Ten days ago, this space opened up to provide
housing to people who are displaced and unsheltered.
Using hotels for emergency housing is an obvious
answer.
They are largely vacant as we enter an economic
depression in the midst of a global pandemic.
There have been emergencies facing this community
for years.
The uprising in Minneapolis was an acutely
dangerous situation for people who are unsheltered.
And we were able to provide housing for people
to get through
some of the scariest days that we’ve seen in this city.
People came in from the street having been
shot at.
People came in from the street being chased.
People came in from the streets talking about
the KKK visiting their campsites.
And today, it’s clear that our time at this
hotel is over.
We were able to open the door to a space.
We were able to house people through a crisis.
We opened a door and demonstrated some possibilities.
This is the time for the city, for the state,
for the county, for the nonprofits, for the
philanthropists to step in.
We demonstrated the clear need.
We housed well over 200 people.
As of this morning, we had 427 people 
on the waitlist.
We’ve had a massive increase in homelessness
driven by unsheltered homelessness in the Twin Cities.
There is no room in the shelters.
We call every night to see if there are shelter
beds, and the shelter beds are generally full
by 9:00 in the morning.
This has been a crisis.
This has been a failed system.
And we had no other choice than to try to
find some kind of space while the curfew was
descending and the National Guard was invading
our city.
There was nowhere for people to go.
We had no choice.
We turned to a space that we identified as
a space
that was in the neighborhood that we could use.
George Floyd was a shelter worker.
He worked at the largest shelter in town for
about three years.
A number of the people that were staying in
the Sheraton, or the former Sheraton, knew him.
There is a resident here that was present
when he was murdered by the police.
And George Floyd is the person that gave us
the power to make these opportunities happen.
We have to — we have an obligation to create
the world that we want to live in.
We’ve been seeing that it’s a possibility.
It took burning down a police station to convince
the county that we needed to open up some
more options, and it still wasn’t enough.
It’s clear that people still have nowhere
to go.
