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ST. LOUIS — Katie Rhoades is doing something she wouldn’t have predicted a few years ago. The founder and executive director of , Rhoades is hiring a “housing navigator� to help place her clients in affordable apartments.

Her nonprofit was founded to help victims of sex trafficking, but the organization looks increasingly like a homeless services agency.

That’s what Rhoades told a gathering of more than 100 government, business and nonprofit leaders Monday morning at the Housing First STL Summit, organized by the . The summit, which continues through the week, aims to develop a regional strategy to combat homelessness — from ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ city to ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County to counties on both sides of the Mississippi River.

During a panel discussion, Rhoades echoed a lamentation that was repeated over and over: The biggest obstacle to avoiding homelessness in the region, like much of the country, is the lack of affordable housing.

“We have people sitting in shelter for six months to a year because we can’t get them into affordable housing,â€� said Jonathan Belcher, senior director of programs at , one of the largest providers of services to unhoused people in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½.

The problem has gotten so bad that Belcher’s organization started a “landlord mitigation fund� to help attract landlords willing to rent to people with government housing vouchers. The fund, for example, helps pay for extra security deposits if a renter causes damage or breaks a lease. “We can’t end homelessness without more affordable housing,� he said.

The focus on those issues — more housing and new landlords — is in stark contrast to what typically garners attention when it comes to homelessness, like a new tent city popping up on the grass outside City Hall or neighbors saying no to a proposal for more shelter beds in their communities.

The real attention-getter should be the housing market, said the summit’s keynote speaker, Mandy Chapman Semple.

“Homelessness is a housing problem,� said Semple, who helped lead successful efforts to reduce homelessness in Houston and Dallas.

She planted the seeds for the summit in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ about two years ago. That’s when local leaders brought her to town to talk about getting business executives, nonprofits and government agencies on the same page, with a unified strategy to reduce the number of people sleeping on the streets. It’s a heavy lift, and it requires some organizations to shift resources or focus.

“The history of homeless response has not been re-housing,� Semple said. “The history of homeless response has been crisis.�

Putting people into shelter or focusing on underlying mental health issues and addictions are valiant goals, said Dr. Sam Tsemberis, who runs a in New York City and was one of the pioneers of the “housing first� model. But those strategies don’t necessarily work.

Tsemberis spoke of his group’s efforts to get people off the streets in America’s largest city 25 years ago by focusing on underlying symptoms. It didn’t work, and they kept seeing the same clients months later.

“So we stopped prescribing and started asking,� Tsemberis said.

And what did people on the street say they wanted, first and foremost? Housing.

In the U.S., Canada and France, studies of the housing first model, where unhoused people are moved quickly into homes and provided services, show that it consistently works better than other models, Tsemberis said.

But it takes funding for housing vouchers, willing landlords and cooperation across civic and nonprofit boundaries that, in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½, is complicated by the region’s divided governance structure.

That’s why, after a similar crime summit she called, ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Mayor Tishaura O. Jones asked East-West Gateway to put together the homeless summit. She wanted to see if, like crime, the region’s leaders could find a unified strategy on homelessness. Jones said she wants the leaders to be guided by data and proven philosophies.

The good news for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ is that the level of homelessness here — about 2,500 people annually, with up to 500 of them unsheltered at any given time — is nowhere near the level found in more high-profile spots, such as California. Still, homelessness is on the rise here, increasing about 12% in the past year. And it’s not just the city of ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ that faces the problem.

Pamela Struckhoff, executive director of the in St. Peters, sees the problem in St. Charles, Lincoln and Warren counties. Her organization has gotten into the landlord business because it is so difficult to find affordable, safe housing.

Similarly, Jacki MacIntosh, who runs the in ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, said her organization’s client list has grown dramatically in the past couple of years. Families will come to the food pantry looking for nourishment, and social workers eventually realize the families are homeless and in need of shelter.

“There’s homelessness in Kirkwood,� MacIntosh said. “There’s homelessness in West County.�

The region’s dysfunction, stemming from its geographic and political divisions, will make solving the problem more difficult.

“It’s one of the biggest hurdles to overcome,� Semple said. “It’s going to require a set of leaders who hold on to this long-term plan.