What residents of one Minneapolis homeless encampment need to survive winter
John, a volunteer with The Sanctuary Supply Depot, points to the kind of cold-weather sleeping bag the collective donates to unsheltered people living in encampments. (FOX 9)
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - While the debate over Minneapolis’ policy toward homeless encampments continues at the government center and on Twitter, residents at the Quarry encampment are doing what they can to prepare for winter as temperatures drop.
On Tuesday night, John Reps, a 42-year-old encampment resident from St. Paul, crouched down in an empty tent and used a safety pin to fix a black cloth over a mesh opening. The idea, he explained, was to prevent the wrong people from peeking inside what will soon be the encampment’s new supply tent, a central location where donations can be stored and distributed.
"So that people outside the camp, they don't just see it and come take it," he said.
John Reps uses a paperclip to cover an opening in a tent at the Quarry encampment in Minneapolis. (FOX 9)
For the past two months, Reps says he’s been a kind of informal leader, helping to push projects like the supply tent forward.
"In this encampment, we want people here who want to help themselves and help the community," he said.
The Quarry encampment is an ad hoc collection of tents in a grassy, wooded area behind the Quarry Shopping Center parking lot in northeast Minneapolis. It’s been there for about three years, with a regular turnover of residents. It’s about 100 meters end-to-end, with three clusters of tents and a central area sometimes used for community meetings. There are about a dozen people living there now, though the count can change from day to day.
At the moment, Reps is worried about keeping those people warm. The tent, along with the donations the group plans to store there, is part of the plan.
"Come wintertime, heat is a big thing for people. So propane, blankets, tarps, stuff like that. Definitely tarps and blankets."
Sanctuary Supply Depot
Many of those donations come via The Sanctuary Supply Depot, a mutual aid collective formed in 2020 that is based out of Boneshaker Books.
On Tuesday afternoon, Andy, a 25-year-old volunteer who lives in Minneapolis, stood in the Depot’s storage room and sorted donations — tents, heaters, and sleeping bags — that he was preparing for delivery. Collective members have faced harassment and had their tires slashed by people opposed to encampments, so he asked FOX 9 not to include his last name.
Andy has been working with the Depot for three years and says many members joined in the wake of the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
"There were a lot of people, especially who are trying to find their place after the Floyd protests because they wanted to make a difference in an on-the-ground way. But they weren't sure how to do that after all the protests wrapped up. So the Depot was one of those places because we focus on the most marginalized people, arguably, that we have in the Cities and you work directly with them," he said.
He says in his experience, encampment residents tend to focus on trying to improve their situation and get housing during the warmer months. Winter, however, is about one thing: survival.
"There is nothing else they want in winter except for heaters, tents, sleeping bags, blankets, wool socks, and gloves. Because just being outside 24/7 is really hard. So they don't have time to be trying to, you know, do extra stuff to try to not be homeless. They just need to eat and sleep and not freeze," he said.
The Depot keeps an updated list on Amazon of items people can donate. Their most pressing needs now:
- Cold weather tents
- Cold-weather sleeping bags
- Wool socks
- Heavy-duty winter gloves
Reps says winter also poses mental health challenges for encampment residents. He tells a story about one resident who, earlier that day, didn’t come out of her tent to pick up a donated propane tank — the kind used in the portable heaters by residents to keep the tents warm. He worries that when it gets colder, "She won’t come out to tell people when she needs it."
That, he says, could be dangerous. "You can freeze to death out here. Definitely cold," he says.
Besides the fast-approaching winter, another challenge facing encampment residents now is the risk the city could conduct a "sweep" and force them all to leave at any moment. Reps says he went through that experience a few years ago and lost property that was important to him.
"A lot of paperwork, a lot of pictures I couldn't replace, like of my mom and a lot of sentimental stuff because they when they come in, they give you, like, 10 minutes. Grab what you want and get out. So you basically lose everything that you have there," he said.
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Lowrider
To make getting around the camp and checking on residents easier, Reps uses a bike he calls a "custom stretched out lowrider" with a small motor on the front wheel. His dad taught him to work with cars when he was a kid, and Reps installed the motor himself.
"They have front-wheel drive cars; why not have a front-wheel drive bike? That’s what I do for a hobby, I put motors on bikes," he says.
Reps says he and his partner are on a Hennepin County waiting list for housing, but he still plans to help volunteer at the Quarry if he finds a new place to stay. Asked what encampment residents don’t need for donations, Reps says that "everything is useful" in its own way.
"We appreciate everything people give, but what people give that we really don't need? Candy. We don’t need it, but we like it," he said.
This article is the first in an occasional series about unsheltered people, encampments and how government and civil society respond in the Twin Cities.