Humans of St. Louis

Humans of St. Louis The people of St. Louis, one photo and story at a time. Inspired by Humans of New York. Wanna support our storytelling? Louis for St. Louis. Q: You took my picture!

Our 544-page self-published book is available at local STL stores and for delivery at humansofstl.org. This page is a collaborative effort and a gift for the city. Our mission is to create a respectful online community and share stories of St. The following team is responsible for bringing this page to life. Co-founders: Lindy Drew & Caroline Fish

Lead Storyteller: Lindy Drew
Contributing Storyte

llers: Colleen O'Connell Smyth, Kiara Fite, and Maleeha Ahmad
Editors: Caitlin Custer and Shaina Peterson

Board of Directors: Mesha Garner, Jerrica Franks, Holly Edgell, Liz Mergenthaler, Samantha Baker, and Whitney Howland


Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Q: When did HOSTL start? A: The first story we posted was on May 5, 2014! Q: I am a photographer and I want to contribute - What do I do? A: Feel free to post directly to the HOSTL page and it will show up in the visitor post section. Keep it clean, respectful, and in the spirit of HOSTL. For when we are needing more photographers and storytellers, feel free to email us examples of your work, your website, or another page where we can get a feel for your artistic style. Q: Where are these photos taken? A: Any neighborhoods in STL City and County are fair game, as well as within a radius of 30 miles, including Illinois. If you think you recognize a place in a HOSTL shot, comment on it. It’s been great to see followers recognize locations and share their knowledge of the city with viewers who may be wondering where it was taken. I haven't seen it posted yet. Where can I find it? A: If you were photographed and agreed to share your story, be patient. It can take a few weeks to edit for the weekly lineup. A storyteller will reach out to you for another round of permissions before sharing your story too. If we do not post it, it's usually because we didn't get a story to go with the photograph. Q: Can I volunteer? A: We welcome the offers to help. Message us or email us along with how you'd like to help: [email protected]. Q: I saw a story that really inspired me to help. What can I do? A: Every time we see an outpouring of goodwill and a desire to help on certain stories, we’re even more excited about how far HOSTL has come and what more it can be for St. We receive many requests to share fundraising pages and volunteer and donation requests for specific people and causes. The responses are just beautiful and show the immediate desire to help, whether that’s giving money, time, or suggestions. We've chosen to not orchestrate these many requests, but action is in your hands! Like a story? Reach out to the person profiled. Want to give? We’ll do our best to provide contact information for the subject, with their permission. Have something to share? Add it to the sidebar directly on the page. When success stories happen, they happen because motivated followers like you organize in a neighbor-helping-neighbor effort. For our part, we're here to share original stories on the ground and cheer you on. For those who choose to go above and beyond, and bring the next level of motivation and inspiration, we support you 100%. Smaller movements that can happen because of a story we tell is what we're all about. Q: Is HOSTL a business? How do you sustain yourself? A: Humans of St. Louis is a 501(c)3 nonprofit. We rely on funding from donations, collaborative storytelling partnerships, speaking engagements, facilitations about storytelling, exhibitions, grants, and print sales. Q: Do you have a website? A: www.humansofstl.org

Q: Where can I pick up copies of the HOSTL book? A: www.humansofstl.org/hostlbook/hostl-book


If you didn't see your question answered here, email us at: [email protected]


Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the featured subject and not necessarily to the author’s employer, organization, committee, other group or individual, or Humans of St.

05/29/2026

sincerely, loving this trend 💌

🥸💐
05/22/2026

🥸💐

(13/13) 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑝 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒-𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑦 16 𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑜, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑓𝑎𝑟 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠...
05/14/2026

(13/13) 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑢𝑝 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑛𝑒-𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑀𝑎𝑦 16 𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑜, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑑𝑜 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑓𝑎𝑟 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑠 𝑚𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑙𝑒, 𝑤ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑏𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒, 𝑎𝑛𝑑 ℎ𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑖𝑛𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑣𝑒𝑑?

“I want people to know how real and how dire the situation still is. We want people to stay as involved and active as they were last May. There’s always an opportunity to volunteer, whether it’s to clean up or provide whatever services we can for people still in need. Even today, there are still people living in tents on their properties. They haven’t had electricity all winter. They may have spent that season in hotels thanks to grassroots organizations or the city, but they’re still unhoused. Often, new programs are announced by the media to alleviate some of the stress in the wake of the tornado. Unfortunately, a lot of those aren’t funded. They’re in name only. And other previous programs are running out of funding now. So we have to find somewhere for people to live. Shelters might be great in emergencies, but they’re no place to raise kids. So the urgency to bring people back home has to be increased.

