Matt O'Leary, Citizens for a Greater Downtown St. Louis board member, joins Mark Reardon to discuss the city's homeless bills and how they could perpetuate failed policies.
“There are actually three board bills that have been presented 126, 127, and 128. One of those board bills basically allows homeless shelters to be located in any area of the city of Saint Louis. Currently, they're prohibited uses, this would make them conditional uses and neighborhoods would stop having a say but to a large degree in the location of homeless shelters. Two, there's a process that the neighborhood uses related to New Life evangelistic center that requires a homeless shelter to go through a plat petition process to get consent from the neighborhood before opening up, that would be eliminated,” began O’Leary.
He continued, “The last board bill, the actual unhoused bill of rights, would do a variety of things. It would mandate that the city set up intentional encampment zones somewhere in the city. It's not specified yet. It would prevent the city from clearing encampments unless they had replacement beds that met the personal preferences of the people in the encampments. It would strip away from ordinance violations, loitering, aggressive panhandling, and to a large degree urinating and defecating in public. There'd be some really serious impacts to the community from this.”