Last week there was a march of homeless people in St. Louis from Lucas Park to City Hall, but none of the news gave it adequate context. Last Spring (2008), when my friends in the St. Louis area and I restarted the St. Louis Food Not Bombs (STLFNB), we were confronted by an official (Bill Siedhoff) and learned the historical context and current struggle of homeless people in St. Louis. STLFNB had a history of serving in St. Louis’s Lucas Park, which was the big hangout for homeless people in the area. Lucas Park had been a sort of battleground for homeless people’s rights to freely assemble in public for decades, and its location has a lot to do with its controversy.
Lucas Park is centered in Downtown St. Louis, in an area that has been under reconstruction for redevelopment purposes—surrounded by ritzy lofts and bourgeois hangouts. The closest blocks are also spotted with churches and expensive offices. On Friday, July 1, 2005, the infamously racist and classist Mayor Francis G. Slay, delivered a speech at City Hall, in which he said that Centenary United Methodist Church would venture into a project with the City of St. Louis to build and fund a shelter, specifically addressing homeless people in Lucas Park multiple times.[i] Slay proposed St. Louis City Human Services Director Bill Siedhoff handle the public-private partnership, in which CUMC would be funded in building Centenary Cares, a food service center and potential shelter for homeless people in St. Louis.
A Criminal City
Almost immediately after, St. Louis City Police conducted a series of illegal "sweeps" through Lucas Park, in which they abused homeless people to clear them out of the park for the July 4th City Festivities (2005).[ii] These "sweeps" were prosecuted, resulting in the City shoveling out $80,000 in damages to plaintiffs. The National Coalition for the Homeless wrote:
City Counselor Patricia Hageman admitted these accounts were accurate. Attorney for the plaintiffs, Steven Gunn, stated, "This agreement makes it clear that sweeps violate the law and human dignity." Although the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in granting a preliminary injunction and the city agreed to the settlement, the city has not admitted any wrong-doing.
The following early November (2005), St. Louis City Police engaged in another intense "sweep" of Lucas Park. And, though not violent this time, the act had caught the attention of many local community activists, making homeless people’s rights a matter of larger controversy in St. Louis. This sweep resulted in a march of homeless people and others, from Lucas Park to City Hall, demanding a publicly owned shelter for homeless people.
Engineering Private Use of Public Funds
To Slay, the goal was clear: Get homeless people out of the public eye and away from valuable properties. And the man he put in charge of the City’s side of the partnership was St. Louis City Human Services Director Bill Siedhoff. Siedhoff fought hard to get funding for St. Louis’s new plan. As part of a national allocation from Housing and Urban Development, Siedhoff and Slay managed to squander "nearly $10 million in homeless housing and service dollars to the City of St. Louis and $1.3 million to the county"—amidst a crisis of too many houses, most of which were sustained by imaginary credits!!!