Type 1415 North 13th Street into , and the software gives you directions to St. Louis Weed Control. In fact, the city of St. Louis-owned building houses the forestry division.
To enter, you have to be buzzed through a locked door. Inside, employees are taking calls about overgrown weeds and other issues. A young black man inquires about a job. Another is standing at the door waiting to be let in. An employee updates acting commissioner Janis Garavaglia about a tree planting.
It’s Friday morning, a little after 9 a.m.
I’m there to view the warehouse.
Come Monday, maybe sooner, it is slated to be the city’s latest homeless shelter.
The image isn’t a good one.
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“It is literally warehousing the poor,†says Thomas Harvey. The executive director of , the public interest law firm that often represents low-income people, including the homeless, Harvey is also the chairman of the city’s Continuum of Care, an umbrella group of nonprofit organizations that serve the homeless.
On Friday, the warehouse was serving as a large parking garage for forestry vehicles. Vans and pickups were parked along one side, while a large area was cordoned off by the sort of gates often used to block off roads during parades, marking the area where no later than Monday, the city plans to park the homeless.
That’s when New Life Evangelistic Center, run by the Rev. Larry Rice, will be shut down.
For almost as long as Rice has been in St. Louis, he has been in a running battle with the city. His walk-in shelter at 1411 Locust Street has long been a source of concern for neighbors in the Washington Avenue loft district. Rice doesn’t play well with others. He is the only provider of homeless services in the city that doesn’t work with the other providers in the Continuum of Care to meet certain standards, connect the homeless to various services, and follow the rules.
Rice’s occupancy permit says he can house 35 people overnight, but he often has 150 to 200 homeless in the center, and during the day, they often camp out outside the building, or by the downtown library. At times there are drug deals, urination and defecation on sidewalks and buildings. No doubt, the crisis is real.
For the past year, as the city waged a legal battle to shut Rice down, it vowed to find shelter for the homeless who had been using Rice’s building.
Despite the fact that many of the city’s homeless facilities are concentrated on the north side, where poverty is rampant, it near the Carr Square neighborhood north of downtown and just west of Tucker Boulevard.
There were public hearings. The neighbors complained.
The city’s director of Human Services, Eddie Roth, defended the process.
This time there were no public hearings. The city worked in secret to develop two temporary shelters in case it won the legal battle with Rice.
“I’m shocked,†says Darryl Piggee. He’s the attorney for the Carr Square Tenant Management Corporation. “After all the conversation about the need to spread these things out and put them in multiple neighborhoods, they’re concentrating them in one.â€
When opening Biddle House — which was also intended to reduce the need for Rice’s shelter — Roth said over and over again that “the way to do better than Larry Rice is to do better than Larry Rice.â€
Harvey isn’t sure that finding a warehouse to park the homeless at the last minute quite accomplishes that feat. At first glance, it’s cleaner than New Life. But it’s also little more than cots on a concrete floor.
“Regardless of whether or not it’s better than NLEC, it’s hard to imagine how it meets standards,†Harvey said.
On Friday morning as Roth was rushing to open the temporary facility, attorneys were heading to court to stop him. The and ArchCity Defenders filed a motion in St. Louis Circuit Court seeking to block the city “from warehousing its homeless inhabitants in its Forestry Division garage.†The lawsuit argues that the care at the temporary facility will be “inadequate†under the law.
The conflict demonstrates the difficulty of dealing with the homeless population, and how division over strategy gets in the way. Harvey and Roth are often on the same team, advocating together for more money, more services, bigger hearts from the neighbors who complain about men and women with no homes walking on the streets outside their downtown lofts. Neither believe Rice’s shelter has ever provided adequate care for the homeless who sleep there.
But the city, while about to shut down Rice for breaking the rules, seems to be stretching a few of its own. The result is a rushed attempt to stick the homeless in a warehouse without any input from the north side residents who often complain of being left out and left behind.
Roth says the facility “is a perfectly reasonable transitional step.†He compared the city’s challenge to preparing for a sudden bout of bad weather.
“The storm has arrived,†Roth says, “and we’re ready.â€
The young man looking for a job in the city’s forestry division hitches up his sweatpants and heads to a back room for an interview. He walked in without an appointment.
By this weekend, or Monday, perhaps, the building he is in will double as an overnight warehouse for men without jobs.
No walk-ins will be allowed.
