 The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development paid a visit to the White Earth Reservation to deliver a gift that will help struggling youth all over the northwest Minnesota. Reporter Cheryl Moore has details. The homeless population in Minnesota reaches somewhere in the 10,000s. Here in the rural part of the state, finding the money to help those people doesn't come easy. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development understands this. And that's part of the reason why they've given $1.4 million to address the issue. When you think about a lot of HUD grants, people talk about the urban environment, the urban cities, the Las Vegas, the Los Angeleses of the world. It's so much more difficult to target and find the youth homeless in this part of the country. The local governments will decide what to do with the money. And as of right now, it will be focused on youth homelessness. One way of integrating services back to mental health, collaborative behavioral health, also putting them in a nice clean environment and back over to our workforce development center. We, Red Lake Nation, I can speak for Red Lake Nation, we lack so many services for our youth. Right now we are in the process of building services, but being a part of this grant is just going to help us create logic models, create training modules, create build relationships with people that have obviously been successful in working with homeless youth. To ensure the grant meets needs, HUD relied upon recommendations of young people who have experienced homelessness themselves. I graduated high school, I went to college afterwards and, you know, just made a couple of bad choices, it couldn't happen to anybody, but there's always hope and there's always people that are there to help you. For these young people, they say they would like to see more money put towards things like supportive and transitional housing. They seem like family more than they were workers. They treated you with respect right away, they wanted you to succeed. While the focus will be on the youth, Wider Chairman Tibbets acknowledges that there are elders and veterans who could also use the help. So there's a chance that the money could be spread around. But, you know, we get to open up the whole book to find out what the problems are. Reporting in Natowash, Sheryl Moore, Lakeland News. The HUD grant is one of 11 that will be given out to communities all over the country. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.