Hearthside is a new Minneapolis shelter created with one simple belief at its center: every person deserves a safe place to land, be seen, be known, and begin again. As the first shelter of its kind that I am opening in Minneapolis, Hearthside is being built with care from the ground up—not as a one-size-fits-all solution, but as a thoughtful, layered response to the different needs of people experiencing homelessness and housing instability.

Hearthside is needed because shelter cannot only be about surviving one more night. Across Minneapolis, Hennepin County, and Minnesota, people continue to face housing instability because emergency shelter, affordable housing, supportive services, mental health care, employment support, and long-term housing options do not always meet people in one coordinated place. Even when progress is being made, there are still youth, adults, families, couples, and individuals who need more than a bed—they need continuity, dignity, and a path that does not disappear after the first intake.

Too often, people experiencing homelessness are asked to repeat their trauma, retell their story, re-prove their need, and restart the process every time they walk through a different door. Hearthside is being designed to do the opposite. We want to be the shelter that remembers people’s names. We want to remember their stories from the first week they stay with us. We want a couple, a young person, or an adult walking back through our doors to feel that they are not starting over every time—they are returning to a place that has been paying attention.

Hearthside will include two distinct campuses: one designed specifically for youth and one designed for adults. This matters because young people and adults often need different kinds of support, different environments, and different paths forward. By separating the campuses, we can create spaces that feel safer, more appropriate, and more responsive to the people they serve.

The separate youth and adult campuses are part of that commitment. Youth need services that understand development, safety, education, family conflict, identity, trauma, and the risks that come with being young and unhoused. Adults need support that recognizes employment barriers, health needs, relationships, disability, aging, recovery, and the long road many people have already walked. Couples and close support systems also need to be treated with humanity, not automatically separated or made to feel like their relationships are a problem. Hearthside will be built to see the whole person and the real-life connections that help people survive.

From day one, Hearthside is committed to doing things differently. We are looking closely at every piece of the shelter experience: how people are welcomed, how safety is created, how dignity is protected, how support is offered, how relationships are respected, and how each person can move toward stability at their own pace. Every level of the design is being considered clearly and intentionally, because the details matter when people are trying to rebuild their lives.

Our goal is to create more than beds. Hearthside is being built to become a place of warmth, structure, practical resources, and hope—a place where youth and adults can access support that respects their experiences and helps them take meaningful next steps.

Hearthside is also being designed to be the shelter that is truly there for the client, not just during intake or overnight hours, but throughout the process of trying to get stable. We want to think ahead with each person and ask what they actually need to take the next step. That may mean helping someone find clothing for work, school, appointments, or changing weather. It may mean making sure someone has access to food, hygiene items, transportation support, documents, referrals, or someone who can sit with them and help them understand their options.

We believe support should be practical, personal, and consistent. If a client is hungry, we should be thinking about food. If a client is cold, we should be thinking about clothing. If a client has no identification, no phone, no transportation, or no safe place to keep important papers, we should be thinking about how to connect them with real help. Hearthside’s goal is to look at the whole picture instead of only the immediate crisis in front of us.

But Hearthside will not stop at emergency shelter. Emergency shelter is necessary, especially when someone has nowhere safe to sleep tonight, but it cannot be the final answer. Hearthside is being created with long-term living solutions in mind: pathways into stable housing, supportive living options, practical case management, and partnerships that help people move from crisis into permanence. The goal is not to manage homelessness forever. The goal is to help end it for the people who come through our doors.

We also know that homelessness is not only an individual crisis—it is a policy crisis. People cannot be housed if the laws, funding systems, and housing structures around them keep failing them. That is why Hearthside’s work will include advocacy and lobbying at the state and federal level. We will push for laws and policies that help people get housed, stay housed, and access the support they need before homelessness becomes the only option left.

This means Hearthside is being built as both a place of immediate refuge and a voice for long-term change. We want to serve people in crisis while also challenging the systems that leave people without stable housing in the first place. We want to design better intake, better follow-up, better living options, better advocacy, and better accountability. We want to look at every piece clearly so that nothing is done simply because “that is how it has always been done.”

Opening Hearthside will take work, resources, partnerships, and people who believe that shelter can be more humane, more organized, and more effective. We are going to do our best to do everything we can to get this shelter system opened and started the right way. That means fundraising, building community support, listening to people with lived experience, planning carefully, and refusing to treat homelessness as something that can be solved with short-term thinking alone.

Hearthside is not being created just to open doors. It is being created to build a system of care that can grow, improve, and stay accountable to the people it serves. We want clients to know that they are not invisible, that their needs matter, and that someone is actively thinking about how to help them move forward—not only for tonight, but for tomorrow, next month, and the life they are working toward.

Another part of doing things differently is building the right tools behind the scenes. Hearthside is working toward developing an app to support operations at both the corporate level and the shelter level. The goal is to create a system that helps us stay organized, communicate clearly, track needs, support staff, protect client care, and make sure important information does not get lost. If we are going to remember people’s names, understand their stories, follow up on resources, and build a better shelter model, we also need strong operations that help the whole organization work together.

We are currently fundraising through GoFundMe to help bring Hearthside to life. The money being raised will go toward opening the shelter, getting people hired, purchasing a building, developing the operational tools we need, and starting everything it takes to launch this shelter system with care and stability. Every donation helps us move closer to opening these campuses, building long-term housing solutions, and creating a shelter model that is intentional, compassionate, and built for real people with real needs. Your support helps lay the foundation for a safer, stronger Minneapolis—one where people are not forgotten, where their stories matter, and where no one has to be left outside of care.