This summer, Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center (MIWRC) opened a 24-unit Permanent Supportive Housing community on their property in the East Phillips and Ventura Village neighborhood of Minneapolis. Named Oshki-Gakeyaa, which means “New Way” in Ojibwe, its newly renovated apartments were instantly occupied by unhoused Native individuals or families.

Twenty of those units are for high-priority individuals as well as those experiencing long-term homelessness, while four units are reserved for people with disabilities. There is now a waitlist for the apartments, a sign of the deep and persistent demand for housing, especially as temperatures drop and tents reappear in the heart of Minneapolis’ Native community. Currently, a majority of these units are occupied by Native women.

This is the latest effort from the Native community to combat the disproportionate number of individuals and families from its community who are experiencing homelessness.

Minneapolis has been confronting an ongoing homelessness crisis, and Native Americans are overrepresented in the homeless population, despite making just 2% of the state’s population. Native women are especially vulnerable, and can face additional risks of being targeted if they are unhoused.

Homelessness and safety concerns of Native women have been two of the top concerns Ruth Buffalo has had to address this year at MIWRC, a nonprofit that offers holistic services to Native women and families that are rooted in American Indian traditions.

Buffalo said in early October, a group of three men and one woman from Oklahoma attempted to traffic Native women from the MIWRC grounds in the pretext of offering addiction treatment and shelter in San Francisco. MIWRC helped the victims report the incident to the Minneapolis Police Department.

This recent incident is only one of the many instances of unhoused Native women being accosted or harmed in some capacity, Buffalo said.

“For a number of reasons, our Native women are more susceptible to being unsheltered, whether [because] they were tricked into believing they were getting in a relationship with someone, or fell into active addiction and are stuck there,” she said.

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