ST. LOUIS — Toni Wade’s email to the city late last year started with a request and ended with an empty threat.
Wade is the owner of a business that provided services to the homeless population in ºüÀêÊÓƵ during the COVID-19 pandemic. This past December, she wanted to know if she was banned from contracting with the city.
“I have recently learned indirectly from one of my associates that I am currently subject to a ban, a form of treatment that I find unsettling,†Wade wrote to Adam Pearson, director of the city’s Department of Human Services.
She demanded proof of the alleged ban: “If I do not hear from you by Dec. 8, I will have no choice but to explore further avenues to address these concerns.â€
Wade, who wanted to bid on a new contract to provide winter services to unhoused people, didn’t get the answer she wanted. Pearson told her the city was still reviewing her eligibility.
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Wade’s company, was on the city’s radar because of an audit of her work. There had been large fluctuations in her billing, and she refused to provide documents to back up the payments she allegedly made to employees.
Two weeks after the email exchange, in mid-December, Wade attended the monthly meeting of Continuum of Care, where she was the vice chairman. Comprised of local agencies that serve the homeless, the organization is designated by the federal government to help oversee services to unhoused people in ºüÀêÊÓƵ. Wade was making her case to be elected chairman, an unpaid position.
Part of her pitch? She turned her troubles with ºüÀêÊÓƵ into a selling point, telling Continuum of Care members that she had no contracts with the city, and no plans to get any in the future. It was an important point because the Continuum of Care board had been warned by the federal government to reduce its potential for conflicts, after prior leaders’ nonprofits had received big chunks of funding.
Wade didn’t reveal that the city was investigating her previous contracts. She didn’t mention the questions about her past bills. She didn’t mention that, just two weeks prior, she was threatening the city with some untold further action. Instead, she simply said she had no conflicts of interest.
She won the election.
That was the last Continuum of Care meeting that Wade would attend in person. She spends a lot of time in Tuttle, Oklahoma, where she owns a marijuana growing business.
Since Wade’s election in December, three board members have resigned. Meanwhile, the organization’s relationship with the federal government, the city and a new nonprofit created to coordinate federal funding has fallen apart.
Not all of that is Wade’s fault. But her brief tenure highlights the dysfunction of an organization that is key to the city’s long-term strategy of moving people from the street into housing.
‘That lame excuse’
Wade’s trouble with her city-funded contract started in July 2021, amid the pandemic. The city had shut down some homeless tent encampments in 2020, and various nonprofits served that community in hotels and the old Little Sister of the Poor facility in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ. The funding came from the federal government.
The dispute between Wade and the city is outlined in public records obtained by the Post-Dispatch in a Sunshine Law request.
Wade was a subcontractor working first for the , and later for . She helped run a pop-up homeless shelter at the old Western Inn off North Broadway and later managed two floors at the Little Sisters site. Wade owns a variety of companies focused on real estate investment, as well as a nonprofit called Project Outreach. On YouTube, she pitches herself as the and she gives advice on how to break into the transitional housing business.
About a year into her contract, a city employee noticed some billing discrepancies. Wade was billing different amounts of money for the same work on different months. In one case, she billed for a full month of work when she had only been there two weeks. One month, she billed $580 per day for her case managers; another month it was $640. On the month where she only worked for two weeks, she billed $800 a day for the full month, a discrepancy of at least $12,000.
Then an anonymous tip came to the city that Wade wasn’t paying her employees what was promised, according to a memo written by the city’s program manager for homeless services. The tipster advised the city to look at payroll records and pay stubs to verify money was going where it was supposed to, the memo showed.
So that’s what the city did. And on Aug. 30, 2021, the city sent a letter to Wade noting “several irregularities†in invoices and billing. The city asked to see payroll records and timesheets, a requirement of the contracts she signed with both St. Patrick’s Center and Magdala.
In a series of emails, Wade largely kept putting off the requests for documents. “I know I’m newer in this arena,†she wrote in one message, “but we have ambitions of growing with the city as a new provider.â€
Magdala’s CEO, Thomas Mangogna, also began to ask Wade for records, such as her plan for how she deployed workers on each shift.
