Free housing, but no one’s home

09/20/2005

Bob Von Sternberg,
Star Tribune
September 20, 2005

Two weeks later, the welcome mat is still out in Bird Island.

But none of the guests have shown up.

Days after the devastation spawned by Hurricane Katrina became evident, officials and residents of the small west-central Minnesota town scrambled to fully convert a vacant city-owned convent into a comfortable long-term home for relocated Gulf Coast storm survivors.

Then, they waited. And waited some more. And as it has become obvious that Minnesota would not be the destination for thousands of refugees, they’ve continued to wait.

“We’re still ready, if anyone still wants to come,” said Mayor Paul Heyl, who jump-started the brainstorm that created the instant shelter. “There still may be a need for us, but this has been such a mess, there’s no way of knowing.”

The 1,200 residents of the city about 95 miles west of the Twin Cities had their housing up and ready for even before state officials had gotten a mass shelter at Camp Ripley in operating shape for the 3,000 people who were expected to seek shelter in Minnesota after last month’s storm.

Bird Islanders’ original thought was to ferry as many as 80 survivors down from Camp Ripley as soon as they were processed and set them up in ready-made apartments that had been created in the convent. After that first step, a network of volunteers hoped to find the evacuees permanent housing and jobs.

“We’ve got the money and all the donated services, computers, cell phones,” Heyl said. “If it ends up not being needed, we’ll either forward it to the Red Cross or put the stuff on buses and send it down South.”

Bird Island’s convent remains on a state-maintained list of available transitional housing sites, should any relocated survivors need it, he said. So it will remain ready for the foreseeable future.

The flood of refugees slowed to a trickle in this part of the country after many balked at the idea of relocating hundreds of miles from home in unfamiliar communities.

“It seems like these folks have gotten a lot of double-talk from the feds, who were labeling this as permanent housing, as opposed to housing just as long as people needed it,” Heyl said. “If I was hearing that kind of thing, I wouldn’t have wanted to move [here], either.”

He had nothing but good to say about the state’s short-circuited effort. “This thing was not in the state’s control,” Heyl said. “Whatever the feds were asking for, the state delivered.”

Despite the frenzy to meet a need that hasn’t materialized, “I’m not going to get frustrated if it means that people’s needs are being met down there,” Heyl said. “I still think we have a good service we can offer people here. I just hope there aren’t any unmet needs we haven’t heard about.”