Late last week, St. Paul city officials said they were increasingly worried about how the onset of wintry weather was affecting a camp of homeless people at the base of Cathedral Hill, and hoped to come up with a plan for them over the next couple weeks.

Early Tuesday morning, they took action: police officers and workers from the Department of Safety and Inspections visited the encampment alongside Interstate 35E and handed out fliers.

“To protect your health and safety,” the flier told campers, “this site will be permanently cleared at 10 a.m. on Thursday, November 15th. You are required to vacate the site and not return.”

Any items left after that date would be considered abandoned and disposed of, the flier added.

“It’s been determined by the Minnesota Department of Transportation that it’s no longer a safe place for them to be,” said Ricardo Cervantes, who leads DSI, which is coordinating the response to the camp. “And we agree with that.”

Cervantes added that he was concerned about how the tents were being heated as temperatures dropped, given the three fires already reported at the camp.

Previously, Cervantes had said the city would avoid a forceful approach.

“The mayor has stressed that there will be no evictions,” Cervantes said in late October. “We’re not going to require people camping to move, without the ability to provide some options.”

MnDOT spokesman Kevin Gutknecht said Tuesday: “We (the state and city) came to the mutual agreement that it was probably time for this site to be closed. And as the landowner, we are the ones that have to say that it has to be closed.

“I don’t know either what the long-term answer to this is,” Gutknecht added. “But we do believe that if we allow those folks to stay there, it’s not safe for them. It’s weather, it’s Minnesota, where were they last year at this time? … It just doesn’t seem like it’s right for them to stay there.”

Some homeless advocates are upset by the decision.

“The shelters are full. Their choices are either the (Metro Transit) trains or somewhere else outside. Should they just go to another neighborhood? Which one?” said Monica Nilsson, a former chair of the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless, who was at the camp Tuesday morning. “I want people to be aware of this shell game with people’s lives.”

Also Thursday, a Ramsey County-run “safe space” night shelter in downtown St. Paul is expected to expand by 14 beds. City officials appear to have focused many of their hopes on the space, which opened Nov. 1.

The shelter hasn’t solved the problem. With its 50 current beds constantly at capacity, and dozens of tents remaining at Cathedral Hill, homeless advocates say that many of the new beds to open later this week will likely be reserved for agencies like Metro Transit. Even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t be enough.

Cervantes said the allotments “are not hard and fast … they have the ability to adjust.” He added that some of the tents at the camp also appeared to have been abandoned.

Regardless, given the number of shelter beds available, “It’s a drop in the bucket,” said Brian J. Molohon, spokesman for Union Gospel Mission.

Added Nilsson: “To have five people move off the trains, and have 25 people move onto the trains, that doesn’t seem like a good solution.”

SHELTERS FULL

The flier pointed campers to the city’s two perennial options: Catholic Charities’ downtown Higher Ground shelter, and Union Gospel Mission.

Both have been consistently at capacity for months, as well. Current residents at both are able to reserve their beds for another day — and newcomers have to show up hours early in the off-chance that a current resident doesn’t show up.

“For immediate relief, it becomes much more difficult. Especially with the turn in the cold weather, we’ve been filling up nearly every night,” Molohon said of Union Gospel Mission. “There’s a few exceptions. … We still certainly would want folks to come on down.”

Catholic Charities spokeswoman Therese Gales said the Higher Ground shelter is “typically always full except for some summer nights during the first week of the month.”

Additionally, while some people at the camp say they’ve been banned from those options, others point to the fact that at Higher Ground they’re separated from partners of the opposite sex, and unable to bring in large amounts of belongings, such as shopping carts. Some said they were loath to leave all they owned tied to a tree, unattended.

One longtime homeless resident, who identified himself as Joe C., said he remembered St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter visiting the camp some time ago.

“He said, ‘I’ll make sure everybody down here is housed.’ … Now, here come the cops.”

“Mayor Carter has been explicitly clear that these folks be treated with dignity,” Cervantes said. “What we’re trying to tell them is for them to get connected, if they haven’t gotten connected.”

Adults without children, as everyone in the camp appeared to be, can get on a wait list for long-term housing assistance from Ramsey County by calling 651-647-2350.