“This is a simple request and can be responded to rather quickly,†Mangogna wrote in an email.
Wade said her chief financial officer would be in touch with the city auditor to provide documents, but he also sent emails seeking delays. By September 2021, the records still hadn’t been sent. As the city pushed for documentation, Wade informed Mangogna that she was walking away from her contract.
The city never received the payroll records it sought. It refused to pay invoices. Wade told the city and Magdala that she didn’t know she needed to keep time sheets or payroll records to justify her grant payments, which came from federal dollars.
“I can’t believe she used that lame excuse,†Mangogna wrote the city in a September 2021 email. “Anyone receiving money via a contract or grant knows you have to keep records.â€
To this day, Wade says she did nothing wrong.
“I can’t create documentation out of the air,†Wade told me in an interview. “They started asking for documents I didn’t have.â€
‘Entirely absent this year’
Wade was traveling in her car the first time we spoke. She travels a lot for business, she says.
In fact, since she was elected chairman of the Continuum of Care in December, she hasn’t made any of the monthly meetings in person.
“She’s been entirely absent this year,†said Lucas Delort, a former board member.
On April 24, after I started asking questions about Wade’s leadership, she sent an email to Pearson and various homeless service leaders to explain her absences from Continuum of Care meetings.
“I understand that my extended absence may have raised questions or concerns, and for that, I extend my sincerest apologies,†Wade wrote. “Recognizing the imperative to prioritize my mental health and ensure the stability of my ventures, I made the difficult decision to temporarily step back.â€
In the email, Wade didn’t resign, and she didn’t mention which business ventures she was attending to. But in June 2023, she gave a hint. She posted on Facebook that she was “moving to Oklahoma to manage another business.â€
In the post, she offered her ºüÀêÊÓƵ real estate businesses for sale. “SERIOUS BUYERS ONLY,†she wrote. The post was later removed.
Wade’s Oklahoma business is called Pure Pressure Farms, LLC, and it has .
During our interview, I asked Wade three times if she was living in Oklahoma, and she refused to answer.
“I have businesses in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, in Illinois. I’m in multiple places,†she said.
When I pressed, she offered: “I’m in partnership with a business in Oklahoma.â€
Wade’s absence has raised questions and added to tension on the Continuum of Care board. There has long been tension on the board, which is made up largely of leaders of nonprofits that work to serve the homeless or keep them off the street. Delort was one of three people who left the 15-member board in recent months.
The agencies also have long had conflicts with the city over the dispersal of federal money. For the past few years, Continuum of Care leaders have worked to create a new, over-arching nonprofit, called House Everyone STL. The goal is to better coordinate homeless services in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and take some of the planning responsibility from the city. But that process, too, has been plagued with tension over power and control. Wade has been in the center of the storm, sending sharp-elbowed emails in the past few months to city and federal officials and board members of House Everyone STL.
So why does Wade still have her role? It might be because Continuum of Care members aren’t aware of her contract problems with the city. But she also has key supporters who are among the strongest voices in the group.
“She has been in communication with me every week,†says Shanna Nieweg, a Continuum of Care board member and executive director of Horizon Housing Development Co.
Anthony D’Agostino, who was chairman before Wade, also came to her defense.
“I know Toni really well and I’ve worked with her over the years,†D’Agostino told me in an interview.
He is currently the CEO of Peter and Paul Community Services, and was previously the CEO at St. Patrick’s Center when Wade signed her first subcontract with the city.
“Any issue she had with the city had nothing to do with the Continuum of Care situation,†D’Agostino said.
That “situation†is a precarious one. The board of the agency responsible for coordinating homeless services, and administering millions of dollars in federal grants, is in disarray. Members are leaving, the chairman is absent and there are frayed relationships among nonprofits, the city and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
At a February meeting of the Continuum of Care, Wade spoke briefly by phone to give the board a pep talk.
“This has been a stressful time,†she said.
Her plan for the board moving forward was to “work in transparency and unity.â€
It was an empty promise, offered from afar.
COMING WEDNESDAY: The Continuum of Care has tried for years to create a new nonprofit to coordinate homeless services. It’s been a bumpy ride.