THE GUILTY CONSCIENCE (OF ST. LOUIS) by jay swoboda

The date is June 5th, 1989, somewhere on the vast expanse of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Student protesters, hundreds of thousands strong, had gathered to oppose government corruption, restrictions on free speech, and joblessness.
 

We all know the photograph. It may not be beautiful or artistic, but it is nothing short of heart-stopping. There he is, a thin young man dressed in a white shirt and dark pants squaring off against a line of tanks, a lone human figure daring to stand up against a great nation’s military.
 

“You’re up against the powers that be when you try to represent the poor and most vulnerable of society,” states the Reverend Larry Rice from across the table in a cluttered side room at his downtown shelter for homeless men, women and children: The New Life Evangelistic Center.
 

Perhaps Rice and his ministry don’t have tanks at their door, but if you’ve been reading the Post-Dispatch or watching the news you’d probably think they weren’t far away.
For those who haven’t been following the news, Rev. Larry Rice has submitted a proposal, on behalf of his Christian service ministry, to lease the L. Abram Federal Building and convert it into a one-stop shop homeless shelter and service center. The Abrams Building is located on Market Street, between 15th and 16th Streets directly north of the Savvis Center parking garage squeezed in between the downtown Post Office and the boarded up Kiel Opera House.
 

According to the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, federal agencies must identify and make available surplus federal property, such as buildings and land, for use by states, local governments, and nonprofit agencies to assist homeless persons. It’s under the legal framework of this act that Rice is applying to expand his ability to provide shelter and services to the downtown homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless. Rice’s New Life Evangelistic Center hopes to turn the available 280,000 square feet into a comprehensive space capable of serving between 525 and 1000 people on any given day.
Rice continues, “We are up against the same struggle as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bell and all the others, in that we are trying to integrate Downtown St. Louis. We are seeing some very bigoted segregationists that do not want the homeless integrated into downtown St. Louis.”
 

To understand Rice’s position, one must take a step back and consider the trajectory of development projects that have occurred in downtown St. Louis over the past decade.
 

“They will spend all sorts of money to build lofts and sidewalks for those that have money, but they do not take into consideration that homeless people are in downtown, whether we choose to assist them or not. The fact is that they are going to continue to be downtown, because this is where all the buses come together, this is where many of the job opportunities exist. All the things they use to appeal to the wealthy also appeal to the poor and homeless – and even more so,” claims Rice about downtown development.
 

However, developer Don Breckenridge and the City of St. Louis are also vying for the federal building with a much different vision of the federal property’s future. The Abram Federal Building is currently home to offices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but in 2006, it will be vacated and sold or leased by the government.
 

Breckenridge has offered to buy the Abram building for $7.6 million with less ambitious plans of turning it into a parking garage. Without the parking garage, he says, the opera house will not reopen. Also, the development deal requires two leases, one with music-industry conglomerate Clear Channel, which plans to rent office space in the Kiel, but demands 1500 parking spaces within two blocks of the site. The other lease is with Savvis Center, which requires an additional 1500 parking spaces.
 

Breckenridge is also interested in renovating the now-shuttered Municipal Courts Building, east of the Opera House, into what developers call a “boutique hotel.” Breckenridge is responsible for redeveloping the Edison Building into the Edison Sheraton hotel and townhouses. But if Breckenridge refuses to renovate and reopen the Opera House without the conversion of the Abram site to parking, he certainly isn’t going to renovate the Municipal Courts Building into a posh hotel.
 

In a February 25th, 2004 Riverfront Times article, that was strategically bumped from the cover by a one-page cartoon spoof on School Board member Bill Haas, Breckenridge was quoted as saying, “The Abram Building becomes a necessity for us, because people going to the theater -- especially ladies in a dress and heels -- they just won’t walk any further than that.”
 

Tom Burnham, a long-time community activist and director of shelter and transitional housing programs for Peter & Paul Community Services, had a different explanation for the frustrated developer’s cold feet.
 

“What is so unique about the Kiel that no one will walk from across the street to get to it? The truth is they never intended to reopen it and then they bring in Breckenridge, who is either in on the deal or they’re playing him for a patsy. They knew it wasn’t going to happen from the beginning,” claims Burnham.
 

Burnham continued to say, “When you go to a ballgame – you don’t park immediately next door. When you go to a football game – you don’t park anywhere near the stadium. When you go to see the Arch you don’t park anywhere near – you have to walk.”
 

Rice and his ministry to the homeless have long been on the chopping block of most developers and city fathers whose guilty consciences suffer the unending barrage of Rice’s moral stands in his fight for the impoverished of St. Louis and the surrounding region.
 

In my opinion, says Burnham, “The city got what it asked for, after they talked the Salvation Army out of applying for the building. The only person left was Larry Rice. This was a predictable result. They city doesn’t have a standing in this case, and they knew it. This lets a bunch of millionaires living on corporate welfare off the hook and allows them to blame it on the homeless.”
 

For some, the Abram building represents the next “reasonable” step in the redevelopment of downtown. But for anyone who has watched the City of St. Louis give away building after building only to be destroyed, the Abram building represents The Alamo for the homeless who continue to be turned away from city shelters for lack of space.
 

The city owned the Kiel Opera House and they chose to give it away for development. In fact, the city spent $35 million to demolish the old Kiel auditorium, build a parking garage and tear down the historic Children’s Building. In return, the Kiel Center Partners agreed to renovate the Kiel Opera House and build a new arena. Yet after spending $2.5 million on renovations, the Kiel Partners said they’d fulfilled their responsibilities. The opera house was left with no running water and steam heat working at only a percentage of its capacity -- the building hasn’t been reopened since it was closed in 1991.
 

