2-1-1

In March 2022, community advocates said St. Louis' 211 hotline fails homeless people and leaves volunteers to pick up the slack. Nearly a year later, they report that things are even worse.

Nicole Warrington of St. Louis is just a volunteer with no official position, but she’s gotten 400 calls from social workers at local hospitals in the past year, all seeking help finding places to take the homeless patients they’re discharging.

For evidence of the coronavirus pandemic’s wide-ranging toll on society, monthly jobs reports and quarterly GDP numbers are go-to sources of information — and highly credible ones. But for a more granular, real-time sense of the extent of community needs, a group of researchers at Washington University has been looking elsewhere: at 211 calls.

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, June 25, 2012 - Kimberly Clark rode the wave of the Great Recession three years ago, not knowing…

This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: June 5, 2008 - Just short of its first birthday, Missouri's new 2-1-1 phone system, a referral…