Some Minneapolis City Council members and homeless camp organizers are criticizing the city for dumping piles of concrete rubble across two former sites used by Camp Nenookaasi, which was evicted from city lots three times in four weeks this year.
Minneapolis officials authorized trucks to dump the rubble onto sites at E. 26th Street and 14th Avenue S. and near E. 22nd Street and S. 16th Avenue “to deter encampments forming at those lots in the future,” according to a city spokesperson. The concrete was added either the day Camp Nenookaasi was evicted from the sites or the day after, according to the city.
Camp Nenookaasi organizers Nicole Mason and Christin Crabtree say the city’s actions show how little it cares to treat Camp Nenookaasi residents, who are mostly Native, as human beings.
“I’m really hurt that these human beings, these wonderful human beings inside these fences, did not count enough–did not matter enough–that we were replaced with scrap concrete,” Mason said at a February news conference.
Camp Nenookaasi is in its fourth iteration, and is located at S. 11th Avenue and E. 28th Street in south Minneapolis. About 50 people live there, according to Mason. The camp, which numbered about 160 people at one point, was evicted on January 4, January 30, and February 1 from city lots located within a few blocks of each other in the Phillips and East Phillips neighborhoods.
The city has previously used other objects to deter people from living on city land, including light poles and concrete barriers. However, the concrete rubble is new, Crabtree said.
Council Member Robin Wonsley posted a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, on February 6 showing a truck dumping rubble onto Camp Nenookaasi’s second site. It quickly garnered 43,000 views.
“There’s no way this could be real,” Wonsley said she thought to herself when she first heard about the rubble.
She confirmed that the rubble came from the city, and said she was told by city officials “that evaluation will be ongoing to see if they’ll continue it.”
Wonsley noted in her post that the city’s effort “solves nothing at staggering costs.”
Although the city has not given an exact amount, officials have said they have most likely spent “hundreds of thousands” of dollars to evict Camp Nenookaasi.
“What hurts the most is knowing that we could be doing things differently, and it’s a choice by the administration to double down on the cruelty of our evictions,” Wonsley said in an interview.
Council Member Jason Chavez, whose ward includes Camp Nenookaasi, called the rubble an “anti-homeless tactic.”
“This is money the council could reallocate to proven housing first strategies,” he said. “We deserve beautiful green spaces in Phillips, not blighted sights that are doing nothing to address homelessness.”
Chavez and Council Members Aurin Chowdhury and Aisha Chughtai are co-authors of three proposed ordinances that would change the city’s approach to homeless encampments. The proposed ordinances would provide health supplies to encampments, publicly report and track city resources, and create regulated “safe outdoor spaces” where homeless people can gather and live.
CORRECTION: The address of Camp Nenookaasi’s fourth site has been updated.
