A contentious debate that took up more than two hours of the St. Louis Board of Aldermen meeting today led to a tie vote that effectively killed a bill that would make it easier to place shelters for the unhoused in the city.
Board Bill 227, sponsored by Ward 7 Alderwoman Alisha Sonnier and co-sponsored by Aldermanic President Megan Green, would reform the city’s plat and petition process for approving shelters.
After a lengthy discussion at today’s meeting, seven alders voted in favor of the bill, seven against it, with one person voting present. This failed to send the bill to perfection and it didn’t pass, effectively killing the legislation this session.
"No" votes came from Aldermen Bret Narayan, Joe Vollmer, Tom Oldenburg and Michael Browning and Alderwomen Anne Schweitzer, Sharon Tyus and Pam Boyd, with Alderwoman Cara Spencer abstaining.
Those in favor of the legislation argue that it is necessary to help the city’s unhoused, pointing out the impossibility of the city’s current plat and petition process, which has led to no new shelters being built in the city in 15 years. They say it would provide more opportunity for public comment.
The alders in opposition to the change hurled comments attacking Sonnier, claiming she didn’t adequately listen to their wards and accusing the bill of taking away residents’ voices.
“In the United States of America, last time I heard, it takes a democracy of 51 percent in a vote,” 5th Ward Alderman Joseph Vollmer said, bungling an explanation of the city’s current plat and petition process. “To have 33 percent of a petition to create something different in your neighborhood sounds a little communistic to me.”
Sonnier fired back saying it shouldn’t be considered “communistic” to vet facilities meant to help people in need.
At least one alder opposed to the bill referred to unhoused people as “these people,” which drew pushback from another member, and others seemed to regard themas nuisances. The alders in opposition didn’t seem to acknowledge that the bill would require public hearings and grant temporary shelter operation licenses that could be revoked and reviewed if problems arose.
Ward 12 Alderwoman Sharon Tyus said she is concerned about the level of crime a shelter might bring to communities.
“Don’t act like there’s not crime associated with a lot of these things, because it is,” Tyus said after ranting about Covenant House, a youth social services organization in her ward. She then spoke in support of the mayor’s controversial decision to remove a camp of unhoused individuals from City Hall.
Tyus frequently mentioned another controversial topic during the debate — moving the unhoused to the site of the city’s former jail, known as the Workhouse. The Stakeholder Steering Committee commissioned by the mayor vehemently opposes the idea of putting tiny homes on site, citing location and environmental concerns. Tyus said she thinks the tiny house encampment is a great idea and says people shouldn’t talk about the environmental concerns without producing the report — which is publicly available on the city’s website.
Tyus worried that shelters will continue to be predominantly in north St. Louis and will negatively impact Black and Brown seniors who own homes in the area, based on the desires of St. Louisans who don’t live in north city, a phenomenon she calls “plantation politics.”
“Which is you put [a shelter] someplace where you don’t have to put up with it. And then, when you have problems, they don’t have enough police to address those problems,” she said.
Ward 14 Rasheen Aldridge, whose ward includes north St. Louis, voted for the change to the shelter approval process, along with Aldermen Shane Cohn and Alderwomen Daniela Velazquez, Shameem Clark Hubbard, Laura Keys and President Green.
Some of the alders who voted no argued that there wasn’t enough time to fully vet the bill so that the concerns of their wards could be heard.
Aldridge pointed out that discussions on this topic date back to at least September. He said Sonnier has done the work, fostering community discussions in various wards including his own, and done a good job of collaborating with the alders who actually responded to her attempts.
“We have to do something, we have to figure out how do we make the process a fair process that works for community,” Aldridge said.
“If we continue to do things how we are doing them now, we may go another 15 years where there isn’t a shelter opened or a special residential facility when we do know that we have rising rents and we’re probably going to see an increase in population,” Sonnier added.
In closing statements, Sonnier voiced her disappointment with her fellow board members, mentioning that a member of the unhoused community asked to be her guest as they discussed the bill today, but later backed out saying they couldn’t stand to hear themselves debated and dehumanized by elected officials.
“I could not be like, ‘Yes, come anyway because I can promise you [it will be fine].’ I knew that might come up in the conversation so I want to apologize to those [unhoused] members,” Sonnier said.
By the end of the discussion after nearly two and a half hours of grueling rebuttals, Sonnier became emotional and wiped away tears as she gave her closing remarks.
“You all would not categorize me as someone who has a drug addiction or somebody who has a serious mental health issue, but I have struggled with housing insecurity myself,” Sonnier said. “Not for being any less of a human being, [...] but for being someone that’s born into society that doesn’t have the best safety nets. For having a mother who got involved in a domestic violence incident, and we had to relocate instantly and we didn’t have the first and second months’ rent available.”
The fight to reform the city’s shelter approval process is not over, Sonnier promised.
“As long as I have a seat and I’m alderwoman of the seventh we are going to be having this conversation, we are going to get something done,” Sonnier said. “If that’s not today, it’ll be in a month, it’ll be in two months, but it will happen.”
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