St. Louis Gets Kudos for Organized Approach to Homeless Aid : More than 100 agencies meet monthly to make sure that needed services are provided without duplication or waste.

Corey Swan was 16, he says, when he “just upped and left” his home in Miami. His girlfriend had been violently killed. “That tore me up,” he said. “I lost my sense of reality.”

For years, Swan wandered the country, emotionally disabled, spending time in New York and Chicago before finally arriving in St. Louis in 1986.

Although he does not consider himself homeless--he has never slept on the street--Swan’s address for the last several years has been a downtown homeless shelter. Still, he said, he considers coming here the luckiest thing that’s happened to him.

Thanks to an unusual local program that is teaching him the ins and outs of television broadcasting, the 31-year-old Swan hopes that in two years he will have a home of his own--and a job. “I’m praying that I can become an electrical engineer,” he said.

The program, created by a local minister, is considered controversial by many, but it is one of a number of new approaches being tried here for dealing with the problem of homelessness. In addition to the privately run program, the city of St. Louis has won national recognition for its own innovations in coping with the growing problem.

No one is suggesting that the solution to one of America’s most troubling problems has been found here in this Mississippi River city. Indeed, as in cities across the country, homelessness has increased here during the last decade.

On any given night, an estimated 200 people are sleeping on St. Louis streets. About 5,500 homeless people have requested help at shelters that receive city support, said Dorothy A. Dailey, coordinator of the city’s Homeless Services Network. And, she added, “We know that there are more (homeless people) than that.” What is more, she said, national studies have shown that St. Louis has more homeless women and children than average.

But, in an age of dwindling federal and state support for social needs, the city is winning kudos for grappling imaginatively with the problem.

The National Conference of Mayors cited the city’s innovations last year when it presented St. Louis with its Livability Award. The city’s efforts were also recognized last year by the Ford Foundation and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Coordinated Efforts

St. Louis does what few other cities do--it organizes. More than 100 agencies that provide services related to homelessness meet monthly as part of the city-coordinated Homeless Services Network. The coordination makes sure that efforts are not duplicated, that needed services are created and that funds are efficiently used. The effect is to make homelessness a high priority, coordinated effort, compared to hit-or-miss efforts elsewhere.

For all the acclaim now, it was a lawsuit in 1985 that spurred the city to action. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the homeless, alleged that the city was not providing enough support for homeless services. A consent decree ordered the city to provide additional services, including day care, transportation and an increase in shelter beds. The city was also ordered to spend at least $310,000 during the next fiscal year on homeless services.

The city responded. In five years, the number of beds in emergency shelters increased to 1,200 from 650. At the same time, the city increased its financial contribution to fight homelessness to $2 million from $310,000. And the Homeless Services Network took shape.

One of the organizations within the network transports homeless people to health clinics and job interviews, others provide shelter, another provides day care while parents seek jobs or housing or attend job and life-skills training programs.

In addition, the network provides drug- and alcohol-abuse counseling and classes in such subjects as budgeting, home management and child care.

The network provides transitional housing for up to three months while homeless families prepare to move into permanent housing, which the network also helps obtain.

One of the organizations involved in the network, the St. Patrick Center, operates a restaurant--in addition to its other services--that employs homeless, mentally ill people.

Speaking of the city’s efforts, Bill Wyman, director of St. Patrick Center, said, “I think they’re doing an excellent job as far as funding and approach.”

City as Slumlord

The city is not without its critics, however. The most vocal one is the Rev. Larry Rice, who runs the interdenominational New Life Evangelical Center, a private statewide network of shelters.

He contends that the city is contributing to the homeless problem by condemning properties and boarding up homes without making sure that evicted residents have a place to go. “The biggest slumlord in St. Louis is the city of St. Louis,” he said.

Rice has refused to join in the city’s Homeless Services Network, contending that the city ties organizations’ hands with red tape while taking credit for their accomplishments.

On the other hand, city officials and operators of other shelters question the effectiveness of Rice’s efforts.

“I don’t think the guy is making any money” off of the homeless, Wyman said, but he added that he does not think Rice’s shelters are well supervised. He and others accused Rice of exploiting the homeless for political purposes, questioning his habit of involving residents of his shelters in long marches and other protests.

Some would argue that the bickering between two groups with ostensibly the same goals is counterproductive, and doubtless it is. Yet Rice’s organization and the Homeless Services Network continue to grow and evolve--trains moving in the same direction on parallel tracks.

Chester Hines Jr., the city’s director of human services, insists that the homelessness problem had become so apparent in 1985 that the city would have taken strong action even without the lawsuit that was filed on behalf of the homeless.

A good effect of the lawsuit and the consent decree that resulted from it was that it protected homeless services during difficult financial times.

“When every other program in the city gets cut, we know there’s a limit to what can be cut (in services to the homeless) because we have a court order,” Dailey said.

Another factor is that city officials now know much more about homelessness than they did in 1985, when they were locked in to the requirements of the consent decree, she said.

The court order emphasizes the creation of homeless shelters, she said, but the focus rightly should be on solving the underlying social problems that lead to homelessness and to helping people get back on their feet.

Training Program

Rice attempts to address that problem at his center, which runs the program that teaches television skills to the homeless.

Rice operates UHF stations in St. Louis and in Jefferson City, the state capital.

Although much of his broadcasting time is filled with vintage shows like “Mr. Ed,” “Bonanza” and “Ozzie and Harriet,” his daily programming is studded with religious messages and exhortations to viewers to become personally involved in helping the poor.

He often goes on the air live with members of homeless families, asking viewers to phone in to offer aid directly to them.

His camera operators and most of his technical staff are formerly homeless persons who received training while staying in his shelters.

“I try to train them in 21st-Century skills,” said Rice, who said he draws no salary.

Some of his trainees have left to work for small-market television stations or video production companies, he said. Others go to work in non-television-related fields, but Rice insists that they are helped by the job skills and sense of responsibility instilled by his program.