Living in a vehicle on a St. Paul street with her children and grandchildren was the last place Kim Washington wanted to be, but she said she had no other options.

Residents kept calling police, asking officers to check on the young children in the sport-utility vehicle. Then last week, two officers started to get the family help.

They made calls and recruited colleagues and agencies to help. But there was no space in homeless shelters. A police commander put up the family at an East Side hotel for a night with her own money. The family got other money to stay at the hotel until Thursday; they hadn’t found a place to go next.

Then, a man who’d heard the story arranged Wednesday for Washington and her family to go to his church’s emergency shelter.

Washington, her children and grandchildren are among an increasing number of families seeking help at homeless shelters, but there aren’t enough beds for everyone, said June Jordan, senior program manager of Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis Housing and Emergency Services Division.

There were 69 families on a shelter waiting list in Ramsey County in August, she said. Those families usually “couch hop” at friends or relatives, sleep in cars or behind garbage bins, Jordan said.

‘NOTHING OUT THERE’

Officers Mary Alberg and Theresa Spencer, who patrol together on the East Side, said they encounter plenty of homeless individuals but usually don’t see families with young children on the street.

“We have our regular homeless people we know about and I think we all run into families that are barely holding on and they’re being evicted or they don’t have food, and all of us help where we can,” said Alberg, an officer of 18 years; Spencer has been a St. Paul officer for 20 years.

“A family with three young children living in the car — I don’t see that very often.”

It was eye-opening to the officers that they and others couldn’t find help for Washington.

“We said, ‘We’re going to get on the phone and get this worked out,’ thinking we had the magic pill, but it was like banging our head against the wall,” Alberg said. “There was nothing out there.”

MIXED RECEPTION

Washington, 46, said she fled domestic violence in Florida to return to her home state of Minnesota. She said she had a good work record as a bus driver but lost her job after her fiance came to her work and caused problems; she said she also missed work because of domestic violence.

She packed her SUV with her 3- and 12-year-old children, and her 20-year-old daughter, who has two children of her own — ages 1 and 2. They arrived in St. Paul in the start of August.

Driving across several states, Washington said, she looked for shelter along the way and locally, but found nothing. Six people sleeping in the vehicle “was extremely hard and nobody wants to do that,” Washington said, “but I felt there weren’t any more options.” She used the small amount of money she had to get food.

Washington parked her SUV on a street not far from Lake Phalen, and police got eight calls about it between Aug. 18 and Sept. 8 from at least seven people, Spencer said.

Washington said she’s had negative feelings toward police through the course of her life, and some interactions with officers in St. Paul didn’t go well.

“I felt like being homeless isn’t a crime,” she said. “I felt like I hadn’t broken the law, but they approached me like I had.”

But there were also officers who were kind and who tried to help, Washington said. They would check on her family, bringing pizza, books for the children and extra blankets, she said.

“It made an awesome difference,” she said. “You don’t feel so invisible.”

COPS CHIP IN

Spencer and Alberg responded to a call about Washington on Labor Day. When another call came Sept. 8, they volunteered to respond and started to look for solutions.

“They were not going to give up on keeping the family together,” said police Cmdr. Jill McRae, in charge of Eastern District patrol.

At the end of the day, McRae paid for an East Side hotel room for the night for the family.

“It bought us some time and I was thinking short-term — let’s get these kids somewhere that they can get a bath, maybe watch some TV, be kids again, be safe,” McRae said. She said she thinks every officer has bought food for someone in need, especially children, but they don’t usually talk about it.

While Washington was staying at the hotel, Alberg brought the woman to her house and washed her family’s laundry. Spencer joined them and made food for Washington to bring back to the hotel.

Alberg has a son the same age as Washington’s 12-year-old daughter, and he sent books to the girl because she loves to read. Alberg is trying to collect winter clothes for the family, and is spreading the word about it on Facebook.

Police say that people who want to drop off clothes for the family can do so at the police department’s Eastern District, 722 Payne Ave., from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays.

MORE SPACE PLANNED

In Ramsey County, homeless families looking for space had to go from shelter to shelter, but the system changed at the start of the year, said June Jordan, the Catholic Charities senior program manager.

Now, families are directed to call Coordinated Access to Housing and Shelter (CAHS) at 651-215-2262. Catholic Charities is the program’s lead organization.

First, a “diversion specialist” brainstorms with the family to identify other safe places they could go, such as a friend or relative’s residence, Jordan said. If they can’t find one, they are referred to a shelter or put on a waiting list. Waiting lists are the reality.

Roughly 100 shelter beds are available in Ramsey County for families, and 69 families were waiting for beds in August, though the count of individuals was much higher, Jordan said.

CAHS is for families, while homeless individual adults often go to the Dorothy Day Center for help. The center, which wasn’t built for overnight use, has places for 250 people to sleep, though it is usually full or beyond capacity, said Therese Gales, Catholic Charities spokeswoman.

Catholic Charities plans a 278-bed facility that would include emergency shelter and pay-for-stay beds, along with 193 units of permanent housing, Gales said. It will be near the existing Dorothy Day Center and replace the current building.

The project’s first phase costs about $30 million, and the total project will be at least $65 million. Catholic Charities has about $6 million in public funding so far and $8 million in private pledges, Gales said. Construction is to start next summer.

HELP FOUND

Kim Washington apparently found help Wednesday, after a man she’s never met saw a story about her on the news and he called upon his own networks. Tony Scheuerman phoned a St. Paul police officer he knows, Reino Rantila, to make sure Washington still needed assistance.

Scheuerman then contacted his church, St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi, about getting Washington and her family into their emergency shelter.

Rantila went to the hotel Wednesday afternoon, to pick up the family and their belongings because Washington’s vehicle is not working, and the officer drove them to the church.

The shelter is in Oakdale, and St. Andrew’s began using it in 2012, said Liz Schreier, executive director of St. Andrew’s Community Resource Center. The shelter houses up to seven families, but “we are usually full, unfortunately,” Schreier said. They don’t have a waiting list and ask people to call back if they’re full.

Families go through an intake process, and Schreier said she couldn’t confirm whether Washington or any particular family was staying there.

The shelter is privately funded through donations and grants, Schreier said. Families at the overnight shelter are brought to St. Andrew’s Community Resource Center each day to work with a case manager, developing “a goal plan to get a job or get housing,” she said. “It’s to get their independence back.”

Washington has said she wants to get a job and feels she’s employable. She said she’s worked as a bus driver, as a women’s advocate at a domestic-violence shelter, as a housing specialist at a charitable organization, and in medical assistance.

Scheuerman, who is executive director of the InSports Foundation in Burnsville, is also trying to get Washington’s SUV fixed. He called Christian Weinhagen, general manager of Weinhagen Tire Co. in St. Paul, who he knows through the Rotary Club of St. Paul.

Weinhagen said he’s going to see if he can assist with Washington’s vehicle.

“That’s what’s so great about St. Paul — there’s so many people who want to help,” Scheuerman said.

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.

Clarification: The photo captions on this story original said the family was moving their belongings to St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in Mahtomedi. The church was just a step along the way to a shelter in Oakdale.