ST. LOUIS, Missouri — A new report shows a steady rise in overall homelessness across the city of St. Louis compared to this point last year.
The number of families without a home is up 11%. Chronic or long-term homelessness is up 13%. The number of homeless people who can't find shelter is 36% higher.
Homeless people who can't find shelter is up 7%. The number of homeless people who can find shelter swelled by 9%.
Nick Dunne, a spokesman for St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, acknowledged "the growing need for housing and social service support for those facing housing instability" in an emailed statement.
Dunne pointed to the city's deployment of federal pandemic relief funds to address the issue and blamed a regional imbalance in homeless migration for "straining our resources."
"The City remains committed to getting our unhoused neighbors on a path to permanent housing," Dunne said.
There are some signs of progress amid the bleak report. While the overall number of homeless veterans is up 10%, the government is doing better at finding shelter for them. The number of unsheltered veterans is down 57% compared to last year.
"The VA has been working its butt off to serve people who had served," Associate Professor Tim Huffman said. "They work really hard to meet those folks' needs. There's different resources that are available to veterans. And so sometimes, there's a little bit more elbow grease that can go into that from a funding perspective."
Unaccompanied youth homelessness is also down 10%.
The new numbers suggest that even as the city expands its total shelter bed capacity, the demand for those beds is growing even faster.
"I think that all of our systems could be doing better," Huffman said. "That statistic is rooted in some of our lost shelter capacity. We in Saint Louis had more ARPA support in the beginning of the pandemic, but some of those shelters have come to a close and some of our shelters have recently moved to transitional housing."
Huffman studies the causes and effects of homelessness at St. Louis University, and sits on the board of 'House Everyone STL,' a new group working to pry the city's $16.9 million share of federal HUD funds out of the city's hands.
The startling statistics come to light just as a group of homeless shelter providers are competing with the city for control of federal funds.
The city's Department of Human Services currently controls the funds provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. However, a group of homeless shelter advocates and providers known as the 'Continuum of Care' recently signed off on moving the administration of those funds.
A newly formed group called 'House Everyone STL' established itself to compete with the City of St. Louis for the HUD funds. Both entities have recently applied for federal funds in a competitive process. HUD is scheduled to select the winning applicants later this year.
Providers that have applied for government contracts to offer services to homeless people in St. Louis have sometimes struggled navigating a sea of red tape at City Hall.
"We currently don't have the right systems to get those funds from their funder to the place that they need to be fast enough," Huffman said.
Financial records compiled by the city show the Department of Human Services has squandered a significant share of federal money in recent years.
Over a four-year span, HUD clawed back $2.2 million from the city of St. Louis after the funds were either not spent on time or in the manner they were intended.
Huffman blamed the losses on confusing procurement processes or contracts with onerous requirements that discourage or prevent providers from getting to work on solving the issues in the streets.
"Because they're not working together coherently, it can sometimes cause threads to be dropped," he said.
"If you want something done well, you got to have the right people; but if you want something done reliably, you've got to have the right system," Huffman said. "We currently don't have the right systems to get those funds from their funder to the place that they need to be fast enough."
The forfeited funds represented 4.6% of the city's federal HUD allocation from 2016-2019. The money was clawed back between 2018-2021 after reviews of the city's spending on the 'Continuum of Care.'
5 On Your Side has requested the current financial reports from City Hall but has not yet received them.
"One of the things that 'House Everyone STL' really aspires to do is to create a network of collaboration with all of these stakeholders where we are creating opportunities and bringing in new forms of funding, and also building the capacity of the organizations that are going to deliver it," Huffman said.
"The city will always play a role, and an important role, in the ending of homelessness in Saint Louis. The trick is to get them at the right seat at the table."