How a plywood warming shelter became a flash point at City Hall

An improvised warming shelter just north of Downtown St. Louis caught fire last Thursday, but not before providing a weeks-long saga starring city officials and one of the area’s more prominent journalists as the masses watched on Facebook. During its relatively brief existence, the refuge became a flashpoint between Mayor Cara Spencer and a perpetual thorn in her side, the former Fox-2 reporter turned Facebook journalist Elliott Davis. 

The charred warming structure sits within the 10th Street and Cass Avenue homeless encampment, which consists of a couple dozen tents. A charity providing free clothes has sprouted up nearby as well. Both Davis and the man who built the improvised 30-foot structure, Erion “Prop-Man” Johnson, say the cause of the fire on Thursday was arson. Prop-Man said the arsonist was one of the residents of the tent community fed up with the attention brought by the shelter. 

Much of that attention came by way of Davis. “Did it draw attention? Absolutely. Did it draw negative attention? Absolutely,” the former TV journalist tells SLM, though he adds that only time will tell if increased awareness of the encampment would ultimately be good or bad for the people living there.  

After retiring in 2024 from Fox-2 after 45 years on air, Davis has made reporting on the plight of the homeless a priority, one that he says is driven by his Christian faith. One problem for Spencer is that, in his post-television life, Davis has no editors to second-guess his judgment or ask him to refine his thesis—yet his reach seems bigger than ever, at least to a city government sensitive to what’s trending on social media. Another related problem is that, on Facebook, outrage drives engagement.

As Davis himself tells it, Prop-Man got the idea to build the structure after seeing Davis do a Facebook live video focused on the harsh winter weather that residents of the encampment would soon be facing. Prop-Man had previously worked with youth in North City to build tiny homes for victims of the May 16 tornado. After seeing Davis’ videos, he showed up at the site with volunteers that at times numbered as many as 30 and started building the rectangle edifice out of plywood, covering it with canvas leftover from what looks like a Planet Fitness billboard.

Not long after, however, Davis began broadcasting that the city was trying to tear it down. “In as much as Cara Spencer would not provide a warming bus that I continue to ask for, to try to help people here keep warm, a private organization, the Tiny Home project, provided this for the encampment,” Davis reported. He then interviewed people inside, who said they’d heard about the tear-down plans. “I heard the rumor, but I didn’t have any confirmation,” he reported. “But now I do.” He added: “We’ll stay on top of this.” 

In truth, the city had condemned the structure as a fire trap, a designation that proved prescient. But they didn’t kick anyone out. Nonetheless, Davis’ Facebook reporting got people riled up enough that a group of homeless people and advocates held a protest in the hallway just outside the mayor’s office, shouting into a bullhorn, “Shame on Cara” and “Don’t let the homeless freeze.”

Unmentioned in Davis’ reporting was the fact that during the January storm the city planned to have 1,000 shelter beds available (600 more than usual) and buses roaming the city, looking for anyone who wanted a ride to shelter. It also ignored the fact that a city-run shelter sat less than a half-mile from the camp. 

After the press conference interrupted by the bullhorn, Prop-Man met with Spencer. The dialogue was described as productive. The two took a selfie together. 

But Davis and Spencer continued to spar at press conferences over Davis’ demands that the city provide a warming bus at the 10th and Cass site. 

The idea of a warming bus has long been a pet issue for Davis, who harangued the previous mayor, Tishaura Jones, about deploying one, too. Jones never gave in to the demand, but eventually, Spencer did.

The Saturday before most of the January snow deluge hit St. Louis, the city began parking a charter bus near the encampment. It came at a cost of more than $4,500 per night, including the bus, security, and a driver. Over the course of eight nights, about seven people used it per day—or about $600 per person per night. Some days, it was even fewer.

Despite the lite usage, Davis himself remained convinced he’d done a good thing. “‘Well, this is going to cost us $20,000,’” he said, with a little sarcasm in his voice. “Well, what’s it going to cost if two people freeze to death?”

But the bus was also a sign of what Spencer herself has called the “enormous financial responsibility” of homeless services, a problem that the rest of the region has been all too happy to slough onto the city. Plenty of neighboring counties didn’t have a warming bus—nor did they get any grief about that either.

Davis’ obsession with the city’s lack of a warming bus undoubtedly had something to do with the fact that made for good Facebook drama, which in turn led to more views, a metric that any journalist is lying if they say they ignore, but to which Davis seems particularly attuned. “Interviewing Prop-Man, all of that… it was amazing,” he tells SLM. “It was like 70,000 views in less than a day.” Since launching his Facebook enterprise, the former TV newsman hasn’t been shy about sharing his follower count, which to his credit now exceeds 200,000. The biggest mistake that old-school media makes, he says, is that they deliver their audience something they think is important, not what their audience thinks is important. You can’t try to sell oranges to people who want apples, he says.

Davis himself concedes that the city under Spencer is doing more than anyone else in the region on the issue of homelessness. “Cara is doing more than any of the other leaders, I think even Larry Rice has conceded that,” he says. “I think she is putting it on her priority list. None of the other area leaders are doing that: Franklin County, Saint Clair County, Saint Charles County, Saint Louis County—they’re really doing nothing substantial.”

Last week, the saga of the 10th and Cass plywood shelter took a turn for the strange. Even people who have been critical of Davis have given him props for “streaming through it.” A lesser reporter might have tried to duck this final act.  

On Thursday afternoon, Prop-Man did an about-face on the structure he helped build. He said he wanted it torn down because illicit things were happening within its walls. As Davis posted on Facebook, Prop-Man discovered the warm-up spot being misused in unspecified ways when he wasn’t around, including potentially illegal activity. 

Seemingly without any irony, Davis added, “He feared being held liable if things took an even worse turn like somebody dying at the facility or it catching fire or any number of things.”

Before Prop-Man could properly demolish the structure, though, a few hours later, someone tried to burn it down on Thursday. 

Davis was at the scene of the fire, which never really managed to catch all the way, though the damage was apparent. Afterwards, when SLM caught up with him, he was in his car holding court with some of the camp’s residents in an empty lot made muddy by the melting snow. One woman came over to him just to say thanks for all his work. 

The next day, Prop-Man told SLM that he was “disappointed” about the fire. It was a frustrating end to what had been a project with no shortage of frustrations.

He said one of his motivations for wanting to tear down the very structure he’d built was that it was putting him in a bad spot with the city, who he needed to have a good relationship with as he works to advance the youth programs that are his primary focus. He wants to help teach kids trades like carpentry, so that they have the skills to earn a living and so they can rehab North City houses.

“I guess the homeless are not my department,” he said. “I’m going to stick with the youth. That’s the real endeavor. I don’t want the youth to end up at the encampment.”