As homelessness grows, so do fences around the Twin Cities

Outside the Minneapolis Central Library, a public seating area is decorated for the winter holidays, with festive evergreen boughs and red dogwood sticks.

And it’s surrounded by tall metal fencing.

So are some sidewalks in Minneapolis and public stairways that lead down the Kellogg Boulevard hill to downtown St. Paul. Fences have gone up around a shuttered former CVS Pharmacy in St. Paul and the former Lake Street Kmart in Minneapolis.

As the visibility of homelessness has increased in the Twin Cities, so have fences. Those putting up fences say they are a way to balance safety and livability, preventing nuisance behavior and the establishment of camps. But others are concerned the reliance on more fencing blocks public walkways and amenities and lends an inhospitable appearance that could further negative perceptions of the cities.

“This is raising the flag, in some respects — the white flag,” said Edward Goetz, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs. “This is an acknowledgement, perhaps, that there will be homeless people. We will not solve that problem. And given the fact that we’re not solving the problem, we have to make these changes to the built environment in order to minimize the perceived negative implications.”

Homelessness is increasing in the United States and in Minnesota. A new U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development report found an 18% increase in homelessness between January 2023 and 2024. In Minnesota, that number rose by nearly 10%.

The Twin Cities aren’t the only places where fences are going up in response. The Minnesota Department of Transportation has also installed fencing in Duluth. Officials in New York and Washington state and Los Angeles have installed anti-homeless fences.

Enrique Velázquez, Minneapolis’ director of regulatory services, said fences are a relatively low-cost way to balance the need to preserve property and community livability, while also working with people to find stable housing.

Minneapolis has installed fencing in some areas around the city to prevent people from forming encampments, including around the former Kmart property on Lake Street. Minneapolis has also installed fencing on city-owned residential properties to keep out nuisance behavior.

Velázquez said response from neighbors is generally positive.

“They would rather have that versus living next to an encampment with smoke and all sorts of debris being blown into the air, and putting up with some of the other activities that come as a result of camps being there,” he said. He characterized encampments as smoke screens for activities like theft, vandalism, and human and drug trafficking that take advantage of people living in them.

Velázquez said the city is looking at using landscaping as a more aesthetically appealing approach to deterring encampments in some spaces.

Fencing was installed around the outdoor seating area at the Minneapolis Central Library at the request of Minneapolis police after the area became a 911 call hot spot, said Ben Shardlow, the chief of staff for the Minneapolis Downtown Improvement District.

The seating area was built as a small public theater space. Eventually, it became a hangout for people doing and selling drugs, often after they had been kicked out of the library for doing so.

“The disruptive, anti-social, unsafe behavior that was happening in the library [was] now happening right outside of it,” Shardlow said.

Shardlow said the fencing there now is more attractive than previous fencing, and decorations similar to those elsewhere along Nicollet Mall were added to spruce up the area. He said it’s clear the spot’s design is an issue, and that the district is discussing its future with local officials.

Fencing may contribute to negative perceptions of the cities, Goetz said, without addressing the issues that cause homelessness or providing solutions, like more affordable housing or shelter space.

“It can produce a sense of lack of control and fear in people that whole environments are being adapted to keep people out,” he said. ”I just think it contributes to kind of a negative perception of social control and safety in public areas.”

Whatever problem the fencing is trying to solve, it’s creating others, said Becky Alper, a Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board commissioner representing parts of south Minneapolis who has been a critic of anti-homeless fencing.

“It looks like you’re in a war zone,” Alper said. “These are not decorative.”

One that particularly bothers her is a MnDOT fence blocking the sidewalk at Franklin Avenue under Hiawatha Avenue, requiring pedestrians to walk an extra quarter- to half-mile.

She said that rather than taking the detour, she sees some pedestrians walk around the fence in the street on Franklin Avenue, and she’s worried for their safety.

“It makes it super inhospitable to be in these areas and it also is a major disincentive to starting a business,” Alper said.

St. Paul has not installed fences to keep homeless people out of spaces, said Casey Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Safety and Inspections.

But MnDOT installed fences that block sidewalks and stairways leading from the top of the Kellogg Boulevard hill to downtown St. Paul. Those prompted discussions on Reddit weighing safety, pedestrian concerns and the needs of homeless people.

In a statement, MnDOT said the fences were installed for safety reasons.

“MnDOT cares deeply about the health and wellbeing of all Minnesotans and keeping all Minnesotans safe is our top priority,” MnDOT said in a statement. “Highway right-of-way and roadways are not safe places for human beings to live.”

In response to a question about the cost of fencing, MnDOT did not provide a number but said cost varies based on location.

As homelessness has grown more visible in St. Paul’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood, commercial building owners have also installed fencing.

In recent years, Menards installed a tall black fence around much of its parking lot fronting University Avenue. It also bricked off a stairway that led pedestrians from University Avenue to the store, prompting the ire of some neighbors. Menards did not respond to a request for comment.

Down the street at University and Snelling — one of the busiest intersections in the Twin Cities — a CVS store that closed in 2022 and had become a hot spot for loitering is now boarded up. This fall, the store’s owners installed a fence surrounding the parking lot at the request of the St. Paul Police Department, said Justin Lewandowski, the organizing director of the Hamline Midway Coalition, a neighborhood group.

“It looks terrible, but beyond just how it looks in the aesthetic of the neighborhood, it’s only shifted the problem,” Lewandowski said. The closure of the CVS has moved unhoused people from the CVS area lot to the now-vacant funeral home across the street, and toward Spruce Tree Centre.

“We need to talk about systems change, but the frustration in the neighborhood is, ‘What are we actually able to do today?’ Unfortunately, that’s the reality of the situation,” Lewandowski said. “Fences only push the situation away from a designated geographic area.”