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Street Clean-Up

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Our program includes community service by picking up trash in the neighborhood, painting historic building and revitalizing parks and gardens. Creating this opportunity for the community brings people together. Community beautification projects give a sense of unity, friendship, and purpose. Revive Outreach is dedicated to a cleaner and greener community. We’re working to clean up neighborhoods, streets, alleys and vacant lots around the city. Through initiatives like our trash clean-ups and our recycling center, we are making communities a cleaner, brighter and better place to live.

 

Our beautification projects help assist clean-up efforts by providing tools, trash bags and recycling carts to those wanting to clean up their neighborhoods.

 

Revitalize Parks and Gardens

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A community with good parks and other facilities is a pleasant and sociable place to live, with a lively outdoor and cultural life. Residents spend more time in the community, and therefore are more familiar with one another, and contribute to a sense of community. Well-designed parks and buildings, and well-restored historic sites, especially when they’re part of a comprehensive community plan, can add greatly to the pleasant atmosphere of a community. Parks, plazas, the courtyards or steps of public buildings, even well-designed bus stations, can serve to increase residents’ interaction with one another and create a greater sense of community that reaches across community sectors.

Parks can range in size from a few hundred square feet – a bench, some flowers, and a 20 by 20 plot of grass on a busy corner. Parks are the lungs of a city, offering green space and fresh air to people who otherwise might seldom experience anything but concrete and exhaust fumes. They can protect open land, extraordinary landscapes, and historic sites, while also functioning as open-air classrooms and laboratories for school children and others. 

Neighborhood parks can provide formal plantings, grassy lawns, benches, playgrounds, picnic areas, and/or sports fields. Parks in large cities often have other community facilities located within the. Many small towns include a central park area with benches, perhaps a bandstand, and a flagpole: a simple open space for town celebrations and gatherings that may include athletic fields as well.

 

Beautification to Historic Buildings

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Historic buildings often fall into disrepair – they’re old and may be abandoned or ceded to the community for taxes. Yet these buildings are in some ways the heart and soul of the community, embodying its history and its heritage. By getting them listed in the National Register of Historic Places, it’s possible to take advantage of federal tax incentives to preserve them and turn them to community use. Many are rehabilitated as affordable housing, but they can function as libraries, concert halls, museums, transportation hubs, or other public facilities as well, depending upon their location and other characteristics. The dilapidated buildings that could be restored and used as distinctive town offices, the closed-down industrial site that could be reborn as an art museum and riverfront park, the last undeveloped pond in town – all of these and many other similar properties could be revitalized to serve the community. They might be available through the efforts of a community land trust, or might be sold to the municipality or to a non-profit when they seem to no longer be of use. By using historic preservation or land conservation funds, tax incentives, volunteers, and donated labor and materials, the municipality or grassroots groups can often turn them into community assets.

 

Shelter Program

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Revive Outreach Center provides emergency shelter for homeless men, women and children at this location in the City of St. Louis.  Hundreds of men, women and children are given a place to sleep for at least one night, amounting to a total of over 100 “bed-nights” served. We will provide shelter 24 hours on days that the temperature is 32 degrees or below. Overnight shelter is provided to as many as 25 people when the other shelters in town are full.

 

Warming and Cooling Center Program

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We believe that a warming and cooling center can improve the safety of neighborhoods and stabilize lives. We hope to create stable, vibrant and healthy communities by providing a center to the public for homeless individuals and their families. Outreach operations under this program-enriched housing for families, seniors and people with special needs who lack the economic resources to access quality, safe housing opportunities during the extreme heat and below freezing temperatures.

Access to air conditioning can prevent heat-related morbidity and mortality. Low-income populations may have limited access to air conditioning or may be hesitant to operate air conditioning and cooling units due to potentially high electricity costs during peak heat hours. Cooling centers can provide a cool environment for these individuals. Although there is currently limited direct evidence of the direct health impacts of cooling centers in the peer-reviewed literature, cooling centers are commonly used across the US. Their use has a high biological plausibility for reducing heat-related illness and death. Heat is a well-known health threat, and it is logical that a relatively cool environment reduces heat exposure and prevents negative health outcomes.

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Our warming center will typically offer a cot and perhaps a bowl of hot soup. We operated with one or more experienced professional staff person. Often, users of warming centers are persons who are not participating in routine homeless shelter services due to disciplinary exclusions or non-compliance with behavioral policies. In order to distinguish mere oddness from behavioral disorders which might disrupt the ability of other persons to obtain service, professional staff is on site.

Child Care for Homeless Program

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Without access to child care, homeless families struggle to secure housing. Having a safe and stable child care arrangement allows homeless parents to look for and maintain work and participate in the job training, education, and other programs essential to resolving their homelessness. Revive Outreach will provide child care services for homeless applicants who apply for the program and meet the eligibility criteria.

 

Homeless families face many barriers to accessing child care; homeless mothers are actually less likely to receive child care subsidies than poor housed mothers. Having a child care provider who can accommodate homeless families’ with unpredictable and inflexible schedules can also be challenging. In addition, restrictive documentation and eligibility requirements can prevent homeless families from qualifying for subsidized care. We are here to provide services that can help overcome these barriers.

 

Polling Site

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For years, homeless citizens have faced obstacles to registering. Although it has been established that homeless individuals do not need to live in a traditional residence to register to vote, many homeless and low income individuals may not have the appropriate identification documents required by some states to register or to vote. Furthermore, many individuals who are experiencing homelessness may lack the resources to educate themselves about candidates or may not be able to get to the polls on Election Day.

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To overcome these obstacles and encourage greater voter participation among low income and homeless citizens, Revive Outreach will be registering citizens to vote and obtain approval to become a voting center for the homeless.

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Our program seeks to promote voting access for low income and homeless persons to ensure that people who are economically disadvantaged maintain an active role and voice in shaping their future.

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