PPCSinc Blogs

A memoir is how one remembers one’s own life. It isn’t a cross-referenced, fact-checked history. Memory tends to fill in gaps with whatever wattle and daub is handy to keep out the rain and retain a bearable level of comfort. The older I get the better I was.

The neighborhood of Soulard was named for a Frenchman who fled their revolution. The reigning Spanish governor awarded him a land grant in the 1790s. One day the Spanish lowered their flag over the territory and the French raised theirs. The next day the French lowered their flag and we, that is, the United States, raised ours. Circumstances begged the question: was the United States duty bound to honor a land grant made by an arguably spurious foreign power?

It took decades to wend its way to the Supreme Court where it was finally decided in favor of Soulard’s heirs. Early in the legal wrangling, circa 1810, in order to assess what was physically at stake, court surveyors left the village of St Louis and ventured a mile south to inventory the property.

There were woods and fields, streams and ponds, and a house. The house had been there for some time, ten or fifteen years, and although it showed signs of recent habitation, it had apparently been abandoned and needed repairs. Who had been using it? Trappers or Indians or perhaps some of the no account layabouts who had been living on the fringes between the Indians and the villagers, but then again, I already mentioned the trappers. That house still stands, with some recent improvements, about a block west from the entrance to the shelter.

As neighborhoods go, Soulard was historically a modest one. It was where the succeeding waves of immigrants would first settle. Climb atop a Soulard rooftop and count the churches. Most every one represents a different nationality although the Germans are represented  for each different wave that seemed to come every twenty years or so.

 Each church served as the social center for those immigrants providing assistance and community for the newcomers. They also served as community support for others as well. The very first chapter of the St. Vincent De Paul Society (dedicated to helping the poor), in the Americas was established here in 1848.

Soulard was a working class neighborhood. There were some wealthy families. They had to be able to get to and from work in a reasonable amount of time, but early in the twentieth century automobiles fixed that.

The first three quarters of the twentieth century weren’t very kind to the neighborhood. Prohibition was hard on a community of brewers and brewery workers. The end of Prohibition coincided with the start of the Great Depression which overlapped the Second World War. After the war, the men and women who fought it wanted a piece of the prosperity. The government created what was then the largest social spending program in history, the G.I. Bill.

The Bill provided low interest college loans and mortgage guarantees to millions and paved the way for the next two generations of prosperity. There was one catch, though. It was also a jobs bill. The G.I. Bill only provided loans for new homes to generate construction jobs. It didn’t apply to existing houses. If you were a returning vet, where would you live, in a new modern low-cost home or a hundred year old fixer upper that may not even have running water? Parts of Soulard didn’t have running water till the ’60s. That is the 1960s. Much of Soulard was simply abandoned.

By the 1970s much of the housing was vacant. The city floated a plan to bulldoze everything east of Highway 55. There were a few stalwart visionaries who fought off city hall but it was still a dirt poor neighborhood. I began coming to the market in ’65 and the neighborhood during the late ’70s.

A number of artists and musicians moved here for the low rents and made the place a destination. The Geyer Street Sheiks and the Soulard Blues Band are among the unheralded saviors of the community.

I remember cold water flats for as low as $45 dollars a month. I also had friends who were occupying buildings with no legal claim on them. They went to work every day. They had furniture and carpets and hung pictures on their walls. They would carry water home in plastic jugs and had heating and lights from kerosene. Their lifestyle wasn’t much different from my own except perhaps they had fewer bills. Some people would line up daily at the doors of the neighborhood churches and ask for food, blankets and clothing. This had gone was now so routine it called for a better response.

In 1981 three of those churches got together and worked to better address the needs that were being presented at their doors. Trinity Lutheran, St. Vincent de Paul and Sts. Peter & Paul opened a shelter. That first winter it was in the basement of Peter & Paul’s parish hall. The following winter it moved to the basement of the church itself, a neighborhood response to a neighborhood problem.

If you lived in Soulard back then, encountering people with serious mental health and substance abuse issues was a much more common routine. There were certainly scores and possibly hundreds of squatters among the generally poor people living in Soulard. It is hardly an exaggeration to say there were whole blocks you could have bought for what some single homes are currently selling for.

In 1982 the meals program was born. The requests for food came from beyond those in need of shelter. Many people on limited income, such as Social Security or food stamps, were running out of resources by the end of the month. Many churches came together to provide a hot meal. At first it was just the last week of the month but as more groups joined, the program has grown until today when there is a meal served on all but three days at the beginning of the month. The program starts, as of January ’07 on the fifth of each month at Sts. Peter & Paul. It moves to St. Vincent’s on the twenty-second where they serve up to including the first of the following month. This past year around 50,000 meals were served out of the two locations.

I wasn’t there for the shelter’s inaugural winter. I didn’t arrive until the fall of 1985. I was still in my twenties, for at least a few more weeks. I had read some poetry at a reading in one of Soulard’s myriad bars and was approached by Peter Rosenberg. Peter thought I had the right attitude and invited me into the shelter. There were men, women and children living crowded in the church basement. Eighty to ninety a night was typical. The door would open at nine each night and the crowd would rush in. Sometimes there would be a hundred at the door when we opened. When we felt we had our fill we would then offer transportation to New Life or Salvation Army. On Dick Pikey’s birthday in January 1986 we hosted 120 guests, it was ten degrees outside and we weren’t turning anyone away.

I was living nearby and it was easy for me to come almost every night. I would leave between eleven and midnight after most people were settled on their bunks and the overnight volunteers were all in. I worked the door. I was essentially a bouncer.

