St. Louis signs lease on new temporary emergency homeless shelter

St. Louis signs lease on new temporary emergency homeless shelter

Originally appeared on St. Louis Public Radio.

St. Louis is poised to meet a Monday deadline to move homeless men from a temporary emergency shelter in a city warehouse […]

Once the new temporary shelter closes in March 2018, the city will have just one emergency overnight shelter — the Biddle Housing Opportunities Center located north of downtown.

Roth said the plan is to get other regional partners to provide breathing room in the future.

“Maybe St. Louis County, or one of the other counties should do a shelter for 30 women,” he said.

To that end, the city is using a $200,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to have a Boston-based consulting firm guide social service providers, politicians, businesses, universities and other community leaders toward a more cooperative approach to reducing homelessness. The firm won’t force anyone to work together, Roth said, but will help foster natural ways to work together.

A two-day “boot camp” starts June 7. The consulting firm, the Cloudburst Group, helped St. Louis adopt a new strategy for distributing federal grants between 2012 and 2014.

Read the full article on St. Louis Public Radio.

Ask the Expert: An Interview with Heather Huntington, Cloudburst