Dollar Homes And Urban Decay

Soon, you might be able to buy a house in St. Louis City for $1.

This comes after the Board of Aldermen passed a resolution to encourage the St. Louis Development Corporation to restart a homesteading program. Agree to live in and rehabilitate one of the vacant residential properties in public care, and you can buy that property for next to nothing. This is part of a broader effort to address the enormous number of vacant properties in the city.

In the 1950 census the population of St. Louis was 856,796—In 2010, 319,294. It’s not hard to see what might be driving the vacancies—people have and are leaving the city. The exodus of people from the city has a number of causes, old and new, ranging from white flight, suburbanization, high crime, and a loss of business. Each factor feeds into the others cyclically. Much of what has left the city has gone to the county which has expanded in population from 406,349 in 1950 to 998,954 in 2010 as each cause draws people out of the city and into the county.

In St. Louis, out of 129,000 total properties around 25,000 are vacant and abandoned. Mayor Lyda Krewson notes that the fiscal impact of vacancy to the 2017 city budget was an estimated $66 million. According to the mayor, there are 13,200 privately owned vacant properties and 11,500 additional plots that are controlled, maintained, and in some cases sold by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority (LRA). The LRA is a land bank that is responsible for maintaining and liquidating vacant properties which are transferred to it, often as the result of unpaid taxes and a subsequent lack of interested buyers. While the $1 home program has yet to be implemented, you can currently buy many of these properties at extremely low prices. The LRA generally sets property prices below market, as selling a property quickly means decreasing maintenance costs and increasing the likelihood that the property can be put to productive, taxable use.

[su_pullquote]“We keep seeing families that are trickling out of St. Louis and we want to keep them here, but we have to give them the type of incentives to stay here,” said the proposing alderman, John Collins-Muhammad.[/su_pullquote]The city already has a “Mow to Own” provision that allows property owners to cheaply acquire adjacent vacant lots provided they can cut the grass and maintain the lot over 24 months. The $1 house initiative would be structured similarly. According to a NextSTL article, purchasers must rehabilitate the home to stabilization in 120 days, complete rehabilitation work within eighteen months, and agree to make the home their primary residence for five years. The stated goal is to help slow the tide of people leaving the city, especially in vulnerable communities, which has been a trend in St. Louis for over half a century – “We keep seeing families that are trickling out of St. Louis and we want to keep them here, but we have to give them the type of incentives to stay here,” said the proposing alderman, John Collins-Muhammad.

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, each year the LRA typically gains around 500 properties (though only 187 in 2017) and sells 500 to 550. This is not enough to reduce the LRA’s holdings dramatically anytime soon.

Last year, the Mayor and community partners put forward a plan to mitigate vacancy. Though this plan did not include a provision for $1 homes—it did include a variety of initiatives structured around giving more resources to the LRA, marketing more properties, more than doubling the funding for demolitions, arranging intra-government partnerships, public-private partnerships, increasing data collection and analysis, creating new green spaces out of some vacant land, and much more.

There is a website featuring some LRA owned properties scattered throughout the city. Featured properties include commercial, residential, and vacant lots for as little as $2,000. The potential of $1 homes is interesting, allowing people with few resources to acquire these homes and renovate them—but also concerning as a financial practice. As the Post-Dispatch points out, it takes much more than $1 for the LRA to acquire and maintain these homes and much of the LRA’s funds come from property sales. What remains to be seen is how many of the vacant properties will be offered under the new homesteading program and how it will play into the broader prospects of the city.

The vacant properties that dot the city, particularly in the north, are a vivid sign of the decay that St. Louis has experienced. If the city can address this issue it will have a positive effect on the residents of the city, raising property values, lowering crime, and creating long-term employment. The steps the city has taken show that this is a priority issue. The city should continue to work to forge and strengthen new and old partnerships, especially in trying to create access to capital—such as the “Greenlining Fund” mentioned in the mayor’s plan—for the poorer residents of the city, so they can support the revitalization of their own communities.

Zachary Sorensen ‘21 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at zacharysorensen@wustl.edu.