蜜柚直播

ST. LOUIS 鈥� A coalition of government, nonprofit and business leaders said Tuesday they want to build a regional system to place the homeless into permanent housing and provide resources to help them stay off the streets, from 蜜柚直播 County to the Metro East.

The Housing First STL initiative comes after the East-West Gateway Council of Governments convened more than 140 people last month to address homelessness across the area鈥檚 fragmented landscape.

The plans calls for a lead organization to oversee a strategy of boosting affordable housing options and breaking the cycle of unhoused people entering and leaving temporary shelters.

"We cannot fully begin to address the issue from across the region until we are all going in the same direction and working together," St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones said Tuesday at a gathering in The Hub.

"Paired with insights and resources from local government, support from the private sector and philanthropies, and a comprehensive strategy that ensures that we will create a nimble, data-driven system, I believe that we can all solve homelessness together."

The initiative aims to identify the lead organization in 2025. How the choice will be made, and what steps come after, is unclear. One key question will be how to secure new funding to drive changes.

But the Housing First initiative is the first to offer a regional plan for homelessness, said Samantha Stangl, with the House Everyone STL nonprofit.

"We find ourselves in a historic moment," Stangl said.

The Housing First initiative mirrors a previous regional effort by Gateway to reduce homicides. Both efforts were proposed by Jones. The mayor has said the city bears the brunt of serving the homeless despite reports showing that large numbers of unhoused people come from across the area.

A lack of affordable and accessible housing contributes to a cycle of people securing temporary shelter but ending up back on the street, officials say. And the region鈥檚 governments and nonprofits don鈥檛 always coordinate efforts, even though they face many of the same challenges.

"Homelessness doesn鈥檛 stop at jurisdictional borders or arbitrary lines on a map," said Gateway Executive Director Jim Wild. "It covers the entire St. Louis region."

Representatives from the city of St. Louis, East-West Gateway, St. Louis County, House Everyone STL and other groups are expected to meet in coming weeks to determine next steps, Wild said.

A new system could force governments and agencies to scale back or give up parts of their missions, Stangl said. But a coordinated and more efficient system could also lure more federal and private funding for homeless services.

"We have all of the elements already in St. Louis to do this work," Stangl said. "It鈥檚 just a matter of connecting the dots."

Also on Tuesday, Jones signed into law a long-debated bill to make opening shelters and transitional housing easier across parts of St. Louis. The mayor said the law would help address emergency cases of homelessness and prepare people who are unhoused to transition to permanent housing.

The bill, sponsored by Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier, removes what amounts to a ban on shelters in the city鈥檚 zoning rules by allowing exceptions. Shelters, however, would still need to gather signatures from neighbors and obtain permits.