Questions and Answers

VOICE Alerts sends short notices to phones about things that affect people experiencing homelessness and housing instability in St. Louis: dangerous weather, warming and cooling centers, open shelter beds, meals, warnings about the drug supply, health clinics, and community events.

A notice appears on the phone's screen the way a text message does, and tapping it opens a page on this site with the full details. Every current alert is also listed on the front page, so anyone can read them without signing up.

VOICE Alerts is a project of FreeSource, a 501(c)(3) peer support and resource referral organization. It is part of VOICE (Volunteer Operated Integrated Communication Exchange), which also runs a message relay line.

Alerts are written and sent by volunteers and staff from the organizations below. Each alert shows the name of the person who posted it and the organization they work with.

• FreeSourceA 501(c)(3) peer support and resource referral organization.

Signing up and receiving alerts costs nothing. There is no app to buy or download, and the site does not show advertising. Each alert uses a very small amount of phone data.

When you turn on alerts, your phone gives this site a delivery address that only works for sending notifications to that phone, along with the topics and language you chose. We do not ask for your name, phone number, email address, or location, and nothing we store names you.

Some records are kept by others, and we cannot control them. The company that hosts this website keeps records of visits, as almost every web host does, usually including each visitor's internet address and the kind of phone. Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Mozilla carries each sealed message to your phone. They cannot read it, but they can see that it was sent.

The Get Alerts page lists what we store and what others may keep, and lets you turn off the arrival reports your phone sends. If you turn alerts off or clear your browser's data, the delivery address stops working, and the site usually removes it the next time an alert is sent.

Alerts work on Android phones using Chrome, including most free government phones, and on iPhones with iOS 16.4 or newer after the site is added to the Home Screen. The Get Alerts page walks through the steps for each kind of phone.

Without a smartphone, you can still read every current alert on the front page of this site from any computer, including library computers.

Every alert has a short code, such as K7Q-29M, and its own page on this site. If you are unsure about a message, type its code into the box on the front page. If the code is not found, the message did not come from us.

Each alert also carries a digital signature, and the alert page checks it on your phone. We will never ask you for money, passwords, or personal information.

Team members join by invitation, and each one signs in with a password and an authenticator app on their phone. They enter a new code from that app every time they send or approve an alert.

Emergency and Important alerts must be approved by a second team member before they go out. During a fast-moving emergency, a small number of coordinators may send without the second approval. When that happens, the reason is recorded and the rest of the team is told right away.

Yes. When you sign up, you can choose topics such as health and safety, services, and community events, and the language you would like your alerts in. Emergency alerts always come through, because they concern immediate danger to life and safety.

Alerts can be written in English, Spanish, and other languages. When an alert has been translated, its page has a button for each language.

Some translations are made automatically by translation software. Those are marked as not yet checked until a team member who speaks the language reviews them, and after that the page names the person who checked it. The Read Aloud button reads an alert in the language you are viewing, as long as your phone has a voice installed for that language.

Organizations that serve people experiencing homelessness in the St. Louis area are welcome to join the team. Write to info@voicestl.org with a short description of your organization and the kinds of notices you would like to send.

Yes. The software is free and open source under the GNU Affero General Public License, and the written content on this site is shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. It runs on ordinary low-cost web hosting and does not depend on any app store.

A link to the source code will appear at the bottom of every page once the public copy is ready. Until then, write to info@voicestl.org for a copy.

Call 911. This site shares information, but nobody watches it around the clock, so it cannot respond to emergencies or answer messages.