I often think in those terms as I write about homelessness. The lower story can be uplifting, like when a woman named Kathy Acre met an unhoused man on a bus more than a decade ago. The chance meeting turned into a nonprofit that for years gave thousands of high-quality backpacks, filled with socks, gloves, flashlights and food, to people in need. The story can also be heart-breaking, like earlier this month when Jennifer Pendleton, a 36-year-old unhoused woman, died outside City Hall during a deep freeze.

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Two men sleep on the sidewalk in the 1300 block of Clark Avenue, warmed by steam coming from a manhole cover, as morning temperatures hover in the single digits on Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. Jennifer Pendleton, 36, was found dead at the site on Tuesday and was identified by the city’s Office of the Medical Examiner, which is located across the street from where Pendleton’s body was found.

The upper story comes in when trying to prevent such deaths. More than 40 years ago, the death of an unhoused man resulted in the city’s first homeless shelter, at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Soulard. In following decades, dozens of nonprofits have been created to serve the homeless population. There have sometimes been conflicts between those nonprofits and government bodies, as the community tries to find the funding and best strategies to save lives.

On Wednesday, the upper story took a historic step forward. The board of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments moved toward adopting a plan to battle homelessness in the eight counties, on both sides of the Mississippi River, that make up metropolitan St. Louis. The meeting didn’t draw a collection of television cameras and reporters, as a news conference organized by the Rev. Larry Rice at a homeless encampment would. But it was just as important, if not more so.

The unanimous decision means the body, made up of elected officials from governments across the region, has agreed to take up the mantle of battling homelessness. Now comes the next part: fleshing out the details. The nonprofit House Everyone STL will take the lead in convening business, nonprofit and civic leaders to create the plan.

“This is the right next step,” said Chris Stephen, the CEO of St. Patrick Center, one of the area’s largest providers of services to the homeless.

For years, nonprofit and government leaders in the city of St. Louis have complained that they bear the brunt of providing homeless services for the entire region. They have also battled over the flow of federal money. The region has seven continuums of care, which are organizations that receive money from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to battle homelessness. They haven’t historically worked well together across geographic boundaries, from Madison County in Illinois to Franklin County in Missouri.

Erma Christ, right, a cook at Centenary United Methodist Church, serves chicken and rice with salad and fruit beside volunteers Barbara Phifer, left, and Tom Ptacek of Kirkwood UMC, for about 75 unhoused people inside a continuous warming center at Centenary United Methodist Church on Pine Street in downtown St. Louis on Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025.

A homelessness summit held last year by East-West Gateway, at the behest of St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, was an attempt to solve that problem.

“They just aren’t coordinated very well with each other,” East West Gateway’s executive director, Jim Wild, told board members this week.

House Everyone STL will work to bring together those continuums of care and develop a plan to get more people into housing quickly — and reduce the possibility of winter deaths that haunt most big cities.

“The reality is homelessness is increasing in most if not all the counties in the St. Louis region, and government funding, which was already inadequate to fully address the challenge, is uncertain,” House Everyone STL Executive Director Samantha Stangl told me in an email after the vote. “There has never been a moment like this, and we are very well poised to capitalize on the momentum.”

Part of the nonprofit’s job, at the behest of St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, will be to study the federal funding streams that flow to various counties and offer suggestions about whether some areas are getting more than their fair share.

That’s the age-old challenge of regionalism: In a metropolitan area with so many cities and counties, many of which often don’t work well together, there’s always a concern about robbing Peter to pay Paul. A key to the new effort will be to tap private funding, from groups such as Greater St. Louis, Inc., to bridge the gap when federal funding falls short.

A year from now, Stangl hopes, there will be a big sign of progress: a pilot program to match people in need of housing with landlords in all eight counties. The program would be supported by a fund encouraging landlords to rent to people they might otherwise look past. If that happens, it will mean there’s hope the lower story and the upper story of homelessness in the St. Louis area can merge and not remain so disconnected.

Rep. Marty Joe Murray, D-St. Louis, on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2025, asked members of the Missouri House for a moment of silence to remember the unhoused woman who died outside of City Hall on Tuesday. She was identified as Jennifer Pendleton, 36, on Feb. 20.

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