Minnesota has put billions into homelessness and housing stability, and state leaders say the spending has lowered the number of people without housing and prevented families from experiencing homelessness. Still, they say the need exceeds available dollars.
After the City of St. Paul cleared a homeless encampment last week, 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS took a closer look at how Minnesota is spending taxpayer dollars on homelessness. The Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness is made up of more than a dozen state agencies, creating what Assistant Commissioner and Executive Director Cathy ten Broeke described as a complicated budget web.
The review focused on a $2.6 billion state-level investment made in 2023 because part of that money is still being used now. That included $1.88 billion allotted for 2024 and 2025 and $768 million more for this year and next year.
“Now, this is an interagency package that included everything from outreach and shelter dollars, all the way to home ownership. So we’re talking about all of housing stability,” said ten Broeke.
If the budget line items were grouped into categories, the money seems to fall into four main areas. They include emergency spending such as $100 million for shelter facilities, prevention efforts such as $95 million for family homelessness prevention and $267 million for rental assistance, affordable housing creation including $200 million for housing infrastructure, and support services, including $25 million to strengthen supportive housing.
Asked whether taxpayers are getting a good return, ten Broeke said the answer is yes.
“I would say they are,” said ten Broeke.
“It’s housing that’s affordable, linked with the kinds of services and supports people need to stay stably housed — is essentially the solution to homelessness for so many people, and that is what we invest in at the state.”
The most recent results from the annual Minnesota Point-in-Time (PIT) Count found 8,392 Minnesotans were experiencing homelessness in 2025. That was down 8.8% from 2024.
“I do expect it to drop again. I’m worried about the coming year after that, however, just because of the, kind of the loss of some of our federal support to our community partners,” said ten Broeke.
Ten Broeke said that the federal funding change would mean about a $50 million loss, particularly to support and maintain permanent supportive housing. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has been told repeatedly that permanent supportive housing is a key solution.
Ten Broeke said Minnesota spends hundreds of millions of dollars in a given year, and that the investment has made a dent, but the need is still greater. She said 123,000 households in Minnesota are “extremely low income,” and that exceeds the number of available housing units within an affordable price range.
“It’s amazing it’s not higher because if we have 123,000 households in Minnesota who are extremely low income and no units for them, what are they doing?” said ten Broeke.
“They’re very resilient, but we have to do everything we can to build that supply and build that affordability so that those households don’t fall into homelessness, and when we get to the place where we are getting more people out of homelessness than are falling into homelessness, that’s when we see those numbers go down, and that is what we are very committed to do.”
