How One Army Veteran Found a Home in Saint Paul

When Familiar Faces case manager Jen Kissling arrives at Randall Todd’s new apartment on a steamy July day, he’s heating up a pizza in the oven. It smells good, but Jen has eagle eyes. “Sir! You left the cardboard under the pizza,” she says. The two of them have known each other for years, and it shows. They banter and argue like brother and sister.

The cardboard, Randall explains, is to keep the cheese from melting onto his brand-new oven. “The cardboard doesn’t burn,” he insists.

“With my oven,” Jen offers helpfully, “I put tinfoil on the bottom for when stuff melts. Do you have any tinfoil?”

He doesn’t. Jen shakes her head fondly as Randall takes the pizza out of the oven with his bare hands.

“We’ll get you tinfoil,” she says, “and an oven mitt. How do you cut the pizza?”

Randall shrugs. “Butter knife.”

“Tinfoil, oven mitt, and a pizza cutter,” Jen says, making a mental note. “And Raven’s coming up in a few minutes with a TV stand for you.”

Randall looks a little overwhelmed. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate all the support he gets from Jen and her Familiar Faces colleagues Raven Davis and Sam Stoltz—he does, very much. “They help me like nobody else ever did,” Randall says. It’s just that this tidy sunlit apartment, with its furniture and appliances and household stuff, is still disorienting for him. He’s only lived here four days.

The apartment’s spacious windows face eastward, with a breathtaking view of the Cathedral of Saint Paul. From the window nearest his bed, Randall looks down at the bridge where he used to sleep at night.

When did he last have a place of his own? “Never,” he says.

Randall looks around the apartment, which he’s decorated with bright patchwork quilts, and shakes his head. “It’s like it isn’t real.”

Coming Home after Ten Long Years

But this apartment is very real. The fact that it’s now home to one of the last remaining chronically homeless veterans in Ramsey County is a hopeful milestone.

After growing up in a challenging home in Los Angeles, Randall enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 11, 2001, and served in the mobile infantry. After leaving the service, he endured a series of tragedies and misfortunes that left him stranded outdoors in the depths of a Minnesota winter.

“It took me a minute to figure out how to keep myself warm in the negative-degree weather,” he remembers. “It’s insane out there. The frostbite was getting me.”

Stories like Randall’s are all too common among veterans nationwide, including right here in Ramsey County. A 2012 study estimated that male veterans are twice as likely to fall into homelessness as men who have never served. Compared to other women, female vets are at three times greater risk. In recent years, targeted housing programs for veterans have made a real difference. But here in Saint Paul, the problem has been stubborn.

Jen knows that from long experience doing outreach work with unhoused people in Saint Paul. “I’ve known Randall since I worked at Catholic Charities,” she says—several years before she came to work for Familiar Faces.

“I was outside, lying down,” he recalls. “She came through and said, ‘Are you okay?’ She brought me something to drink.” They’ve seen each other often in the intervening years, during which he tried and failed repeatedly to find a stable place to stay. In all, Randall says, he spent ten years in Saint Paul without permanent shelter.

Thanks to his persistence, and relentless support from Jen and the Familiar Faces team, that decade of homelessness is over.

“A Symbol of Respect for the Veterans”

Randall’s new apartment is on the top floor of Mary Hall, a century-old building in downtown Saint Paul that just reopened last month. Built as a home and training center for nurses at St. Joseph’s Hospital, the building has been used in many ways over the years—notably as a place for people with nowhere else to go to shelter during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I was quarantined here during Covid, when the building was in rough shape,” says new Mary Hall resident Kurt Edson-Herzovi. “I remember thinking, ‘This would be a great place to live.’ I’m very, very glad to see this building get turned into these apartments. It does feel like home.”

After years of hard work from teams at Minnesota Housing, the City of Saint Paul, Ramsey County, the Minneapolis V.A., Catholic Charities, and Aeon, Mary Hall is now an 88-unit supportive housing community, serving single adults transitioning out of homelessness—especially veterans. Onsite support from Radias Health is there to help residents find jobs, stay connected to healthcare, and manage the challenges that come with being housed after months or years on the street. Other support workers, like the Familiar Faces team, visit their clients there too.

Amid a worsening housing crisis nationwide, the new Mary Hall brings desperately needed affordable housing to the heart of downtown Saint Paul. For Saint Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, that’s personally meaningful.

“When my family came to America, there were times that we really struggled,” she said at Mary Hall’s grand opening in June. “I remember standing in line for free clothing and government food. The one factor that allowed my family to break the cycle of poverty in one generation was the fact that we had stable housing. It is a human right to have shelter.”

Mary Hall is especially meaningful for veterans like Randall, says Minneapolis V.A. housing expert Bridget Gil. “It brings veterans together in one place, where they can have tailored services onsite, and be in their own community. This is more than a building: it’s really a symbol of hope, collaboration, and true, deep, respect for the veterans who served our country.”

“I Give Them Jen’s Card”

Just as promised, Raven soon knocks on Randall’s door. She’s brought the TV stand she found for him. Later, Raven confirms his practice of baking frozen pizzas with the cardboard under them. “It really doesn’t burn,” she agrees.

Now that Randall has an apartment of his own—and on-site support from Luke, his on-site case manager—Jen, Raven, and the rest of the Familiar Faces team won’t be such a big part of his life. For all of them, that’s bittersweet. The bond they’ve formed over the years is real and deep, and they will miss each other.

Randall, who’s well known and liked among people who spend time outside in Saint Paul, will keep spreading the word about Familiar Faces when he encounters people on the street who could use their support. “When people need help,” he says, “I give them Jen’s card.”

For her part, Jen has no intention of forgetting about Randall. The two of them had just visited a resource event for veterans, one that’s held every summer. “When the V.A. event comes next year,” she reminds him, “you told me it’s a date.”