For the better part of four years, Rachel Roweol has eyed the vacant, red brick structure next door to Catholic Charities’ Dorothy Day campus with a kind of wonder. A sizable, century-old dormitory-style building sits unused directly next to a homeless shelter and low-income housing facility. The irony of empty housing sharing a block with the poor and unhoused does not escape her.

The prospect of transforming Mary Hall into 88 units of housing, half of it geared toward the recently homeless, has raised hackles in some corners, but Roweol — who is disabled and rents a studio from Catholic Charities — mostly wants to see resolution.

Facing pressure for more affordable housing to help those experiencing homelessness in St. Paul, Catholic Charities is looking at selling Mary Hall, pictured Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, for development into 88 units of affordable housing for the very poor with supportive services for the recently homeless. (Devanie Andre / Pioneer Press)

“I’ve been hearing that for quite some time now,” said Roweol, 60, expressing frustration. “Do it or don’t do it.”

For weeks, the leadership of the Assumption Church in downtown St. Paul has led efforts to block a new affordable housing complex from taking root in Mary Hall, which is owned by Catholic Charities. Some church members have said the area is already too saturated with homeless residents spilling from the campus onto surrounding streets, and adding 88 apartments for the very poor will do little to help downtown or residents in need.

Church drops opposition

That fight appears to be over.

In a two-page letter to his parish, the Rev. Paul Treacy recently indicated that the church will abandon efforts to block zoning relief for Aeon’s planned affordable housing project, which in late June earned the support of the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals. The church had been scheduled to make its case during a public hearing before the St. Paul City Council on Aug. 7.

“We have used the appeal process to explore and learned more,” writes Treacy in the letter, dated July 27 and obtained by the Pioneer Press on Friday from a parishioner. “Aeon has secured approvals and funding, and we have reasonably concluded that an appeal would be unsuccessful, especially with a tight timeframe. We also realized that most of our concerns are beyond Aeon. Continuing an unsuccessful appeal process could put at risk important conversations if there is an attitude that ‘the matter has been voted on.’”

Catholic Charities declined comment this week but said they had prepared a public statement, expected Tuesday. Aeon also limited comments to prepared statements in the past two weeks.

Open drug sales — and a security fence

Treacy said he had met with Catholic Charities, St. Paul Police and other officials in recent days, and hoped for further dialogue about how to best support the homeless while also deterring open drug sales, litter and vagrancy, which some downtown residents and church-goers have called overwhelming. Catholic Charities erected a temporary chain-link fence around its courtyard by the Higher Ground facility this summer and plans to install a permanent fence next year, but Treacy called the fencing a setback rather than an improvement.

Some homeless visitors on Friday agreed.

“When you see it, it feels like Guantanamo Bay,” said Marcus Shaw, 45, emphatically, between drags on a cigarette. “A woman got hurt real bad recently (by a guy) over a lighter or something. Fence or no fence, he was going to hurt that woman.”

Shaw, however, said he supported the prospect of converting Mary Hall into housing, provided there were appropriate services for the mentally ill.

“They need housing,” he said. “They’ve got to be watched at the same time.”

Khadra Ali, 30, has been homeless for three years. Standing under the shade of a tree across the street from the Dorothy Day campus on Friday, Ali shook her head from side to side upon hearing about resistance to the repurposing of Mary Hall, which has sat empty for most of the last four years.

“This place can’t house everybody,” she said, motioning toward the emergency overnight shelter and low-income units at Higher Ground. “Do you know how many people eat here and live here? I would live here if I could. It’s always full.”

‘Families living out of their car’

Joe Scanlon, a parishioner with Assumption Church, has devoted much of the last four years toward fellowship with homeless residents at the Catholic Charities facilities and the Listening House day shelter. He’s of the mind that the very poor absolutely need more affordable housing, but that units should not be clustered together downtown, next to a homeless shelter. Concentrating needs in one street or neighborhood does nothing to help an addict get away from her dealer, or a victim of abuse get away from her abuser.

“There are some perfect families — no drugs involved — living out of their car,” said Scanlon on Friday, pausing to check on a man in a wheelchair who had been complaining of foot pain. “The whole family stays here on the weekends, and during the week the kids are in foster care. Where do mom and dad go? Back to their car. Dad works when he can.”

He said he’d like to see services spread further out throughout the city, and also installed in suburbs to help residents stay close to home when they have needs.

Many of the visitors to the Catholic Charities campus on Friday said they did not grow up in St. Paul, or even in the Twin Cities.

Frustration and support

Steve Loeding, a longtime condominium owner at the downtown Pointe high-rise on 10th Street, said he is at once supportive of affordable housing and fed up with vagrancy downtown. He emailed the St. Paul mayor’s office and his city council member Friday to complain that police presence had let up too much by the 10th Street light rail station, the state human services building and elsewhere along Cedar and Wabasha streets.

“Trying to walk downtown to the Walgreens is a dangerous, disgusting trip,” he wrote. The front steps of the Church of St. Louis, King of France on Cedar Street are “covered with trash and lined with drug dealers. The Cedar Avenue side of the state human services building got so full of trash before they recently cleaned it up and took all the furniture off the patio. It seems like the druggies are taking over and winning and forcing things to close or take out amenities.”

Still, reached by phone, Loeding said he had no qualms about adding more housing for the very poor at Mary Hall. “That’s fine, I don’t care about that,” he said Friday. “As long as they have people in the building to kind of supervise things, that’s good.”

Cassidy Zeiler, 29, said she lived with her boyfriend and roommate in Roseville until the latter was evicted, and it was his name on the lease. She and her boyfriend ended up at the Higher Ground facility, and then her boyfriend went to jail. Sitting with a female friend and her small white dog on a concrete retaining wall, Zeiler marveled that anyone would argue more housing would leave the homeless too saturated.

“Well, what do they call this?” she said, looking around a courtyard where groups of homeless residents sat socializing in groups of twos and threes. Directly across from her, a man who identified himself as “Bam Bam” asked her some unwanted questions, and she stood up and left. He later walked off as well, yelling loudly and repeatedly into the air at no one in particular.

Robert Kaylor, 72, said he visits the courtyard daily, selling shoes, clothes and food to the homeless. He, too, objected to the new fencing, calling it jail-like, while lending praise to the idea of redeveloping Mary Hall into apartments. “It’s a good idea, but not how they did Mary Hall before,” Kaylor said. “Give people rent and a room.”

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