We saw a lot of one percenters back then - those alcoholics who lived for nothing more than their next drink, Pops, Ashtray, Johnny and Roy;  and severely mentally ill - Bucket Joe aka Gravois Joe and Cosmic Dan, and constant scrappers like Otis and Dumpy. We also had families with infants and children in school, abused women, abused men and folks just really down on their luck…and far too many veterans.  

When we closed at the end of March in ’86, decisions were made. We had been serving a lot of people but poorly. We were overcrowded. The numbers greatly added to the stress level. We helped open three other shelters intent on working with women and families.  We would cut our numbers down to fifty a night. We would, henceforth, only serve men. They would have to sign up for a reservation for a week at a time.

Initially, I opposed these changes. That we might exclude anyone struck me as a terrible idea. Within hours of opening, in the fall of ’86, I knew it was the right thing to do. The stress level had fallen off the charts. Previously at the end of each evening, I had such an adrenaline level it took hours to unwind. We still have our moments but not at all like we once did.

Out of those decisions a lot of good has emerged. We knew we could be more than a seasonal shelter. In ’87 we made our first attempt at a year round program, a transitional program. We were making it up as we went along. There wasn’t a handbook at the time and we failed utterly. We needed to give it a lot more thought. We didn’t want it to just be a smaller emergency shelter. We really wanted to see men move from the streets. We shut it down within two months.

We tried again in the spring of ’88. We had a clearer set of expectations for our guests and a better notion of who we might be able to help. Since then, many hundreds of men have received meaningful help in their journey back from the streets.

We have probably all heard about the de-institutionalization from the mental health system that was taking place in the seventies and early eighties. Libertarians were offended that people were being held, incarcerated because they were mentally ill but had committed no offense. Conservatives thought the government ought not be in the mental health business anyway. It was a much too nebulous a field to be wasting tax dollars on.

The upshot was we saw a lot of severely mentally ill people on the streets back then. Sometimes a mental hospital discharge plan was little more than a taxi ride to the vicinity of the shelter. We saw many folks revolve in and out of hospitals, jails and streets. Sometimes they would enter boarding houses only to drift away without proper supervision.

There was one program, Juniper House, that received a number of our past shelter residents. Many seemed to do fairly well there. It was run by Brother Bob Huston. Bob came down with cancer and his guests were foundering. We had been concerned with what we had been witnessing and felt we could do more in this area. In 1991, we established our mental health transitional program and adopted the residents from Juniper House shortly before Brother Bob died.

Known today as The Benedict Joseph Labre Center, the program is a 15-bed state licensed mental health facility. It is a transitional program with an occupational therapy component to assess and develop the living skills of the residents, where we seek appropriate housing and supportive services to enable them to live in the community, off the streets and out of the jails and hospitals. Once stabilized, many of our guests have gone to school and back to work and are contributing back to the community.

At least from my earliest days in the shelter, there has been the constant presence of HIV/AIDS. Ours is a difficult demographic, individuals who, in many instances have exhausted friends and family and other service providers. Many have come to us with shattered health and unstable mind. Some, we have held their hand to their end, but many others we have been able to assist back to health and stability.

We have about twenty people in housing today as part of what has become our Positive Directions program, and we have a day center where residents come for classes, meetings, meals and social activities.

Our newest program is the Breakfast Club. Originally housed at Christ Church Cathedral, we moved to Centenary Methodist Church in September 2006. Prior to 2002, Christ Church would daily open their doors and many homeless people would enter, especially in the winter. They would sit in the sanctuary, occasionally going to the offices asking for help with simple needs.

The Cathedral approached us about creating a program and managing it in their space. We opened in October 2002, expecting to serve around 50 to 60 a day. In short time we were seeing closer to a 150 daily. They renovated a larger space and our numbers blossomed again.

Once again we were serving a lot of people poorly, but not for lack of effort. The numbers were just too great for the space. A couple blocks to the west on Olive Street is Centenary Methodist, another beautiful old church. Their pastor wanted to develop an urban ministry serving the ubiquitous denizens of the downtown streets. We worked out a plan to move into their much larger space.

Today, we can (and often do) seat over 200 people at tables at one time and are serving a light breakfast with information and referrals to about 1,200 individuals a week. Centenary’s own staff has developed a lunch program serving similar numbers. In the past year we have served at Centenary, somewhere around a hundred thousand meals. We are beginning to develop an evening meal, too. In September, dinner will be served three nights a week. Many other agencies are coming on site to do outreach and provide services.

We make an impact. We make a difference. People come to us for help and get it.

One of the things I admire most about Peter & Paul is that all our programs came about because a problem or situation presented itself and we fashioned a response. We aren’t perfect and haven’t always been right, but we give our best shot with our best abilities. I came as a volunteer and continue with volunteers, people who give their time and money to make this a better community. From former recipients to corporate executives, liberals, conservatives and those who are apolitical, people who know they just can’t sit back and say, “Somebody ought to do something” and let it go at that.

Every now and then, someone asks me how I keep doing what I do. They see the grinding poverty, deprivation and attendant suffering. All of which is real and true. I suggest they look around and see the selfless giving and engagement.

Every year many hundreds of volunteers offer many thousands of hours to make our programs work. Our guests know this and appreciate that so many could be doing something else but choose to be a part of the solution.

Volunteers come to the work as a joyful thing. They know helping someone else helps themselves, that to be happy you make someone else happy. It isn’t the gift, it is the giving. The shelter was a neighborhood response to a neighborhood problem, a problem that couldn’t be ignored. All the other programs grew out of a budding awareness of the constellation of problems that made people ‘homeless.’ Some of our programs are more directly dependent on volunteers than others but all programs utilize them, need them.