And we have to put additional pressure on our local legislators to pass bills allocating more funds that go directly and only to home repair and reconstruction. Then people can at least get some normalcy back in their lives. Because these aren’t normal times that we’re dealing with. People may have been able to adapt and be flexible. But we want folks to be in more stable living situations. So reach out to your alderperson in support of allocating more of the Rams’ money towards the rebuild on the north side. And please join volunteer efforts. A million things are happening, whether you’re cleaning up, doing construction, planting trees to replace the shade canopy since we lost thousands of trees, or helping with some of these tarp programs. Supposedly, there’s a new line of wrapped tarps that are thicker and have a lifespan of one to two years. If we could get people to put as many of those as we can on people’s homes this summer, that would be great. The Recovery Office is set to run out of money soon, so if those allocations aren’t made, we’re in a position where we’ll have to scramble to fill in the gaps again.”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

(12/13) 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 Action St. Louis 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒?“We’re proactively working, especially on the...
05/14/2026

(12/13) 𝑊ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑠 Action St. Louis 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡’𝑠 𝑑𝑖𝑓𝑓𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒?

“We’re proactively working, especially on the north side, to reach a lot of community members who are left out of a lot of these conversations. There aren’t many forums like this where people can learn like at our events. You’ll typically have a state legislator or alderperson hold a town hall where they provide updates, but it’s not really an interactive, informational kind of thing like we try to provide. Because we try to drive a lot of our actions by what the community feels. We don’t want to be in the same situation as politicians, where things are just happening to you but without you. So input from the community is the biggest difference we have. We’re not just bringing folks in to tell them what’s going on. We’re asking them, ‘How would you like to see this play out?’

Now we’re at the Northside Movement Center, 5939 Goodfellow, and soon we’ll also have coworking spaces available for people doing work in the movement. We have our gym space where we’re holding town halls and community events. We just had an event last month about the budget for the police board and what that increase will mean to St. Louis in so many ways. There was a breakout about how it would affect housing. There was a breakout for all the programs that would lose funding and city resources that would have to be cut. So we’re making sure people are informed about the details. Because you’re sold that this budget will increase the number of police in the city, and they’ll make it safer, when really the drop in crime is due to grassroots organizations like SHOW ME PEACE and all their work funded by the Office of Violence Prevention. They mediate a lot of violent things before they even take place, compared to the police, who respond after the fact. Additional police surveillance or presence doesn’t necessarily make people safer.

So we want to make sure people know why the police feel like they deserve so much money and talk about all the programs that are already underfunded and will be cut as a result of putting so much into the city’s budget into more policing. We could provide mediation services through different means if they were adequately funded, which would continue the decline in crime. Because if the state takeover of St. Louis was so great, then somewhere else like Kansas City would be one of the safest places in the world, and it’s not. Now, crime numbers are higher there than in St. Louis. So with that topic, it’s being sold in a different way than what the reality is. Unfortunately, it’s politics.”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

(11/13) “My current role doesn’t have as much to do directly with the tornado, but as the Electoral Justice Organizer at...
05/13/2026

(11/13) “My current role doesn’t have as much to do directly with the tornado, but as the Electoral Justice Organizer at Action St. Louis a big part of what I do is political education so people are able to make informed decisions when they go to the ballot box. We had an election on April 7 about the St. Louis City Earned Income Tax: It’s a 1% tax, but it accounts for 36% of the city’s budget. And we have to vote on that every five years. It’s one of those things that’s important for us to retain. Because if we lose that pot of money, that’s more than one-third of our operating budget right there. It became a thing where there was no real support from conservative lawmakers to just do away with it. And it sounds good, similar to the income tax at the state level, where we’ll save money. But the reality is that we’ll start to see sales taxes on goods and services we’ve never had to pay before. Doing away with it would just increase the sales tax. Over time, you do lose more money because you’re having to spend more. But things like that are Missouri ballot initiatives that just came up.

