The Houses · H-07
River House
Ramsey County, Minnesota · Established 1997 · Open to visitors
River House does most of its work in other people's front rooms, and most of that work in winter.
- Region
- North America
- Residential places
- 20
- Residential periods
- Twenty places. Residential periods of three to twelve days.
- Public gathering
- Open Table, monthly, second Thursday, six o'clock. Meal provided.
- Arrival
- Fifteen minutes from downtown Saint Paul; the number 61 bus stops at the corner.
- Access
- Step-free throughout, with a lift to the first floor installed in 2019. Interpretation can be arranged for visits.
- Correspondence
- Write or telephone the house office, weekdays.
The house
The house was established in 1997 in a former parish school, at a point when the city's resettlement agencies were placing more households than they could follow up. The house's original undertaking was modest and has not changed: to be the second visit rather than the first.
Winter mutual aid began in the cold of 2000, when the house started keeping a list of households without a working furnace and a second list of members who owned a truck. Both lists are still kept, on paper, and are reviewed each October.
The oral history collection now runs to two hundred and thirty interviews in eleven languages. Interviewees hold the right to withdraw a recording at any time and eleven have.
The work
- Refugee resettlement support with three agencies: interpretation, school enrolment, tenancy questions, and the long unglamorous middle of a resettlement.
- Winter mutual aid: furnace repair, fuel assistance, snow clearance, and the October review of both lists.
- Oral history recording and transcription, with copies given to the speaker first.
Observance kept here
One place left
At the formal meal, one place is laid and left unoccupied. Residents are told that this is the house's practice and are not told anything further.
The shared forms, here
- The Quiet Twelve
- The silence is kept for the same twelve minutes, but the house keeps a longer silence of its own from midnight to noon on 22 May, which is separate and older.
Kept in use
The kitchen bell
Timekeeping. It is rung for the meal, and at most houses to mark the end of the twelve minutes.
Local participation
- The warm room in winter, opened by two members each evening it is cold.
- Shelving the archive returns, fortnightly.
- Separation
- Notice to the steward. Members in separation remain on the winter list unless they ask not to be.
- Succession
- The warm-room rota is written a season at a time so that no single person is depended on for the whole winter. The work is reassigned; the person is not replaced.
The steward
Abdirahman Yusuf
Social worker · steward since 2020
Resettled here as a child in 1994; qualified in 2008. Keeps the October review and argues each year for a larger fuel fund.
Records
Other houses
- North House — Penobscot County, Maine
- Briar House — Albemarle County, Virginia
Entry H-07 · reviewed 6 March 2026