Advocate Alex Cohen was at one of the homeless tent encampments in downtown St. Louis when he learned — from The St. Louis American — that the City of St. Louis Department of Health had issued orders to vacate the encampments. The 50 residents in the tent communities must leave by Friday, May 1, according to the order emailed to the press at around noon on April 29.
“We are here right now, and no one has issued a vacate order,” Cohen said. “We’ve just heard rumors.”
Cohen is a member of the Tent Mission STL grassroots group that has been aiding the two tent communities since they popped up along Market and Chestnut streets at the beginning of April.
Steve Conway, chief of staff for Mayor Lyda Krewson, said the city will be posting the orders at the encampments throughout the day.
“As of today, there are now sufficient shelter openings for the 50 or so individuals who remain living in the encampments downtown,” according to the mayor’s press release. “For their health and safety, and for the health and safety of the broader community, the city will continue to have safe and secure shelter available for these individuals.”
Every day, Cohen and other volunteers fill out the city’s Google form to request shelter on behalf of individuals at the encampments. Some people will only agree to go into hotel rooms for various “valid” reasons, Cohen said, including past trauma and fear that they will have less control of who they sleep next to and contract the virus.
Some have been waiting for a while to hear back from the request form, Cohen said. They’ve been told there’s a 100-person wait list for hotel rooms.
Conway said he was unaware of the Google form process or the wait list.
Cohen said the city recently lost several staff members, and that has made communication between the city and the encampments even more difficult. Now, Amy Bickford, the chief program manager for the city’s homeless services division, is herself managing all the requests and placing people, he said.
“She is the only one to call, and she is busy,” Cohen said.
Just yesterday two families with children came to the encampments, he said.
“When it comes to a family, we know we are going to have better luck going through St. Louis County,” Cohen said.
Even before the pandemic, it was impossible to find shelter for families in the city, he said.
Both families were placed in a Bridgeton hotel by Loaves and Fishes. People are seeing the encampments as a place to go for resources, he said, and they have new people coming every day. Tent Mission STL tries to find places for them as soon as they can, but each person has different circumstances.
According to the mayor’s press release, “Over the past several weeks, the city has worked diligently to expand its capacity for emergency shelter with more than 200 additional beds. It has also conducted routine outreach and provided medical support and has successfully placed more than 40 unhoused individuals into shelter and housing.”
According to the St. Louis Area Regional Commission on Homelessness (SLARCH), there are at least 780 people who are homeless currently engaged with St. Louis city nonprofit organizations, which track their data in real time. Outreach operations suggest that there are at least 200 more people without homes in the city.
Normally, there are 518 beds available for the homeless in the City of St. Louis, according to SLARCH. However, with social distancing requirements, that has been reduced by 40 percent to about 308 beds.
So unfortunately, the 200 beds that the city recently added only brings the city back to its original number before the pandemic, advocates said.
The city appeared to be making moves to vacate the encampments earlier this month. At that time, the Continuum of Care (CoC) — which consists of 148 organizations, social service providers and individuals who aim to end homelessness — released a statement arguing that it was against federal guidelines to force homeless encampments to close during the pandemic. Closing the encampments poses a greater health risk because it spreads people throughout the region, they said.
Conway said a mobile COVID-testing van will arrive at the encampments on Thursday and Friday so everyone there can get tested before vacating.
“The problem is the congregating,” Conway said. “If we have a COVID-positive case, think of how many people would be infected. The camps draw in daytime visitors. There’s a huge health risk associated with this. We will be able to get it under control.”
