For weeks, Alpha News has been receiving information from tipsters who are concerned about growing homeless encampments across the city, with some describing scenes they say are unlike anything they have experienced before.

Tipsters describe people who appear to be under the influence of drugs, individuals behaving erratically, public defecation, screams echoing through the night, and emergency responders carrying people out on stretchers.

One of those tips came from Angie, a longtime server at Obb’s Sports Bar & Grill. The East Side institution has been serving customers since 1932, and Angie told Alpha News that a nearby encampment has brought the city’s homelessness crisis to its front door.

She said people who appear to be under the influence of drugs have fallen asleep on the restaurant’s patio, washed up in its bathrooms, dug through dumpsters, urinated on the patio, stolen patio furniture, and approached customers for money.

Their behavior, Angie said, has at times been so erratic that employees fear what they might encounter when they come to work.

“It’s like the Walking Dead,” said Angie. “It’s completely insane.”

She recalled one woman pounding on the restaurant’s windows while employees were closing for the night.

“She was trying to get in and screaming, saying demons were chasing her. Then she started chasing after my car,” Angie said. “It’s become a safety issue for people that come here and for us that work here.”

Angie said people living in the encampment told her that outreach workers with the city regularly bring food and other supplies into the camp and that sterile syringes are also distributed there.

East Side institution under strain

Today, Obb’s is owned by Jim Johnsen, the grandson of its founder. Johnsen told Alpha News he has invested more than $1 million into the property since purchasing it in 2001. His own children now work there, making Obb’s not just a business, but a multi-generational family legacy.

That’s why, he says, the problems outside the restaurant hit especially hard.

“My kids work here. My employees work here. People come here with their families,” Johnsen said. “I worry about all of them.”

In one incident, Johnsen said a family discovered discarded needles on the patio.

“It’s really disgusting, sad, depressing,” he said.

According to Johnsen, the encampment sits in the woods near the DNR fish hatchery and Pig’s Eye Park, just a short walk from Obb’s. He said people frequently emerge from the wooded area, cross a nearby pedestrian bridge and congregate at the bus stop outside the restaurant before wandering onto the property.

Johnsen said many of the people appear to be under the influence of drugs. He said he and his employees routinely have to ask people to leave the patio and, at times, escort them out of the restaurant itself. He has also repeatedly had to remove people from the restaurant’s parking lot.

“They need help”

Despite his frustrations, Johnsen said he is not without compassion for those living in the encampment.

He said many of the people there are clearly struggling and need more than temporary assistance.

“The city needs to get these people taken care of — housed, whatever it is,” he said. “My heart goes out to them — they need help.”

Johnsen said he has reached out to numerous officials for help, including St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her’s office, and remains “hopeful” that her administration will take action to address the growing problems near his business and in other parts of the city.

Screams in the night

The homeless encampment isn’t just affecting Obb’s.

A longtime St. Paul resident and business owner who lives at the Waterford Bay Apartments near Shepard Road contacted Alpha News after noticing what he described as a growing number of people living in the nearby woods over the past two years.

The resident, whose $3,200-a-month apartment overlooks the densely wooded Mississippi River bottoms, said he and his neighbors have been awakened by screams from the encampment, watched emergency responders carry people out on stretchers, and repeatedly called police about safety concerns.

“There’s troves of these people walking in and out of the woods, stumbling around and doing the fentanyl zombie crawl,” he said. “It’s sad.”

What troubles him most, he said, are the sounds coming from the woods at night.

“We have been woken in the middle of the night on several occasions with screams from the woods, both male and female voices pleading for whatever is happening to stop,” he said.

On other nights, he said, he has heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the woods.

“The other day I woke up to two squad cars. Both of the officers were out of their vehicles with… AR-15 assault rifles. They were heading into the woods,” he said. “There was two more officers jumping a fence. They were chasing someone, so it just seems to be a hotbed.”

“It just seems like the city kind of knows about it, patrols it, but doesn’t really do anything about it,” he said, adding that officers told him about another problematic encampment “down by the fish hatchery.”

But the resident said what is happening in the woods is no longer confined to the encampment itself.

According to him, individuals have squatted in vacant units of the high-end apartment building, stolen tenants’ mail, broken into vehicles and the parking garage, and taken bicycles, golf clubs and catalytic converters.

Despite his frustrations, the resident — like Johnsen — said he has compassion for those living in the encampment and believes many are trapped by addiction and in desperate need of help.

“We’re not dealing with street drugs of the ’80s or ’90s,” he said. “We’re dealing with highly potent, chemical warfare.”

“There has to be a solution”

The longtime St. Paul resident owner questioned whether the city’s current approach is helping those struggling with addiction or simply allowing the problem to continue out of sight.

“To me, it’s less humanitarian to kind of just let these people sit in the woods, hand a couple dozen meals out thinking that’s going to solve the bigger issue,” he said. “There has to be a solution.”

The resident said he believes taxpayers are spending enormous sums of money managing the crisis and the root causes are not being addressed.

“We’re subsidizing housing, we’re subsidizing food, we’re subsidizing healthcare, we’re subsidizing clean needles,” he said. “It’s an endless cycle of my money.”

Inquiries to city leaders

Alpha News contacted Council Member Rebecca Noecker, Mayor Kaohly Her, and the city’s Homeless Assistance Response Team (HART) seeking comment on the concerns raised by business owners, including questions about police calls, outreach efforts and reports of services being provided at the encampment.

No responses from those entities were received prior to publication. However, the St. Paul Police Department (SPPD) did provide Alpha News with data and a statement.

According to data from the SPPD, the homeless encampment near the fish hatchery and Obb’s received 466 calls for service in 2025. As of June 28th of this year, the homeless encampment has received 265 calls for service in 2026.

As a result, the encampment is on pace for a 13.7% increase in calls year-over-year.

The SPPD also provided Alpha News with information about police responses to calls at or immediately around Obb’s. In 2024, there were 7 responses at or immediately nearby Obb’s. The following year there were 15 such calls.

However, through just six months of 2026 there have been 56 calls at or near Obb’s, the vast majority of which have come in May and June. Documents from SPPD show the calls range from disturbances and welfare checks to drugs, person in crisis, and what the data sheet describes as “proactive police visit.”

Asked about the encampment near Waterford Bay Apartments, an SPPD spokesperson said, “We have been made aware that code enforcement officers have been visiting to that location, but we do not have specific data at this time.”

“That information will be compiled in the coming days & we are happy to provide you with a copy of that next week,” the spokesperson added.

The SPPD said it works jointly with HART to respond to encampment issues, but did not provide specifics about that work, saying “your question will need to be directed to the city/HART.”

“The Saint Paul Police Department has worked with our unsheltered population for many years,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue to work with our city and county partners to provide resources and stable housing.”

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