Yes, we need development, but it has to be balanced – and not on the back of our poorest citizens. The reality is that social services across the board have been suffering mightily. From the destruction of public housing, to the lack of affordable housing and the lack of appropriate affordable housing – the city is not doing their fair share. This needs to be turned around. It is not enough to say that in the next ten years we are going to create enough housing units when our shelter system is full, especially, when great numbers of people are not able to get into housing.
 

This is not the first stand that Rice has taken in his thirty plus years of serving the poor, but it could be the most important, because this is a fight Rice is likely to win. Even Breckenridge has conceded that little can be done to stop him.
 

According to Rebecca Troth, an attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty who is working with Rice on its application,
“Because Rice is alone in his efforts for the Abrams building and because the St. Louis area is in need of more emergency shelter, he stands a very solid chance of obtaining the building.”
 

But Rice’s plans are running into opposition from the city and other homeless providers in the St. Louis area. Dan Buck, chief executive of St. Patrick Center, was quoted in a March 9th Post-Dispatch article as saying,
 

“I’m just frustrated. If Larry Rice is given that shelter, it will be a duplication of services we offer just eight blocks away. What we don’t need is another mega-shelter.”
 

Yet, it is difficult to understand how the St. Patrick Partnership Center, which provides a whopping 15 emergency shelter beds at its 800 N. Tucker building, can be considered a “mega-shelter.” There is no question about the quality and quantity of services provided by the St. Patrick Center and other shelters that receive funding from the city, state and federal government. But when these same organizations, which recently took $9.2 million tax dollars to serve the homeless of St. Louis, claim that Rice’s plan flies in face of years of research…please don’t use cost-effectiveness as a reason why emergency shelter beds should not be created.
 

In regards to St. Patrick’s, Rice mentioned, “We placed as many people in jobs and apartments as St. Patrick’s Center did last year…and we’re finding that some of those individuals and families that received placement grants from our organization also received funds from St. Patrick Center. It is nice to see this unplanned collaboration benefiting the homeless.”
 

Rice continues, “We find our time is best spent with the homeless and not behind a computer or at meeting talking about the problem. We do some of that, we have to that, but we want to remain focused on providing compassionate service.”
Tom Burnham, who did not express whether or not he supports Rice’s plan, highlights personal experience in regards to the need for more emergency shelter,
 

“If the numbers from the Housing Resource Center tell us anything, it is that we need more emergency shelter. Those numbers only represent the calls that were actually able to get through the hotline. This number doesn’t account for those that were ignorant of the hotline, didn’t have the wherewithal to make the call or didn’t have the 50 cents or the patience for the call,” Burnham expresses.
 

“I’ve seen people wait an hour only to be told that there was no room for them. How many times does it take before someone says that they are not going to go through the frustrating, humiliating process only to be told that New Life Evangelistic Center might be the only resource able to help before they stop calling and go straight to Larry Rice,” adds Burnham.
 

Rice has retained his independence in an effort to avoid the city stepping in to close down his services and in an effort to keep the needs of the homeless in focus.
 

Rice said, “If we are going to serve homeless people, then we have to put homeless needs first. If we don’t want to serve homeless people, and instead engage in a whole form of tokenism – we will continue to have revolving door social services that continue to frustrate the poor and homeless. Put yourself in a homeless person’s shoes, understand their struggles…and City Hall will recognize that our plan for the Abrams building will break the cycle of homelessness even faster.”
 

In early March, the St. Louis Affordable Housing Commission (who are appointed by the mayor) unanimously voted to oppose Rice’s proposal. In a letter to Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, commission members wrote: “Serving such a large population is not a service but a ‘warehouse’ for homeless, creating more problems, rather than solving them.”
 

Rice denies charges that he is “warehousing” people and charges,
 

“Visible poverty is a problem for the opponents of our application. They want the homeless out of sight and out of mind. Because if they become more visible suddenly there are facts, suddenly there are figures and then we just might have to do something about the problem. They would rather lie to the public saying that they are meeting all of the needs and talk about all the federal dollars going to help the homeless. Yet very few of those dollars ever reach the homeless…instead they go into the pockets of bureaucrats and those that maintain the programs instead of ever reaching the homeless. What is also unique about our program is that most of the people working for us have been at one time or another homeless.”
 

Because Reverend Larry Rice and his ministry remain independent, they are not accountable to City Hall. The main reason you don’t see any other homeless service providers seeking out this building is because they are afraid of losing their funding.
Rice adds, “They are not working for the homeless…they are working for Francis Slay. They are not free to serve the homeless. We are free to serve the homeless and that is what we plan to continue doing with this particular building.”
 

A response from the Department of Health and Human Services regarding Rice’s application is expected by March 12th. Once the smoke clears the homeless of St. Louis will either have a warm and welcoming space or will be able to watch as women in high heels make the short trip to the Kiel Opera House from a newly constructed parking garage.
 

If Rice, the guilty conscience of St. Louis, and the homeless prevail in their efforts in obtaining this space it would be an amazing opportunity. But only if the homeless service providers, opposed to this ambitious plan, can come together in a concerted effort to finding real solutions to ending homelessness.
 

Joseph Kitchen, 51, has stayed in Rice’s shelter and adds, “If this is going to work Larry Rice needs more or better trained supervision. Because the problems he is having now are only going to multiply. Not so much problems with the homeless, but problems with how his staff interacts with the homeless.”
 

“If Larry Rice gets the Abram building, many of the people on the streets will be assisted in the downtown community and other areas. Shelters are full and I think this building could fill that void.”

jay swoboda, is the publisher of Whats Up Magazine, and wants to wake up the rest of St. Louis. If anyone has any better ideas please let him know at: editor@whatsupstl.com 

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