Five bold results. 15 committed agencies. 160 action steps.
One driving vision: housing, racial, and health justice for people facing homelessness.
Crossroads to Justice is the State of Minnesota’s strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness.
Crossroads to Justice Strategic Plan
Crossroads to Justice offers a new vision for Minnesota’s collective response to homelessness and housing instability. It outlines the vision of justice and the bold results that center a set of specific strategies and actions the State commits to. Through these steps, we seek to reduce both the number of people who are experiencing homelessness in the state and the disproportionate number of Native, Black and Brown Minnesotans who experience homelessness.
Phase 1
Completed June 2022
Centering the voices of those who have experienced homelessness, Rainbow Research is leading a process to co-develop a unified, operation definition for what we mean when we say housing, racial, and health justice for people experiencing homelessness.
Phase 2
Completed October 2023
Using the operation definition from Phase 1 to drive specific strategies, actions, and commitments that the Council and other partners could pursue as a part of the strategic plan. The Council will adopt specific actions in this phase.
Phase 3
Ongoing
Implement, monitor and iteratively refine the plan.
The Council accepted several adjustments to the plan on June 11, 2025. These adjustments clarify existing Actions and reflect additional commitments that have emerged as agencies conduct the work of the plan.
Movement on five bold Results will demonstrate success for our communities. These Results demonstrate a holistic, coordinated approach to homelessness. While each Result is important on its own, they are all deeply connected to and supported by one another.
Result 1: Collaborate and Co-Lead with Impacted Communities
Council agencies will collaborate and co-lead with impacted communities that have been historically oppressed and excluded such as Black, Brown and people of color, poor/low income, LGBTQIA2S+, people with disabilities, older adults, foreign-born, and people who have faced homelessness and Tribal Nations to implement the action plan on housing, racial and health justice.
Strategy 1: Every council agency commits to working with people with lived experience of homelessness to guide policies, programs and agency direction.
Strategy 2: Ensure equitable funding opportunities for Tribal Nations and communities across the state.
Strategy 3: Provide easy to understand information on programs, funding and decision making to ensure transparency and accountability in state government.
Result 2: Prevention
Homelessness is prevented whenever possible, and services and supports are provided to ensure no one returns to homelessness.
Strategy 1: Improve access to resources for households to sustain their housing.
Strategy 2: Support people in transitions so they do not leave government funded or operated systems into homelessness.
Strategy 3: Use data to target resources more effectively.
Result 3: Robust Crisis Response
A robust crisis response geared towards housing outcomes supports people staying outside, in emergency shelters, and in community.
Strategy 1: Invest in and support additional outreach responses that reach people wherever they are and help make connections to housing providers.
Strategy 2: Increase safe indoor crisis options statewide that are low barrier, harm reduction, and culturally responsive to meet people’s needs.
Strategy 3: Support a consistent and systemic approach across jurisdictions to improve outcomes for people sleeping in encampments.
Result 4: Housing Options
People facing homelessness have access to housing options that meet their needs and honor their choices.
Strategy 1: Fund and develop a variety of housing options with fewer restrictions and barriers.
Strategy 2: Increase access to rental assistance and vouchers.
Strategy 3: Improve navigation to get people into housing.
Strategy 4: Increase access to supportive services to sustain housing.
Result 5: Health and Public Health
Homelessness is treated as a crucial health and public health crisis wherever it occurs.
Strategy 1: Create a comprehensive, trauma-informed and culturally responsive continuum of care for people facing homelessness with behavioral health needs, which includes mental health and substance use.
Strategy 2: Increase capacity, access and use of quality, culturally responsive health resources including physical health, mental health, substance use supports, sexual health, and spiritual health.
Strategy 3: Establish a structure and protocols to prevent, mitigate, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks for people facing homelessness.
