The homeless camp at St. Louis City Hall is gone (2024)

ST. LOUIS — After a chaotic standoff Monday night, city officials pulled together to clear virtually all of the sprawling homeless camp outside City Hall on Tuesday, enticing residents with promises of suitable space in shelters and tiny homes.

With the blessing of top mayoral aides, two aldermen went from tent to tent helping city outreach workers negotiate departures.

“We put people in housing,” said Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, of Downtown. “I feel good about that.”

The camp’s gradual dissolution marked a relatively orderly end to a whirlwind month at an encampment that had grown to dominate the north side of the seat of government and local news coverage.

In the run-up to this week, it had hosted an ongoing protest against city leaders, watched its size balloon to more than 30 tents, and become a public nuisance: Trash littered the grounds in the plaza north of City Hall. Some areas stank of urine. People freely used drugs and regularly overdosed, sending paramedics scrambling.

The collaboration between Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, Aldridge, and Alisha Sonnier, of Tower Grove East, also marked a striking reversal from the acrimony of the previous evening, when the two progressive aldermen went against the progressive mayor, joining with activists to block police trying to clear the camp on Jones’ orders.

Aldridge said Tuesday that the administration’s push to clear the camp late at night, with little notice and no apparent plan to get all the campers into housing, was still a misstep. But he said the administration had turned things around Tuesday, finding dozens of beds for the people living in the encampment, and giving aldermen space to work through issues.

Sonnier cast the Monday fight as healthy conflict. “We did have a miscommunication and a disagreement on how things were moving,” she said. “But we were able to come together and work on a solution that worked for everyone.”

Nick Desideri, a spokesman for Jones, said the entire effort was about clearing a public safety hazard, and that city outreach workers spent weeks trying to connect campers with shelter before police rolled up.

He commended Aldridge for helping work through issues on Tuesday, however.

The encampment's end followed a breakneck 24 hours that began early Monday evening when word began to trickle out: Under pressure to do something about the fights, drugs and general disorder, the city was about to move on the camp without the usual notice of several days.

An aide to the mayor assured aldermen that everyone had been offered shelter, and would be offered it again.

But activists for the unhoused came to City Hall in droves to protest the clearing, calling it inhumane and unnecessary. Aldridge, Sonnier and top aides to Aldermanic President Megan Green joined them.

And as city trucks pulled floodlights up on the sidewalk, the assembled crowd locked arms and began defiant call-and-response chants. Jay Nelson, Green’s chief of staff, held a sign that read “Not my mayor.”

“This is sick,” Aldridge said. “The city has got to do better.”

But curfews at 10 p.m. and then midnight came and went, and the police officers staging in the park across the street stayed put.

Around 1 a.m. Tuesday, Aldridge got on the line with the mayor’s office and told aides that the crowd of advocates wasn’t going to leave. There was discussion of moving campers into hotels and clearing the encampment that way, but it was too late in the night for that.

And the conversation turned to Tuesday. The clearing was called off, and they agreed to work together to find people housing in the morning.

It worked. Aldridge and Sonnier were back on site by mid-morning, talking to campers and advocates. The city’s Department of Human Services announced it had freed up 50 beds in shelters and transitional housing, more than enough for everyone in the camp.

And by mid-afternoon, city outreach workers were making the rounds to offer the beds to campers, and Aldridge and Sonnier were negotiating with the last major holdouts. A couple from Arizona that didn’t want to separate from one another or their three dogs got a tiny home where they both could live with at least one of the pups.

Another couple unwilling to split from each other, William and Ericka Clay, were told they could go to a tiny home together.

And by 7 p.m., the grass outside the Market Street doors and Poelker Park across the street were being gated off for “restoration.”

But not everyone went to shelter. Christopher Perry, 42, the camp’s unofficial mayor, was still hanging around Tuesday night on the other side of the barriers. He said it was just a matter of time before tents popped up down the street.

“That’s all we can do,” he said.

And the fight over how the city will handle that may be just beginning.

Sonnier said Monday night that the whole experience reinforced the need for legislation rewriting the city’s obligations to the homeless, which she had previewed at a press conference Monday morning. Her bills would require the city to give 30 days notice and offer campers appropriate shelter beds before clearing tents and mandate the establishment of controlled encampments with showers, toilets, access to social services and 24-hour security for those who don’t want to go to shelters.

Green said in an interview Tuesday she thinks the same thing.

“I hope we take this moment to see that there are different ways to interact with our unhoused,” she said. “And I hope we choose the humane option.”

But implementing those plans could carry significant costs and raise the ire of neighbors. Several aldermen have expressed wariness of outright endorsing encampments in the city.

And Jones and her staff have been noncommittal about the plan, saying the city is already doing all it can for the homeless.

A spokesman for Jones offered no further comment Tuesday evening.