The initial petition process is another big one simply because it’ll require all eight Missouri congregational districts to agree on any different topic. We know people in St. Louis city aren’t gonna agree with people in Northwest or Southeast Missouri. But a single congressional district can sink good legislation right there. And it would make it so that whatever the lawmakers in Jefferson City say goes without pushback. Think about community-led petitions that have passed, like sports betting, ma*****na, or the right to abortion, and they’ve ultimately made life better for everybody in this state. So a big focus of what we do is about people making informed decisions, getting them registered to vote, especially if they’re permanently displaced or have decided not to come back to the city. So we’re identifying people in those situations so they can still actively participate in upcoming decisions that will be happening. There are a lot of state-wide attacks on this region. It’s important that people are aware of what’s happening so it doesn’t just happen to them, and it’s not a surprise, like, ‘How are we losing so much money when I was promised something else?’”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

(10/13) “Between almost $300 million going towards tornado demolition and removal versus the $16 million in the pot goin...
05/13/2026

(10/13) “Between almost $300 million going towards tornado demolition and removal versus the $16 million in the pot going towards the repair and construction, it’s disappointing that there’s such a massive funding gap. There doesn’t seem to be much urgency to fill that. It seems like the priority is on the aesthetics of recovery more so than the actual recovery itself. To say we’ve been able to clear all these condemned houses or make these areas more visually appealing for development, which, as we’ve seen, just leads to gentrification — especially in The Ville and The Greater Ville, which are both historically Black neighborhoods in St. Louis. So that’s a lot of history that can potentially be lost. And all we’ll have to show for it are monuments. It’ll be another Mill Creek Valley situation, where if you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t know except for the monuments.

My biggest frustration has been the lack of urgency. It’s almost like the rebuild is optional for a lot of people. Or I hear people say, ‘Well, the north side looked like that before the storm,’ which is not true. St. Louis has a perception problem of what they perceive things to be and what the reality is. The perception is that St. Louis is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. The reality is that St. Louis has hit record lows in violent crime. It’s not even top 10 at this point. Like, the idea that the north side was just this crazy, bombed-out portion of the city that nobody could help, and any investment up there would be a waste at this point... Stuff like that. So we’re battling those types of perceptions and then battling those same perceptions coming from city leaders. That also makes recovery frustrating because the people who should be trusted the most are the ones holding things back.”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

(9/13) 𝑇𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑢𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒’𝑠 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑜...
05/13/2026

(9/13) 𝑇𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑢𝑠 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝐴𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡. 𝐿𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒’𝑠 𝑅𝑒𝑠𝑝𝑜𝑛𝑠𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑖𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑎𝑓𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑑𝑜.

“In the direct aftermath, we lined up resources, interacted with folks who were impacted, and conducted surveys of what people were experiencing and what they needed. It was a really big effort. We’d share techniques and stories with people in similar situations, like, ‘My tarp isn’t holding up. Is there anything I can do to mitigate the water damage?’ Over at my place, when it came to handling rain getting into the house, my family used an inflatable pool and a water pump to catch as much rain as we could. Like, last summer definitely wasn’t a drought with all the rain we got. Later on, we worked on helping people receive donations and heard about tornado-related situations from people who weren’t directly impacted. We learned how they knew what to bring to the hub in the form of donations was through us sharing videos to bring ‘This, this, and that.’ And how people were literally at Walmart and Sam’s Club waiting on those social media updates to grab things and run them up to the hub. People even came from states away to drop off donations. It was a beautiful thing.

I was proud of the ability we had in mobilizing as many people as we did. We’re talking 10,000 volunteers in six weeks. That’s unheard of. What group can move that many people to want to volunteer? The trust we built with the community over the years was also a major factor in people coming to get resources from us. Honestly, so many stayed locked in with the recovery process, versus the inactivity from the governmental side.”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

(8/13) “I was familiar with Action St. Louis and For The Culture STL from my previous work with the city government. And...
05/12/2026

(8/13) “I was familiar with Action St. Louis and For The Culture STL from my previous work with the city government. And whenever I could charge my phone, I’d see their updates from setting up the hub at the O’Fallon Missouri YMCA. Well, one of my colleagues who was helping clean up at my house was also going to The Y, and he got contracted to start working there, which was great. Meanwhile, my focus was on my place in those first few weeks to get the house to a place where the contractors could continue with what we needed done. But knowing how bad the tornado wreckage was, and since I wasn’t employed, I was also looking for ways to help out. I thought, ‘My friends are up here at The Y. I’m gonna go over there, too. I’ll just go up there for the day to help out with things I know about. They can plug me in anywhere.’ And it became a situation where I just never left. After a week, they were like, ‘You’re here all the time. Do you just wanna be 𝑡ℎ𝑒 job?’ And I said, ‘Yes! I absolutely do. Because you know we just lost reelection.’

