Homeless camp residents in Cedar-Riverside find local governments shifting responsibility for them

Encampment occupants and neighbors pleaded for a portable toilet for six weeks

Dec 20, 20220

Brian Peterson, Star Tribune count

Mase Jackson, who has lived in a tent in the shadow of downtown for three weeks, said people were using buckets to go to the bathroom until the city installed portable toilets.

As human waste piled up near a growing homeless encampment in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, local residents, business owners and City Council Member Jamal Osman begged multiple layers of government for a portable toilet for its occupants.

Ushered from one agency to another, they eventually got the port-a-potties after six weeks with the intervention of a state legislator.

"This was such a ridiculous experience, to be constituents of all these levels of government and just to be feeling completely crazy," KJ Starr, director of the West Bank Business Association, said before a community meeting Friday at the Brian Coyle Neighborhood Center.

https://www.startribune.com/homeless-camp-residents-in-cedar-riverside-find-local-governments-shifting-responsibility-for-them/600237296/