexibility on this placement, the community would stand behind this proposal. 

Despite the optics of being "for" women of color, women in BIPOC leadership positions are firmly in opposition to this proposal.

• Kerry Jo Felder, our School Board District President is against this proposal.
• NRRC, our largest neighborhood council, stands against this proposal. The Jordan council and many others, stand against this proposal.
• The former Director of New Haven (which runs St. Anne's, the only county-funded women's shelter in Minneapolis) stands with the Northside 
• A Mothers Love, Mad Dads, Guns Down Love Up, and many other local BIPOC grassroots organizations stand against this proposal. Northside leaders find the Application for Land Use disturbing as it creates an impression to the City Council that there is Northside community support, a support that this proposal firmly lacks.

COMMUNITY CONCERNS: 

• Out of three women-only shelter/transitional housing locations across the City of Minneapolis, two of them are within a single mile of the Willard School site.  30% of homeless folks report having last had a N. Minneapolis address. 37% of people experiencing homelessness identify as Black. If this proposal passes, almost all women-only shelters and transitional housing for the city of Minneapolis will be in North Minneapolis. All three will be within a mile of each other.

 

• There are no emergency shelters within a low-density R1/2A neighborhood in the city of Minneapolis. Emergency shelters in Minneapolis are either in commercial or mixed-use areas, or are directly adjacent to commercially zoned areas. The proposed shelter at the Gordon Center is not next to any such commercially zoned property and is squarely within residential homes. It is in a children's park, however no children or families are allowed. All this flows from the fact that the city’s low-income Black and BIPOC neighborhoods have been marginalized in the zoning process in the past and have few other avenues to affect housing development policy or other city investment decisions. This has resulted in zoning oddities from liquor stores where they should not be, and now an emergency, high-volume shelter in a children's park. See comparison visuals here ​

 

• This short-term, high-volume, crisis shelter will be closed during the day, making its clients leave each morning to enter a residential neighborhood with no coffee shop, public library, grocery store, or social space within walking distance. There is not a place to buy food or water, a public restroom, or a heated public building within walking distance. This does nothing to serve the critical clients' daily needs. This lack of access is why shelters of this short-term nature are in mixed-use locations. Without bus fare, these residents are stranded at a neighborhood park. While Northpoint is nearby, most emergency shelter residents are allowed to stay for too short a time to make use of many of the services it provides. For all other daily or immediate needs (e.g. to buy a sandwich or stay warm) they must get on a bus and have bus fare available.

   

• It will not allow for families or children; most Northside-specific housing needs center on women-led families and women with children. 

   

• The shelter works against the 2040 zoning goals the city has for the Penn corridor and community feedback solicited for the 2040 zoning plan. The zoning goals are diametrically opposed to this proposal, as is the Hennepin County commissions’ own statements supporting the 2040 zoning goals. This shelter does also not comply with current or future community-identified needs as cited in Penn corridor community-solicited feedback. Feedback that was not solicited for this proposal

 

• There are no community agencies, particularly BIPOC leaders on the Northside, involved in this project, a deeply concerning difference from other successful shelters in our community.

 

• The current administrator of the initiative has changed since this proposal and is now the Salvation Army as several local agencies bowed out. The Salvation Army has a long history of transphobia and a womyn-only shelter deserves better than the standards of care demonstrated by the Salvation Army. To say this choice of administrator is problematic is an understatement. Trans community activists have not been engaged in the dialogue or selection of the service provider, just as the Northside was not engaged on the unprecedented and irregular zoning placement within our neighborhood.

 

• The city has received 4.5 million in emergency COVID funding to find usable space for this shelter; enough money to buy or rent another building for shelter needs rather than paying those funds to convert this space from its natural use. Both initiatives can be accomplished. The city can find another location for this shelter and the Northside community can utilize the school to serve it's youth which it has asked to do for years. This could be a win/win rather than a lose/lose for the Northside.

 

Timeline of the (lack) of Community Notification

NOTE:

• This timeline indicated the violation of the approval process required by the city. To see those notification requirements, click here
• To donate to our legal fund to file an injunction based on the lack of BIPOC community engagement or legal notification click here
• If you're wondering why this timeline does not match with Irene Fernando or other official statements, we hope they are simply confused about the timeline themselves. The documents we cite by Appendix are here. You can see a fact-check of the timeline represented by Commission Fernando by clicking "Fact Check Fernando" in the tab above.

Nov. 12, 2019: Date Land Use Application for the Gordon Center deemed complete
            Appendix document 1
 
Nov. 12, 2019: Letter from Margo Geffen to NRRC president Martine Smaller and Jeremiah Ellison requesting a community meeting for Nov or Dec 2019
            Appendix document 2
 
Nov. 13, 2019: City of Minneapolis approved the request to submit the Land Use Application
            Appendix document 1
 
November 25th 2019: Margo Geffen states NRRC, Councilmember Ellison, and residents within 350 feet were sent a letter indicating the Dec. 5th vote with the Zoning and Planning Committee. Because the notification indicates the hearing will be held Dec. 5th, the notice is sent less than the 15 day and 21 day notification requirements.
 
November 27, 2019: Letter asking for an extension for the 60-day decision period until March 13,2020
            Appendix document 3
 
Dec. 5, 2019: Zoning and Planning Committee meeting were to vote on the application but moved the vote to the meeting of Jan. 9, 2020 (Jeremiah Ellison present). There is not a second notice sent to NRRC or the community indicating the change and new date of the hearing.
 
            Appendix document 6
 
Dec. 5, 2019: Land Use Application Summary submitted to the Zoning and Planning Committee notes that “Staff is not in receipt of public comments regarding the proposed shelter”
 
Dec. 9, 2019: The county goes to standard, monthly NRRC RCTF meeting on December 9. The idea is presented to NRRC as an idea or exploratory conversation. Neither NRRC or the city publicize or flyer the neighborhood about this meeting. Feedback at this meeting is not recorded or submitted with application.

• Dec. 19, 2019: Final date to submit notice to registered neighborhood group, NRRC (21 days before Jan.9 vote). This notice was not sent.

 

• Dec. 24, 2020: Final date to submit notice to residents (15 days before vote Jan.9 vote). These notices were not sent.

 
Jan. 9, 2020: Zoning and Planning Committee meeting voted on application delivered by Shanna Sether, motion was approved. No notice was sent to the community or NRRC about this rescheduled vote.
NOTE: Jeremiah Ellison absent – no one at the meeting who voted represents the Northside
            Appendix document 7
 
January 17, 2020: City Council meeting – approved the approval from above Jan. 9 Zoning and Planning Committee
            Appendix document 8
 
January 30, 2020: First publicized community meeting about “proposed” women’s shelter held at Robert J. Jones Urban Research and Outreach Engagement Center with Jeremiah Ellison and Commissioner Conley
NOTE: This meeting takes place AFTER the city council has already approved the plan. The community meetings must take place before approval. Announced on Social Media pages of Angela Conley and Jeremiah Ellison. Verbiage still describes a “proposed” shelter.
Appendix document 9
 
July 30th, 2020: Northside Residents Redevelopment Council meeting to discuss the Gordon Center
            Appendix document 9
 
July 31, 2020: Irene Fernando, Hennepin County Dist. 2 issues first Public Statement on Planned Shelter at the Gordon Center
            Appendix document 10