Rooted in Community, Ready in Crisis

As Community Health Manager at the Brian Coyle Center in Minneapolis, Eliyas is used to hundreds of people walking through the halls on any given day. Students can do homework or learn video editing skills here. Legal assistance is available for housing, family law, or immigration matters. There are classes for learning English and others for sewing. There’s also an after-school day care. “Everything in the building is free,” said Eliyas.

But the hustle and bustle disappeared when the surge of federal agents brought patrols to the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, where the center stands in the shadows of the towering Riverside Plaza complex. Long an arrival point for immigrants, Cedar-Riverside is now home to a large Somali and East African community.

To address urgent community needs amid the ICE surge, the Minneapolis Foundation in February awarded a OneMPLS grant of $165,000 to Pillsbury United Communities, the organization that owns and operates Brian Coyle.

Those needs included food for families too scared to leave their homes. Before the ICE surge, PUC was serving more than 600 free, hot meals at Brian Coyle five days a week while also operating a food bank. Even then, demand was increasing.

Amano Dube, the center’s director, told Sahan Journal in December that the meals focused on serving elderly people, immigrant families in transition, and those who are unhoused. “But if someone who is hungry comes to the food distribution site, we serve them food.”

Photos from the Brian Coyle Center, courtesy of Pillsbury United Communities

During the surge, PUC shifted to delivering food to people at home, while also placing hot meals near the front door of Brian Coyle for pickup. Even then, people who came to the center to collect food were sometimes told to stay inside—sometimes for several hours—if staff noticed patrols nearby.

In addition to food distribution, the OneMPLS grant helped address rising needs related to staffing, transportation, and security at Brian Coyle and two other food shelf and storage locations, Waite House and North Market. All three are run by PUC, an organization that dates back more than a century to its time as a resource center known as a settlement house.

On a recent Friday morning at Brian Coyle, a group of about six women waited in chairs in the gymnasium. The center’s food bank is small—most clients drive up to a window to get food—so those who show up in person usually enter one at a time.

Soon, the gymnasium was filled with a line of people waiting for a hot meal. But there are still community members too scared to come, added Eliyas. “We know there’s always more to do to reach everyone.”

The 33-year-old building is “well-loved,” according to Chief Development Officer Denise Fosse. It opened in 1993, the year before refugees from war-torn Somali started to arrive in the Twin Cities. The recent surge was a moment when the organization leaned into its roots—always being there for communities.

“We’re the chief navigators,” she said, “The services are all integrated—it’s in our DNA. But the work is largely unfunded until we’re in the thick of a crisis.

“We hope more people will realize that crises don’t start the moment you hear about it—it was usually building up before that.”

PUC set up a fund to help with rental assistance—more than $500,000 has already been spent towards a goal of helping 250 families with rent and utilities.

“We can help people stabilize,” she said. “It doesn’t guarantee anything long term, because life doesn’t work that way. But we’re still with them.

“Amidst the deep sorrow and struggle, there are also a lot of hopeful things going on that remind us of who we’ve been for more than a century.”