St. Paul mayor skips encampment listening session amid harassment investigation

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her was scheduled to appear at a community listening session July 28 on the Aug. 5 closure of the Pig’s Eye Park encampment. She did not show, leaving Assistant Mayor Cedrick Baker alone to face an angry crowd at the North Garden Theatre.

Sexual Harassment Allegations Surround Mayor’s Absence

Her absence comes as St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry’s sexual harassment allegations against her, filed in an April complaint letter but only made public this week, have thrust the mayor’s office into crisis.

Henry’s complaint alleges Her made inappropriate sexual comments to him and other city employees, prompting the city to hire an outside law firm to investigate. Baker declined the Spokesman-Recorder’s request for comment on the allegations that Tuesday.

When asked why the mayor was absent from the listening session, Baker said the Mayor’s Office had concerns that one of the moderators may have been biased.

“We had a little bit of a back and forth with the organizers,” Baker said. “One of the concerns was the position of the moderator. I was told that this would be a situation where we would be able to have a neutral conversation.”

Safety Concerns vs. A 1,400-Person Housing Waitlist

The harassment investigation has amplified frustration among community members already upset over the city’s plan to clear an encampment home to roughly 120 people along the Mississippi River. Officials say the closure follows a safety assessment that detailed fires, sexual assaults, thefts and two overdose deaths at the site.

For many inside the theater, the numbers didn’t add up. Ramsey County Board Chair Rafael Ortega said the county has purchased just 48 shelter beds from Catholic Charities. Baker said the city is working to add capacity beyond that, but acknowledged roughly 1,400 people remain on Ramsey County’s housing waiting list.

Unhoused Residents Speak Out on Broken Outreach

Justin Demico Ford, who has lived at Pig’s Eye, said he’s gone more than a year without hearing from the Homeless Assistance Response Team.

“I haven’t heard from HART in over a year. I didn’t even do an assessment yet,” Ford said. “I get more help from the people from the community… That’s where our help is coming from. That’s where we feel more safe, at our neighbors. Not [with] the state, not [with] the city.”

Ford said he hasn’t seen any outreach workers from the city since the closure plan was announced earlier this month. “I have seen no one,” Ford said. “Please do more, because we need the help.”

Baker said 10 county staffers covering housing stability, financial assistance, social services and public health work the encampment daily, alongside three to four workers each from HART and the city’s Familiar Faces unit, plus People Incorporated’s ARC outreach team and RADIAS Health, which serves unhoused people managing mental illness or substance use. The county says it has assessed and found help for 18 people in the past week alone.

Ortega called the endgame “the toughest question anybody could ask me tonight,” adding the county can’t guarantee the effort will work for everyone.

Outreach Workers Detail Systemic Barriers to Trust

Seneca Krueger, an outreach worker who connects unhoused encampment residents to services that begin the process toward stable housing, said building that trust is complicated by practical barriers. Many unhoused residents lack the identification or paperwork required to qualify for free phone assistance programs, making it hard for outreach workers to stay in contact.

“It takes time, a lot of time, to build trusting relationships with people,” Krueger said. “That’s not a week. That’s not a month. That’s not even three months.”

Krueger said outreach workers need to show up consistently, checking in on court dates, housing referrals and family emergencies. They’re the ones who first earn a resident’s trust, she said, and it was painful to hear that multiple residents like Ford are having only “one-off connections” with outreach staff.

Audrey Segovia, a nurse with Hennepin County Healthcare for the Homeless Street Outreach, said she’s watched Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s administration mislead the public about the scale of unsheltered homelessness, and urged local lawmakers not to follow that path.

“I can tell you, as someone who’s day in, day out in East Phillips looking for people who I worked with for years to connect them to their housing referral, to connect them to their treatment referral, to connect them to their infectious disease care, it is not easy,” Segovia said. “I am really hoping that you can actually take the moment to look at how it is absolutely not working and how harmful Mayor Frey’s rhetoric has been about deploying into hot zones, lying to the media about how there’s 12 unsheltered people out at a given time.”

Community Demands Better Solutions

Ford turned directly to Baker, urging the assistant mayor to try something different.

“You said you did research and studies about the past evictions and stuff. Didn’t you learn that none of the stuff you did in the past worked? … I want to go home to my daughters. I’m sick of this. I need to get back to my family,” Ford said.

Ford then rattled off his PTSD and depression diagnoses.

“I started a nonprofit. I do more for my community than you guys do. I do more than y’all do. How is that?” Ford said. “The community should not have to come out and help us when you guys get paid for it.”

For the city’s response and more information, visit https://www.stpaul.gov/residents/citys-response-encampments.

Clint Combs is a freelance journalist and contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. He welcomes reader responses at combs0284@gmail.com.