Last week's drama surrounding the now-dismantled homeless encampment on the north lawn of City Hall was the ultimate case of a metaphorical cliche come to life: An issue that St. Louis leaders have long failed to adequately address was literally laid at their doorstep.

In the short term, the showdown spurred Mayor Tishaura Jones' administration to action, with the hasty relocation of dozens of homeless people to shelters and the fencing off of the City Hall grounds. It has also further exposed the growing political fault lines between Jones and some of the far-left activists who helped get her elected.

One of them, Aldermanic President Megan Green, continues to pursue an ill-advised effort to yank all local control away from neighborhoods when siting homeless shelters — an effort that, unfortunately, appears to have been emboldened by last week's tent-city showdown.

What that showdown apparently hasn't done (but should) is prompt a conversation about fundamentally changing the way St. Louis handles its homeless problem. Pushing the unhoused en masse from one location to another, in and out of temporary shelters, clearly isn't addressing the underlying issues. Green's plan won't, either.

Instead, St. Louis' leaders should be looking to the success stories of some other cities that have actually begun solving the base problems in creative ways, instead of treating the whole topic as an endless cycle of crisis management.

The handful of tents that began popping up on the grass and sidewalks outside City Hall building earlier this summer, within sight of Jones' office, totaled several dozen by early last week.

It brought with it some of the familiar problems associated with homeless encampments: unsanitary conditions, panhandling, open drug use, fighting, frequent calls for police and paramedics.

After weeks of inaction, Jones' administration finally moved Monday to clear them out — though with the strange decision to do it late at night. Protesters resisted, including top aides to Green and other progressives on the Board of Aldermen. So the city backed off.

In the light of day Tuesday, more than 30 people still at the encampment were finally moved to shelters and other locations and the tents were removed.

Homeless activists allege Jones' action was driven by the fact that the Democratic National Committee's fall meeting was being conducted in downtown St. Louis later in the week, including Vice President Kamala Harris' speech Friday night.

Jones' staff denies that was her motivation — though it's arguably a valid one. St. Louis has enough image problems without the national media seizing on the irresistible optics of a homeless tent city on the front stoop of a Democratic City Hall even as national Democrats convene just blocks away.

Green and her far-left allies apparently don't agree, having taken the mind-boggling stance that clearing out the encampment was unnecessary. Some of them are arguing that the showdown proves the need to support the pending city legislation that would deprive neighborhoods of any control whatsoever in the siting of homeless shelters in their midst.

But this single-minded focus on establishing more shelter beds (in this case, with a plan guaranteed to further fuel the exodus of St. Louis homeowners from the city) fails to consider better strategies that other cities have pursued.

Their experiences highlight some things St. Louis could be doing to go beyond merely treating the symptoms of the homeless crisis.

Rockford, Illinois, has demonstrated the importance of knowing as much granular detail as possible about the local unhoused population. The city compiled a "by-name" list of chronically homeless people within its boundaries, with details about their circumstances — which of them need mental health services, which have drug issues, which have pets that complicate their search for a home, which have family support networks and which don't. Outreach workers talk with each of them about the specific hurdles to getting housed.

By dealing with people as individuals, with individual housing issues, instead of trying to serve a broadly anonymous group generically called "the homeless," Rockford has been able to reduce its once-daunting homeless problem to almost "functional zero" — meaning, instances of homelessness are brief, non-recurring and easily handled with existing city resources.

Among the data that would be helpful is to know where St. Louis city's unhoused are all from — since it's clear they're not all from St. Louis.

For years, city officials and homeless advocates have said that St. Louis County and other surrounding communities have, wittingly or not, exported their own homelessness issues into St. Louis city. It's important to understand that homelessness is a regional issue, even if the unhoused themselves end up concentrated in urban centers like St. Louis.

Suburban communities must be convinced that this is their fight, too, even if they don't see it on their own streets every day. It's in their interest to work with the city to provide funding and resources for homeless services and housing. A collaborative effort between Bakersfield, California, and surrounding Kern County, for example, has resulted in a dramatic reduction in chronic homelessness in both.

Another success story in reducing homelessness — Houston, Texas — has done it by pursuing what might initially sound like a counterproductive strategy. It's called "housing first": Instead of transitioning the homeless from the streets to shelters to, eventually, permanent housing, the city attempts permanent housing immediately, working directly with landlords to get the unhoused housed.

To overcome obstacles that arise with people who have had problems with landlords before, local governments like the aforementioned Kern County, California, have used what is called a "master lease," in which the government contracts directly with private landlords, then sublets the units to homeless people and covers the liability for any damages. The idea is that the residents will eventually take over their leases themselves.

None of this would be cheap, of course. But Jones' administration says it has already spent some $20 million in federal funds addressing homelessness in St. Louis — a figure that, depending on how the unhoused are counted, could translate into something between $10,000 and more than $20,000 per homeless person in the city.

Instead of continuing to throw that kind of money at strategies that clearly aren't working, how about looking at other ideas that have?

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Photo credit: Nathan Dumlao at Unsplash