Action Highlight: Building a More Accessible Section 8 Tenant Hotline
Minnesota Housing partnered with lived-experience consultants to design a new Section 8 tenant reporting hotline that is easier to navigate and more responsive to resident needs. Staff from Minnesota Housing’s Performance-Based Contract Administration program shared early drafts of the hotline script, naming options, and outreach plan, and invited consultants to provide feedback. Consultants offered guidance on email naming conventions, clarity in recorded messaging, multilingual access, web layout, FAQ content, and outreach strategies to ensure tenants understand when and how to use the hotline.
This collaboration helped reshape the hotline into a more intuitive system. Consultants recommended promoting the line through tenant newsletters, community action agencies, HomeLine, and social media—meeting residents where they already are. They also advised adding guidance on what tenants should try before calling, ensuring the line remains focused on issues that require Minnesota Housing's attention.
The result is a stronger, clearer, more accessible tool for thousands of Section 8 households across Minnesota. By designing the hotline with tenants rather than for them, Minnesota Housing strengthened transparency, improved navigation, and demonstrated the real value of lived experience in implementation work.
This plan was developed to drive action as well as to promote continuous learning and improvement over the next four years. The Council measures progress, adjusts actions as needed for greater impact, and will communicate regularly with partners across the state.
The implementation of this plan is being co-led and co-monitored by a team of Implementation Consultants with lived expertise.
Each action item has a lead agency staff responsible for managing the details and ongoing work needed to complete the action. The Council staff regularly brings together agency staff and Implementation Consultants to work collaboratively and monitor how the action items are achieving the strategies under each of the five results. Additionally, a senior leadership and interagency equity team support agency staff, problem solve and remove barriers that may be impeding progress and ensure equity is central to all pieces of implementation.
Overall Metric: The number of Minnesotans experiencing homelessness (Goal: 15 percent reduction by Dec. 2026)
Overall Metric: A reduction in the inequities of who experiences homelessness,
Result 1
Quarterly report at Council meetings from each Council agency that describes the ways they are working with community to meaningfully make decisions to guide the implementation of this plan which is inclusive of hiring people with lived experience, going out to the community, and engaging consultants.
No baseline data. This is new data that will be developed as part of implementation.
Result 2: Reduction in the number of people entering homelessness.
Result 3: Reduction in the number of people sleeping outside.
Result 3 & 4: Increases in the number of people exiting homelessness into housing
Result 3 & 4: Increases in the number of people exiting homelessness into housing
Note: Roughly half of all people exiting homeless projects in HMIS exit to an unknown destination as program staff do not always know where participants go when they exit a program. However, this is an important measure to capture as it is our best approximation of identifying if people obtain permanent housing after engaging in services.
Result 5: Reduction in the disparities in mortality and morbidity and improvements in the health of people facing homelessness
Note: MDH will monitor progress in reducing substance-use related deaths among people facing homelessness, using as our baseline the data below from the Minnesota Homeless Mortality Report, 2017-2021. As the plan progresses, we will look to expand this analysis to other mortality and morbidity measures.
On October 27, 2023, the Council committed to Crossroads to Justice: Minnesota's New Pathways to Housing, Racial and Health Justice for People Facing Homelessness. The plan is the culmination of a year-and-a-half-long process that was co-led by 10 paid Justice Consultants, all people with lived experience of homelessness representing different experiences and different parts of the state. In 2022, after the shared experience of working with partners across Minnesota to protect and support people facing homelessness during the pandemic, while confronting the racism and injustice in our systems following the murder of George Floyd, Governor Walz and Lieutenant Governor Flanagan tasked the Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness with developing a strategic plan focused on justice. They sought a housing, racial and health justice approach for people facing homelessness in Minnesota to guide the work of state government on this issue for the remainder of their second term.
The implementation of the plan is now being co-led and co-monitored by 14 paid Implementation Consultants with lived experience of homelessness representing different experiences and different parts of the state. Consultants meet regularly with agency staff and partners to guide the work outlined in the Actions, ensure justice and equity remain at the forefront, provide timely updates, and improve State processes and programs to most effectively address homelessness.