In light of heavy community opposition, Luther Seminary announced Monday it canceled plans to relocate Ramsey County’s 64-bed overnight emergency shelter from downtown St. Paul to its Stub Hall dormitory in St. Anthony Park.

“After receiving feedback from its neighbors, Luther Seminary has decided to cease its negotiations with Ramsey County,” read an announcement issued by the seminary. “Stub Hall will remain vacant as the Seminary continues its plans to sell the property.”

City and county officials, as well as shelter managers with nonprofit Model Cities, had planned a community outreach meeting at Luther Seminary on Tuesday evening. That meeting has been canceled, as has the county’s three-year lease, which was poised to take effect as soon as July 1.

The county, with the blessing of the city mayor’s office and other officials, had planned 64 beds to be used as their new emergency “Safe Space” shelter for homeless people removed from Metro Transit cars and other spaces late at night, with the expectation they would leave the premises each morning, likely through a shuttle arrangement. The county has operated Safe Space in a downtown government building on Kellogg Boulevard in various capacities since 2017, and with Model Cities as a partner since 2019.

Through a previous lease with Ramsey County, Stub Hall’s Hendon Avenue dormitory had housed homeless women and couples from December 2020 to June 2022, at a time the numbers of unsheltered homeless were soaring downtown, in part because shelters were limiting occupancy and many coach-hoppers were no longer welcome to stay with friends and family.

Some neighbors who had initially been supportive of the 2020-2022 leasing arrangement said that the situation deteriorated with time, as loitering men came to check on their girlfriends and other signs of vagrancy, littering and drug use escalated. Stub Hall has been vacant since June 30, 2022.

St. Anthony Park residents opposed to the new three-year lease, including a land use attorney, questioned why more outreach had not taken place before finalizing the new shelter arrangement, which was poised to take effect this summer. Officials with the St. Anthony Park Community Council told residents they had been unaware of the county’s plans until they were presented to them as final. Residents also questioned the lack of services available for the homeless on the western edges of the city, so far from downtown.

Land-use rules questioned

Attorneys and others familiar with the city’s efforts to allow homeless shelters and other public-facing services at churches and religious institutions questioned whether the county was abiding by the city’s religious accessory use zoning codes, which since 2022 have limited overnight shelters on church grounds to 25 people without a conditional use permit.

While part of Luther Seminary, the Stub Hall dormitory sits on a separate lot from the chapel, raising a potential legal question as to whether it qualifies as church grounds.

“The county approached Luther Seminary earlier this year about the possibility of leasing Stub Hall a second time due to the closure of the Government Center East building at 160 E. Kellogg Blvd,” reads the seminary’s announcement. “The City of St. Paul and Ramsey County determined such an emergency overnight shelter was an allowable use for Stub Hall based on federal law pertaining to land owned by religious organizations.”

City officials had said federal law — the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA — was on the county’s side, as it awards wide latitude to churches and other religious establishments to operate free from discrimination in zoning and other municipal land-use laws.

In an interview last week, St. Paul Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher recalled the drawn-out legal battle with the First Lutheran Church in Dayton’s Bluff, which hosted the Listening House day shelter and sued the city to protect the shelter’s right to operate under the conditions, capacity and hours it saw fit. A federal lawsuit ended with a legal settlement in 2019, after some two years of costly court action.

In the case of Luther Seminary, “the city’s position is RLUIPA applies,” Tincher said. “The settlement with First Lutheran provided a lot of direction for the city in how to approach these situations.”

“We’ve been really intentional about figuring out how to provide for that need in a way that is good for our community as a whole,” she added. “We’ve added a lot of (homeless) response teams. We’ve added a lot of staff that has experience in this space, because we want to meet that need in our community in a way that is really responsible.”

Tuesday meeting canceled

As Tuesday’s now-canceled community town hall approached, it became clear the public notification process would come under as much scrutiny as the shelter itself.

“As a gospel-centered community, we felt this opportunity to meet a need in our region aligned with our values,” said Heidi Droegemueller, vice president for seminary relations, quoted in the announcement. “At the same time, our primary mission is theological education. While we are grateful for the welcome extended by our St. Anthony Park neighbors to shelter residents during the pandemic, it has become clear in recent days that moving forward with Safe Space Shelter is not a constructive path for the seminary or the neighborhood at this time. We remain grateful for the commitment and dedication of Ramsey County’s Department of Housing Instability and Model Cities as they work diligently to solve our community’s housing crisis.”

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