A Nazarene ministry in St. Paul‘s working-class East Side. An aging Lutheran congregation in Roseville. A nondenominational megachurch in Maple Grove.
Three vastly different churches are on the leading edge of a Minnesota experiment in treating chronic homelessness by building tiny home villages — known as Sacred Settlements — on their land for society’s hardest-to-house people.
The settlements are modest, each comprising a handful of tiny houses clustered near trees and water. Neat, wood-chipped trails ramble from one home to the next. Hand-carved road signs and communal vegetable patches add a cottage flair. Each house is uniquely built and donated by other churches across the state, with rents based on size…