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ST. LOUIS — A couple came up to Lucas Rouggly asking about resources for the Greater Ville neighborhood. It was almost a week after a tornado ripped a hole through north St. Louis, and The Block on North Taylor Avenue had become a hub of activity.

The building, just south of Martin Luther King Boulevard, sits at the intersection of four neighborhoods: the Greater Ville, the Ville, Lewis Place and Vandeventer. It’s a community center of sorts, with a gymnasium frequently filled with young people and families building relationships.

Its roof was torn off during the tornado, as many were next door, across the street and in a straight line from Fountain Park to the northeast — through some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Rouggly stood on the front sidewalk with a notebook, directing volunteers, collecting food, making lists of people who needed tarps or generators or help with debris.

This was the vision Rouggly had about 15 years ago, when he and his family moved to the Enright neighborhood and founded a nonprofit called . The neighborhood, devastated by a 1927 tornado, had been forgotten by time. Rouggly and his wife settled in to plant a seed of Christian love and see what germinated.

Now, the community center that sprouted after years of effort is busier than ever, but it has been so under tragic circumstances.

The couple that approached Rouggly was having trouble getting contractors to come to the neighborhood, a necessary step to stabilize properties before filing a homeowners’ insurance claim. The couple’s home had lost its roof, and they had only a tarp in place.

This is the devastating reality for people who live in north St. Louis. Even those with insurance — and not all have it — are worried about getting the rebuilding help in the 63113 ZIP code that people in other parts of town can get more quickly.

“I have homeowners’ insurance,� the man told me. “And I’m still finding resistance to get help when I tell them my ZIP code.�

The couple declined to let me use their names for this column, and I get it. Trust is an earned commodity in north St. Louis. Rouggly has taken more than a decade to build that trust, one block at a time.

But the couple’s story is a St. Louis story: Black neighborhoods recovering from devastating storms often have a harder road forward, in part because of infrastructure neglect that builds up over time.

Around the corner from Rouggly’s center, in the Lewis Place neighborhood, there are still scars from the 2011 tornado that wasn’t quite bad enough to earn a disaster declaration from the White House, leaving many homeowners on their own.

To make his point, the man pointed across the street, to a weathered wooden pole connecting electricity to the building on the corner. A tarp was flapping in the wind where a roof used to be. Most of the neighborhood lost electricity during last Friday’s tornado, and Ameren Missouri has told some homeowners that it won’t turn the power back on if the electrical pole is damaged or the home isn’t stable.

“That pole has been in need of repair for years,� the man said.

Indeed, Friday’s storm ripped down substandard electrical poles. The man and his wife still don’t have power. Like many people in their neighborhood, they’ve been in and out of their home the past few days.

“We’ve been evicted by Mother Nature,� the woman told me. “It’s the perfect gentrification tool.�

She worries that people who have lived in St. Louis for generations, as she has, will be forced away by this storm, unable to get their homes repaired in neighborhoods that will have to wait for new investment.

“This is the story passed down to every Black generation� in St. Louis, she said.

Now, after one of the worst tornadoes in the history of the city, it’s their turn to live it.

Rouggly hopes the folks pulling up to The Block this week to drop off food and other supplies stay engaged. He wants people to realize these are neighborhoods worth saving, worth spending time in, worth investing in.

Rouggly says Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard, whose family for generations has been in the neighborhoods hit by the tornado, has been a great help for Love the Lou, accessing resources for neighbors with immediate needs. Businesses, church groups and other nonprofits are also helping.

The area was already facing difficulties that took generations to form. So for those who want to pitch in, Rouggly has a simple plea: help build relationships and stay engaged with folks who live in the north St. Louis neighborhoods most devastated by the storm.

“Our focus is on the restoration of these neighborhoods for the folks who live here,� he says. “We don’t want to feel alone.