Supporting Seniors and Families

By Travis Reems

St. Louis, unlike some other cities, was built for high density, due in great part to our inability to expand our borders, trapped between the river and the county. Kansas City, for example, continues to grow geographically even today, because it is bounded on some sides by unincorporated Jackson and Clay counties. Being built for high density, we have in our ward many multi-family dwellings, which force a specific use: rental.

The rental situation is neither good for the renter, nor for the housing stock of our neighborhoods. In order to have true financial security, home-ownership is a must. Home-ownership provides stability for families and our neighborhoods, as it helps reduce transience. We can help our neighborhoods and residents by pushing for both home-ownership and reduction of housing density.

Many families became home-owners for the first time over the past few years through questionable, and sometimes fraudulent, lending practices. These families were robbed of the American dream. Worse yet, they were given a glimmer of hope, only to have it then stolen away. It just might be worse to be given a promise of hope than to never have had it to begin with. For our neighbors in this situation, we can solicit the state to help stop foreclosure. And we can use our community corporation as a conduit to help our neighbors connect with local and national non-profits that aid in this situation. We must ensure that our neighbors in this situation are not given a dream denied.

And we can go further. For those families that have never dreamed of home-ownership, we can use our community corporation to act as a channel to connect our neighbors with other non-profits that give true low-rate loans and small forgivable loans. We can use our housing corporation to build new housing where none exists and renovate existing housing to make affordable home-ownership a possibility for our neighbors.

But building home-ownership is just a start, for the stability of our neighborhood, we must ensure that our residents are able to stay in their homes. Over the last few years we've seen our property taxes and the cost of home maintenance rise, but seniors have seen their fixed incomes fall. This has put many seniors in dangerous jeopardy of losing their homes, which will not only make homeless many of our neighbors, but also decimate our neighborhood with even more vacant or poorly maintained properties. But we can help our seniors stay in their homes.

We can use our housing corporation to work with the St. Louis Agency on Aging to access programs that aid seniors in this situation. Further, we can work with the state to pursue a freeze on property taxes for seniors meeting income guidelines. And, we can help not only our seniors but potentially all of our neighbors with $5,000 forgivable loans for home improvements that help stabilize our neighborhood.

As our city is unlikely to double in size to fill its capacity, ultimately our only way forward is to reduce the density of housing stock in our core residential areas. We can achieve this through pursuit of redevelopment. With the use of tax-abatement, we can attract developers willing to rehab multi-family structures into fewer units, such that a 2-family building becomes a single-family home and a 4-family flat becomes two townhomes. Buildings with even more units can be made into condo units. The private market, especially in the current economic crisis, can only provide for so much redevelopment on its own.

Which is why working with the City Counselor's Office we can pursue sale of abandoned properties that owe the city back taxes. Many of these derelict and vacant buildings will be sold to private developers, but we can use existing funds to purchase these buildings for community-based redevelopment. Further, some properties may be forfeitted to the city and can then be sold to developers by the city. We can dream again of a day when our neighborhoods are stable with pride of ownership. But we need leadership with the vision to get us there.