...Within minutes, volunteers with the street outreach group Natives Against Heroin (NAH) sprang into action, helping the family secure a spacious tent, sleeping bags, food and other provisions. Days later, a social worker identified a small apartment nearby that could house the family. “We never in our wildest dreams imagined this,” Deer said, as volunteers dropped off bowls of chili and fry bread to her tent on a recent Saturday.

The Deer family’s experience reflects the unusual approach that Minneapolis city officials and American Indian leaders are taking to address the crowded homeless camp near Hiawatha and Cedar avenues, which sprang up almost overnight last month and has more than tripled in size, becoming one of the largest homeless settlements ever seen in the state.

In major cities across the country, officials have responded to rising rates of homelessness with sweeps, raids, arrests and other punitive measures designed to break up large camps and keep people on the move. A 2016 report from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, which surveyed 187 American cities, found that three-quarters of all homeless encampments in the U.S. are illegal; only 4 percent are considered legal.

By contrast, Minneapolis city leaders have made a deliberate decision to embrace the encampment as part of a wider community effort to combat homelessness. Instead of clearing the site, a coalition of city, county and American Indian agencies have launched a massive outreach effort to deliver housing assistance, medical care and other social services. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey signaled his intent to work with the tent dwellers last month when he pledged, before a large crowd assembled at the American Indian Center, a “full-throated effort” to find housing for everyone at the encampment by the end of September. The mayor then surprised some in the room by asserting that the encampment is situated on land stolen from American Indians. “It’s Dakota property,” Frey declared.