We had to define my position to have something for me to focus on after the initial tornado response. Because I’ve worked on political campaigns in the administration and during internships, my position became the Electoral Justice Organizer. So it was a perfect fit all around because I’ve been able to use my past professional experiences in what I do now.

Just being up there the first day, I knew, ‘This is where I want to be.’ Because it’s not a governmental agency. These were just regular, everyday people learning on the fly how to respond to a lot of disaster relief-related things. They didn’t have a large sum of money from a government agency to respond, but they could move people. And that turned out to be the biggest thing that assisted in helping with recovery and relief efforts to be as successful as it was.”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

(7/13) “We’re going to stay here. We’re not going anywhere. Some of my best memories in this house are growing up with m...
05/12/2026

(7/13) “We’re going to stay here. We’re not going anywhere. Some of my best memories in this house are growing up with my siblings and cousins, and all the holidays that we’ve had. It was my grandmother’s home. You know, no matter who’s running the house, it’s still always Big Mama’s house. It’s the family house, and we’re not getting rid of it. There are too many memories to even count. We’ve all grown up here. Anytime anybody moved away, every one of us always found ourselves back here. We toyed with, ‘What if we go somewhere while the rebuild happens?’ But a fear was, ‘What if we don’t come back?’ And my aunt was concerned about leaving the house unattended in case squatters moved in. Our house was something we just didn’t want to let go of. Plus, all the time and money that had already been put into it.

There were offers to sell or buy it as is, literally the next day, too. The vultures that were on these grounds were disgusting. So many predatory realtors and contractors came from out of the region, even from out of state. They promised all these things to the people who resided in these homes, like signing over insurance money or paying them outright to do all this so-called work. And when you have people who lost everything, who were either underinsured or had no insurance at all, they took whatever they could get, they carried laundry baskets of whatever possessions they could take, and we’ve never seen them again. And then all those strangers disappeared. That happened to a lot of households. Unfortunately, this is a business for some. And they go from disaster to disaster doing that.

To this day, we still get calls about selling. I guess they don’t know how far along we are in the rebuild. As far as the neighbors go, we don’t have many anymore. Our house is in the middle of the block. Whereas the street was lined with households, there are maybe six or so occupied now, and the majority are at the end of the street. Those were the least damaged. But everything else is completely devastated. Some started to rebuild, but I think those are more folks who bought property at land bank sales or purchased homes after the tornado. Because neighbors were selling, getting whatever they could at the time. At the end of the day, there’ll be a lot of demolition in the area, considering how much was damaged. And just looking at how much can actually be repaired, there’s going to be a lot of empty land.”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

(6/13) “One year later, our family’s home exterior is pretty much repaired. We did all brand-new tuckpointing. The porch...
05/12/2026

(6/13) “One year later, our family’s home exterior is pretty much repaired. We did all brand-new tuckpointing. The porch has been rebuilt. The roof has been rebuilt. The downed trees in the backyard are all gone. It’s a pretty nice-sized backyard, too, and we installed a new fence. But unfortunately, we don’t have a single tree, which means there’s zero shade coverage anymore.

After the storm, there was that week of just the heaviest rains. So with amateur tarp jobs, we had no idea what we were doing, but we just wanted to get a tarp up. We took on so much rainwater that it ultimately buckled all the floors upstairs. The walls were damaged from mold and everything, and that all came down through the floors into the lower level of the house.

We’ve since rebuilt the upper level. Brand new floors, brand new walls. We put carpet back in, and we were finally able to move back into the bedrooms. Moving forward, we’ll be able to work on the lower level of the house to remediate any potential mold and try to repair as much as we can. Honestly, thinking of how long timelines usually last for a whole house rebuild, though? At least we’re done with the whole top floor. So, we’re making progress.”

Dr. Michael E. McLemore II, Electoral Justice Organizer, The People’s Response

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