At 5:15 pm, President Ken Schaefer, called the meeting to order at the Pool and Yacht Club. Ken thanked the volunteers helping at the meeting, Deb Katzmark was the greeter, Heidi Fisher for her introduction of guests and Happy Dollars, Jim Hart for the Inspirational Minute and Four-Way Test Jim spoke about his experience with his nephew’s family recently and quoted a poem by EE Cummings, “fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting”. Our amazing IT tech team of Rob Thomas and the scribe, Linda Mulhern. We had a couple of guests Marg, who is a member of the Oshkosh Rotary club and previous president of the St Paul club, and Lucky Lee, who is a member of the Stillwater club. We also had Klaudia, our youth exchange student from Slovakia and Mary Schaefer, the wife of President Ken.
Kevin Nye, a writer and advocate to get rid of homelessness, spoke to the club. He is the Housing Director of National Faith Coalition to End Homelessness. He said it touches everyone, be it a family member or seeing people without homes on sidewalks and parks. It thrives on invisibility to the public even though we see it daily. He is looking for faith communities to help with the issue and to change the mindset about the myths of homelessness.
How do we understand the root causes of homelessness? Most people note addiction and mental health issues, but there are other issues also playing a role. People often do not have safe locations to call home and will often sleep in a car or couch surf. The most common age of people that are homeless are infants and seniors due to living on a fixed income and costs continue to rise. Mental health is not the root cause, but it is like “musical chairs” with each round, someone losing a place, so society will often blame the victim or are not helping enough. The cities with the highest homelessness are some of the highest incomes cities in the United States, including New York City, Los Angeles, San Franciso, and Seattle. Homelessness is a lack of housing problem. Here in the Twin Cities, it takes years to build homes for people. The AMI (Average median income) determines how well we can house people needing help with high housing costs. In the Twin Cities, we can help people who have incomes in the 80% range of the AMI, most of the time, but the actual need is helping people who only have an income in the range of 37-50% of the AMI and we have not been able to meet that goal yet.
Kevin is promoting the idea of YIGBY (Yes in God’s back yard), rather than NIMBY (Not in my back yard), such as converting old hotels into housing units to help with increasing the housing stock. He noted that HUD (Housing and Urban Development) was once one of the largest departments in the Federal government and the federal government understood that providing housing access was important up until 1980, but at that point, since then, the money has dwindled to just scraps. We need to have an understanding that it shouldn’t be “us” versus “them”, because homelessness affects everyone. Many people are working multiple jobs to earn enough for housing, and it still may not be enough. On 10/11/26, the National Faith Coalition will be asking religious institutions to learn more and share knowledge and opportunities to service their local community. Currently, 25 denominations are involved, and they would like to increase that number.
Kevin was given a certificate for his time by Ken and money will be donated to the YMCA homeless youth program. There were several Happy Dollars; Dick and Pat Hartford will celebrate their 58th anniversary, Al Zdrazil asked to borrow a laptop for a presentation, Dave Dominick celebrated the life of his dog that was put down recently, Brianna Haglin talked about her step-daughter showing llamas at the State Fair, Tricia Wiitanen talked about the upcoming Book Club meeting on the second Wednesday in November, Pete Grayson was at the fair with the Roseville Rotary Club and also over extended himself with Pilates with his wife, Dana Bruce reminded that people could join the Park Conservatory, and Linda Mulhern asked that members remember Klaudia if they will be attending a play or professional/college athletic game to learn more while in the United States.
Klaudia pulled the ticket for the sparking wine fund raiser and Beth Naughton won!
Upcoming meetings:
9/8 – Patrick Plonski – Books for Africa
9/15 – Kathleen Biggins – C Change Conversations
9/23 – The Community Forum at the Minneapolis Club – Resilience in Uncertain Times
9/29 – Gina Lindquist – The Drawer
11/10 – Dave Dominick will talk about the St Paul Foundation status
12/3 – Holiday Party at Union Depot
The meeting was adjourned at 6:05 pm.
Linda Mulhern
