How Avivo Village St. Cloud Helps Homeless Residents Find Permanent Housing

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- Avivo Village Central Minnesota broke ground on a new homeless shelter in St. Cloud a year ago, and now it is getting close to opening its doors.

Avivo Service Area Director John Tribbett says they are anticipating that by the third week in October their first shelter guests will start arriving.

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The facility has 48 individual units along with shared spaces like laundry facilities. It is not a drop-in facility, so anyone who stays there will need to be referred.

We work with county outreach teams and some of the other local shelters that have people not staying there consistently. We'll be working with those teams from Sherburne, Stearns, and Benton who know the city and know the people who are staying outside and really working with those folks who are struggling to come inside to a shelter space on a path to permanent housing.

How long they stay there depends on the level of help they need.

We are working very deliberately with people who have health concerns around mental health, substance use disorder, and physical health concerns. Both acute and chronic. It's hard to put a specific time frame with those individuals because oftentimes there is a need to stabilize several factors before folks can move into housing.

Tribbett says it is a 24/7 facility with at least three people working at all times, including a security guard always on duty.

Avivo will provide three catered meals a day to the residents.

Tribbett says that in addition to providing the residents all the services they need to move them into permanent housing, they'll also offer other programming.

Often, these people who are being labeled as scary or frightening are some of the kindest, most gentle human beings. When you sit them down, they love to do things like painting flowers on coffee pots or mugs, or play bingo, just simple fun things. That sense of community is a driving factor in helping people talk about themselves differently.

Tribbett says while this is Avivo's first shelter in St. Cloud, they have been in central Minnesota for many years providing job training and other programs. They have a large chemical and mental health division. Avivo's Ending Homeless program has a similar shelter in Minneapolis' North Loop. In the six years that facility has been open, Avivo has helped 375 people move into permanent housing.

Avivo is a nonprofit organization that works with state, county, and city governments for funding. They say the annual public cost to care for a chronically homeless person is over $35,000. The average annual cost per resident at Avivo Village is $20,000. Research shows that when people move into supportive housing, emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and healthcare costs all go down.

Community leaders began working in late 2022 to bring the Avivo Village model to St. Cloud. $7.65 million in state funding made the project possible. A long-term lease agreement with the city provided the project site.