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ST. LOUIS — Three weeks ago, Tommie Kates and his girlfriend moved into a brick box of a house with their pit bull, Remy.

On Sunday, their yard was littered with wood planks, chunks of concrete and fragments of wrought iron fencing. The front eaves had been bitten off and the windows shattered.

Sunlight streamed into the living room from a gap where two walls used to touch and in the back room from a hole in the roof.

But Kates is still living there. He has nowhere else to go.

“I needed four grand to move in here,” he said. “I spent my last dollar.”

Kates lives in the Ville, one of the north St. Louis neighborhoods that bore the brunt of Friday afternoon’s tornado, which touched down in Clayton and tore northeast before reaching the Mississippi River. Winds that topped 150 mph shook trees loose from the earth and rattled homes off their foundations. Cars flipped, and patios splintered. At least five people were killed, and dozens were injured.

Many more people have homes that are unsafe to inhabit, on streets strewn with downed power lines. Some have left, taking refuge with friends or family, in hotels or at three the American Red Cross opened.

But others are sitting tight, saying it’s their only option — or the least-bad one of the few choices they have. Many say they can’t afford to leave. ������Ƶ worry about protecting their homes from looters, too.

Kates doesn’t want to stay in the crumbling house. He’s scrambling to collect his belongings — many still in the trash bags he packed a month ago — and start over.

He has to earn some money first, and his job as a custodian at Enterprise Center is seasonal.

“I really don’t want to go to a shelter,” he said.

The storm bowled through Central West End mansions, Forest Park landmarks, schools, churches and gas stations. About 5,000 structures were damaged, city officials estimated, at a cost of $1.6 billion.

Residents of low-income neighborhoods in north St. Louis may have the toughest climb to recovery.

The median household income in the 63113 ZIP code, which includes the Ville and several other neighborhoods, is about $38,600, according to the U.S. Census. Nearly a third of residents fall below the poverty line.

St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer on Monday said building inspectors are examining all damaged residences and color coding them by severity. The city isn’t condemning any buildings at this point, she said.

But Spencer warned people about staying in homes with even partial damage, urging them to use the Red Cross shelters instead.

“Please don’t chance it,” she said. “Please don’t risk your life.”

‘Trying to stay strong’

Tykevia Crawford and her family moved into an upstairs unit in a four-family flat on Cupples Place, in Kingsway East, about a year ago.

“A godsend,” Crawford called it.

She had spent 17 years on the Section 8 waiting list when a voucher finally came through — just after their previous apartment had been condemned.

Crawford was home with her two daughters when the tornado hit on Friday. She had picked the girls up from school early to get their hair done for her son’s high school graduation. A tree smashed into the bedrooms of her son and older daughter, but her 6-year-old’s room was spared.

Neighbors helped cut away the branches so the family could get outside. On Friday night, they all slept in their minivan, too scared to go back in. Crawford said she saw people walking through the streets, looking for things they could take.

“We just had a tragedy, and people were stealing stuff,” she said.

On Saturday, a nearby church gave Crawford money to put the family in an extended-stay motel, but her fiancé, Joanez Kimble, didn’t want to leave their place unguarded or their pets, Montana the dog and Missy the cat, alone.

He sent Crawford and the kids off, then pulled a table and chair into the yard. As darkness settled in, he kept a fire going in his barbecue pit with twigs he snapped from the fallen tree.

“I’m just trying to stay strong for my family,” Kimble said on Sunday.

He was preparing for another night alone in the dark. He and Crawford work at Busch Stadium, and their budget is tight. They can salvage some belongings, but the furniture is probably a loss.

“What we’re doing now,” he said, “is playing in limbo.”

A block away, Brandon Williams sat in the back of a minivan, talking to a friend who had come to check in. A neighbor passing by offered to pick up pizza.

“It will never be the same down here,” the neighbor told Williams.

Williams moved his family onto St. Ferdinand Street more than a decade ago. Eventually, his landlord decided to sell, and Williams bought the duplex, using one side for storage. He and his wife, their 11 kids and a grandchild live on the other side.

Williams is a truck driver, and he’s on the road for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. But he was off Friday for 18-year-old Nicholas’ high school graduation. As they drove home after the ceremony, it looked like they were traveling through the set of a disaster film.

Everyone was OK, but the roof of their home was shorn clean off. Williams doesn’t have insurance.

“I’m an emotional person,” Williams said. “I’ve cried a lot in the past three days.”

He scrounged up three tarps, but they weren’t enough to cover the duplex from wall to wall. He was looking for a fourth on Sunday, plus some weights to hold down the edges. He knew he didn’t have much time before rain was expected to roll in.

He and his wife have been sleeping in their car. A couple of the teenagers have bunked inside the cab of the Alcatraz semi-truck he drives for work. The rest are squeezed onto the first floor of the house.

Williams will need to get back on the road soon, but he is hesitant to leave his wife and kids with so much uncertainty. He doesn’t want to split up his family, and no one he knows has enough room to take in 14 people.

“We’re staying,” he said. “We ain’t got much of a choice.”

Joe Holleman of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this story.