Unsheltered man on the danger posed by extreme cold: ‘This just gets the coverage’
A man sips a coffee at a Ramsey County Winter Warming Space in downtown St. Paul on Thursday, Dec. 23. (FOX 9)
SAINT PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - It was approaching 11 p.m. on Thursday night and the trickle of people arriving at the Ramsey County winter warming space in downtown St. Paul was beginning to increase, with small groups of men and a few women forming a line to check in at tables by the front door.
Outside, it was dangerously cold. The temperature was 9 below zero in downtown St. Paul with a wind chill of 33 below zero, cold enough to produce frostbite in about 30 minutes, when an older man in a wheelchair came in holding his hands in front of him. The tips of his fingers seemed discolored, and he was in obvious pain.
Rick Nyquis, the supervisor of housing stability in Ramsey County, had been helping the new arrivals, answering questions, coordinating with county staff on his walkie-talkie, and giving out fruit snack packets and pouring coffee. Now, he was on his cell phone as he knelt by the man, asking him questions, reassuring him and relaying information to paramedics. They arrived soon afterward and took the man to the hospital.
The low murmur of conversation in the room had grown quiet. The unsheltered people in the room who spoke to FOX 9 were all aware of the risks of frostbite, injury or death associated with being outside in the extreme cold of Minnesota winters.
The cold can be deadly. As recently noted by MinnPost reporter Ava Kian, there has been a sharp rise in cold weather-related deaths in Minnesota, with statistics from the Minnesota Department of Health showing the toll rising from 12 in 2002 to 62 in 2019.
"It's dangerous. You can lose fingers and toes, especially with mental illness and without finances to be prepared," said Jim, 47, a machinist who has been unsheltered for about a year. "Especially with mental illness problems, you can end up losing basically everything you have except for a T-shirt and pants. And to be honest, I've seen that out here."
The Ramsey County winter warming spaces, open from 9:30 p.m. to 6 a.m., are not shelters and do not have beds, but they provide a place where people can get warm, have coffee and watch a movie while coming and going as they please.
"The goal is to get people warm, that’s really all we’re trying to do, save some lives," Nyquis said.
There are three warming spaces in St. Paul — downtown by the Union Gospel Mission, on the East Side at the Phalen Activity Center, and another in the Newell Park Building in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood, which is geared toward women, families and youth.
Nyquis says they’ve seen demand grow steadily since launching on Dec 1, with 140 people using one of the warming spaces on Wednesday. Many of the people who come to warming spaces either prefer not to use shelters or can’t get into one.
Shelters across the state have seen demand rise over the last two years as housing protections implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic ended. In October 2020, there were 4,513 people in the emergency shelters in Minnesota. The number had risen to 5,029 by October 2022, according to data from the Institute for Community Alliances.
Currently, there are 31 families on the shelter waiting list in Ramsey County.
"There's just not a lot of opportunity for shelters around the cities to help people who are experiencing homelessness for whatever reasons, there's a limited amount of bed space and we open these to hopefully get people off the street," Nyquis said.
Jim said he appreciated the service provided by the warming spaces.
"It's warm and there's a little bit of snack, and it's a place to lay down and get some rest that's safe for my body…it's just the humane thing to do. It’s needed for humans in this type of weather. It's really important," he said.
‘The cops would just throw away people’s things’
However, as one man in the group pointed out, it’s not just the extreme cold that poses a danger for unsheltered people.
"This just gets the coverage because it’s so much more deadly, but it starts to get dangerous as soon as it gets into the 30s and 20s," said Frank, a 44-year-old man from Minneapolis.
Academic research shows he has a point. A 2017 study on the impact of cold weather on the mortality rates of unsheltered people in Poland showed their risk of death increases by 321% in cold weather, or when temperatures drop below 47 degrees, with the greatest risk actually occurring during moderately cold temperatures between 32 and 8 degrees.
The researchers noted only a small percentage of the deaths in their study were from hypothermia. The stress of cold weather on the bodies of unsheltered people seemed to make deaths from underlying health conditions, such as cardiovascular problems, more likely.
Frank is new to Ramsey County, having previously been unsheltered in both Duluth and Hennepin County. He sat in the rows of chairs in the middle of the room, watching "Friday," the 1995 movie starring rapper Ice Cube, as it played from a TV.
He said he has lived in several encampments in Minneapolis over the years and has had his belongings lost in "sweeps" — including things he needed to stay warm, like his sleeping bag. Sometimes, he recalled, individual officers were "patient" and allowed him to gather his property, but often that wasn’t the case.
"The cops would just throw away people’s things, stuff that was donated, stuff that was needed," he recalled.
At least in the warming space, everyone’s things seemed reasonably secure. People mostly kept to themselves, exhausted from whatever had led them there. The warming space became quieter as time passed, with many dozing in their chairs or lying in sleeping bags by the sides of the room.