A newly opened Minneapolis shelter for homeless families filled every one of its rooms just over a month after opening its doors, housing 52 families in a converted downtown hotel just blocks from U.S. Bank Stadium. The facility, called Belonging Place, is the latest expansion from People Serving People, the state's largest provider of emergency family shelter, and its rapid fill-up signals just how much need remains even as Hennepin County shelter numbers trend downward.
Belonging Place opened in September 2026 through a public-nonprofit partnership with Hennepin County, retrofitting an existing downtown hotel into emergency shelter space, according to CBS News. The new building increased by 45% the number of families People Serving People could serve, allowing the nonprofit to house up to 177 families a day — roughly 500 individuals, including about 330 children — according to People Serving People. That kind of scale reflects just how central the organization has become to the county's family homelessness response.
“Children cannot make it on the street,” Hoang Murphy, CEO of People Serving People, said in comments featured by CBS News Minnesota, adding that families cannot survive without shelter. Murphy has spoken about experiencing homelessness as a child in Minneapolis and has said he wishes a shelter service had existed when he was a homeless child in the city, a perspective that shapes how he frames the organization's mission today.
A Flagship Gets a New Name
Alongside the Belonging Place opening, People Serving People renamed its original 11-story downtown Minneapolis shelter at 614 South 3rd Street to Possibility Place, the same month, per the nonprofit's own announcement. That flagship building houses 99 emergency family rooms along with 10 permanent supportive housing apartments.
Beyond its downtown buildings, the nonprofit also operates St. Anne's Place in North Minneapolis' Jordan neighborhood, a shelter gifted to the organization in 2024 that serves 16 women- and non-binary-led families, the organization notes. People Serving People also planned to acquire the former First Covenant Church building and continue its Early Learning Center.
The County Mandate Behind the Expansion
The push to add shelter capacity is tied to Hennepin County's “Shelter All” policy, under which the county must find shelter for families who need it, CBS News reports. The policy applies to qualifying families with children younger than 18, helping explain why local officials and nonprofits have prioritized rapidly standing up new buildings like Belonging Place.
Even so, county data suggests the overall need may be easing somewhat. Hennepin County's Point-in-Time count conducted in January 2026 found 1,342 families with children using shelters, while the total number of people in Hennepin County shelters fell 6% from 2025, the same CBS News report states. County officials have credited expanded eviction prevention and rapid re-housing programs for the decrease in shelter use — even as individual shelters like Belonging Place still fill up almost immediately once they open.
Who Murphy Is and Why Children Matter
Before leading People Serving People, Murphy founded and directed Foster Advocates, a Minnesota organization focused on improving child welfare policy, drawing on his experience growing up in foster care and experiencing homelessness as a child, according to the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless. He also previously worked as a U.S. Department of Education public policy fellow. That background informs his public framing of shelter access as a basic necessity rather than a last resort.
People Serving People provides emergency shelter to families with children.
People Serving People also reports that 95% of families who receive shelter and support through its programs — which include financial literacy classes, mental healthcare, and housing navigation — do not re-enter the homeless shelter system within a year. That statistic, paired with the swift occupancy of Belonging Place, underscores the nonprofit's dual strategy: opening beds fast enough to meet urgent need while building the kind of long-term stabilization support meant to keep families from needing shelter again.
