MISSION
Recover. Rebuild. Remain.
It Takes A Ville-age is a resident-led initiative committed to ensuring that longtime families of The Ville can Recover from the 2025 tornado, Rebuild their homes and lives, and Remain in the historic Black community that has shaped generations of excellence, resilience, and possibility.
Through community leadership, strategic partnerships, and targeted investment, we work to prevent displacement and safeguard the legacy of The Ville for the people who call it home.
VISION
A reawakened Ville
We envision a reawakened Ville – restored, thriving, and rooted – where families no longer rely on memories to describe the neighborhood they love, because they can live it every day. It is a future where longtime residents are secure in their homes, where cultural legacy is protected, where community-led rebuilding drives equitable revitalization, and where The Ville’s next chapter is written by the very people who have sustained it for generations.
"For us, this silence and neglect wasn’t new. In fact, it was quite familiar."
OUR STORY
When the Storm Came
The Ville has weathered many storms. But nothing prepared us for the one that arrived on May 16th, 2025, when a historic EF-3 tornado tore through St. Louis and struck the very communities that have already carried more than our share our neglect. In just minutes, 5,000 buildings and homes were destroyed, and five lives were lost.
It was the first tornado to hit our neighborhood in more than 60 years, and the first time ever that there were no sirens, no warnings, no alert that a tornado was coming.
For us, this silence and neglect wasn’t new. In fact, it was quite familiar.
Because long before the tornado, The Ville had been living with another kind of storm, decades of neglect, disregard and disinvestment. So when the sirens didn’t sound, it didn’t feel like an error. To those of us who have lived here our entire lives, it felt more like a pattern we knew well.
What hit us that day wasn’t just the wind, and debris. It was the weight of decades of being overlooked, yet again, even in the face of disaster.
Families who have been in The Ville for generations, now find themselves displaced. Some even sleeping in their cars, and others, no one may ever know.
And this is when things became clear for many of us: If we’re going to recover from this, we cannot wait for someone else to “fix” things. We have to be the ones to drive our own change.
THAT'S WHY IT TAKES A VILLE-AGE EXISTS
We are the people who live in this community and lived through this storm and every other storm before it.
We know what it feels like to watch a neighborhood already overlooked, now face another threat to its survival.
We are choosing to Recover, choosing to Rebuild, choosing to Remain and choosing to believe in The Ville’s next chapter. Not because it will be easy –because it won’t –but because our legacy is worth it.
Our story isn’t about a single day of destruction. It's about what that day and the past 160 days revealed and confirmed.
THERE IS NO VILLE WITHOUT OUR VILLE-AGE
And right now, our Ville-age, the residents are at serious risk of permanent displacement, not because they want to leave but because recovery without support makes staying impossible. A community with a legacy as deep as the Ville cannot survive on hope alone.
It requires investment, partnership and action, especially now. We will not rely on the memories to describe the neighborhood in which we live, because we will live it again.
And with support, it will be the story of The Ville’s Reawakening. Because The Ville is worth rebuilding, the people are worth investing in, the homes are worth preserving and our legacy is worth protecting.
And as for the next chapter, that story is still being written, but this time, through the hands of those that call The Ville Home.