“If this city truly treated these shootings like the emergencies they are, people would already see grief and trauma counselors on the ground,” Sabri said after the shootings. “We would see a citywide emergency response — with outreach workers, harm reduction teams, and housing navigators deployed. We would see safe places to stay opened immediately — hotels, Navigation Centers, emergency shelter beds. Instead, the mayor’s answer is the same tired move we’ve seen for years: displacement. Bulldoze people’s tents, fence off their space, and call it leadership.”
Sabri first experimented with hosting homeless encampments on his private property in the winter of 2021, when he allowed people to move into a semi-vacant property he owns on N. 5th Street in the North Loop neighborhood. He told the Minnesota Star Tribune at the time that he’d encountered difficulties developing the property after the pandemic, and was considering building a dog park when tents appeared. He permitted homeless people to stay until they could find permanent housing.
That encampment lasted for months with the help of volunteers who supplied food and survival gear, and attempted to build tiny homes. Activists thwarted city workers’ attempts to clear the camp, but as time went on and the population grew, garbage accumulated in the surrounding snow banks, the porta-potties overflowed and propane fires engulfed tents. The city ultimately swept the North Loop camp, with Sabri’s consent and participation, in March 2022.
Earlier this year, the city of Minneapolis cracked down on encampments, with Police Chief Brian O’Hara issuing a special order clarifying police have the ability to intercede when they find illegal camping. Large encampments mostly disappeared, and Frey controversially claimed that the city had reduced the unsheltered homeless population to less than 30 individuals citywide.
Despite the drastic reduction in tent encampments, neighborhoods continued to experience large gatherings of unsheltered people in active addiction along the Midtown Greenway and under bridges throughout south Minneapolis.
Sabri said he was tired of seeing unsheltered people breaking into his properties for shelter and wanted to bring them together in one place, where resources could be concentrated. He invited people to move into a long-vacant property he owns at 2716 E. Lake St., a block that sustained heavy damage in the civil unrest following George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
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