As clusters of hundreds of tents grew larger along the Hiawatha and Cedar avenues in south Minneapolis last year, the surrounding state recorded 10,233 homeless people, the highest number in three decades.

With night shelters stretched at full capacity and rents rising in the city of 425,000, many residents were also reportedly forced to sleep under bridges, in parked cars or even through the night on public buses.

Although the primary need for them is a space to sleep, research carried out by the city’s 2025 Ending Street Homelessness Committee found that many homeless people in Minneapolis had suffered from not having a secure place to store personal belongings.

“I believe there’s been an under-recognition of storage as a resource"

The survey found that not having places to store their possessions was the top concern for 75% of homeless people and that the lack of it had often led to chronic physical and physiological strain. Of those surveyed, an astonishing 79.9% reported back pain and 69.6% shoulder pain, with respondents citing the burden of needing to carry heavy backpacks around with them all day.

In response, the city launched a $25,000, year-long pilot project to provide free storage space for homeless people last December, allowing up to 50 users at a time to store their belongings in bins located in a secure room.

“It’s another function of a home – as well as somewhere to sleep, it is somewhere to store your things,” said Ben Shardlow, director of urban design for Minneapolis’ Downtown Improvement District, which runs the facility. “I believe there’s been an under-recognition of storage as a resource.”

The one-room facility, housed underneath a parking ramp, is open for a few hours each weekday morning and evening. With the aim of making the program as accessible as possible to the most vulnerable, users don’t need to provide identification or housing status in order to use the storage.

Distinct from locker systems, which Shardlow describes as “fairly problematic” because they can be used to store weapons, drugs and perishable food, the storage bins follow more of a retail service model. Always manned by staff, each time the storage is accessed by a user it is logged, ensuring users make regular access rather than waste capacity.

At the launch, the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, said that he hoped the location could free homeless residents to apply for jobs, improve their health and clean up the image of the city’s downtown.

“Imagine having to cart your things around all day. Now imagine having to cart your things around all week,” he said. “To have to bring a stroller to your job, your bedding to your place of work. Imagine having to bring everything you own to a job interview. I’m proud to say that we’re doing something about it.”

Campaigners believe that the cost-effective project could go some way to addressing the psychological impacts of experiencing homelessness, which often leave rough sleepers without the mental capacity to focus on improving their lives.

“Your possessions are always susceptible to being stolen or destroyed by weather, that weighs on people a lot,” said Mandy Davis, a project director for homelessness non-profit Depaul USA. “They are constantly overwhelmed by the crisis of homelessness that they can’t focus on getting themselves out of the situation.”

The location could free homeless residents to apply for jobs, improve their health and clean up the image of the city’s downtown

According to Davis, in the course of her work she has encountered so-called community watch teams of homeless people taking shifts to guard each other’s possessions from any prospective thieves. In some cases, it has meant that those on shift have refused to leave the site to write housing applications.

“Providing them with their own secure space means that they will be in a better state of mind,” she added. “It will be worth every dime.”

The Downtown Improvement District believes the pilot has been a success to date, with the 50 containers regularly full, and is hoping to open a much larger location in a converted parking garage that could house hundreds of storage bins.

“The anecdotal feedback has been all positive,” added Shardlow, who believes it is a scheme that could be used in cities around the world. “Can we learn from this experience and expand it out? It would make a world of sense. I think these storage facilities should be ubiquitous.” — Peter Yeung

(Photo credit: Claudio Schwarz/Unsplash)