STL Vacancy Crisis – What Can You Do?

Emily Woodruff, Staff Writer | Photography by Eric Kim, Design Director Emeritus

With over 25,000 vacant properties in St. Louis (one of the highest numbers in the nation), rows of empty houses remain a common sight in this city.

Imagine that you are driving through a St. Louis City neighborhood. As your car bumps along the road, you look out your window and see row after row after row of old, leaning brick houses boarded up, burned, or missing windows. There are no “For Sale” signs or any evidence that anyone cares about the empty houses and lots. Driving in your car, you are probably wondering why so many buildings are vacant and why no one is doing anything about this crisis.

St. Louis has one of the highest number of vacancies of any city in the United States, with over 25,000 vacant properties in the city, making rows of empty houses a common sight. St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative (a coalition of “neighborhood leaders, nonprofits, academics, community development corporations, and bussinsses” working to “put our vacant properties back into productive use”) created a housing tracker which provides a clear but depressing picture of the massive amount of vacant housing in St. Louis. It also demonstrates how vacant properties are concentrated in northern St. Louis. According to St. Louis Public Radio, as of 2022, about 12,000 vacant properties are owned by the city of St. Louis and 13,000 are privately owned. The city is spending millions of dollars each year on the upkeep and in some cases the demolition of vacant properties.

Besides representing St. Louis’ decline and straining the city government’s budget, these properties can cause real dangers to people, such as if they collapse or catch on fire. Vacant buildings can also attract crime and reduce housing prices. Even one vacant building can give a neighborhood an eerie feel and mentally affect residents.

Like many of St. Louis’ problems, vacant housing has many causes, both local and national. Houses can become vacant through several ways including foreclosure, lack of proper probate, a flipper (investor) buying the house and then never doing anything with it, or bureaucratic loopholes that allow the property to be owned even if no one is doing anything with it. In St. Louis specifically, white flight and declining resources have contributed to the vacancies. Since 1950, St. Louis has experienced a 63% decline in population. If people who wanted to leave couldn’t sell their house, they simply left it. Nationally, the subsequent housing market crashes and the foreclosure crisis only worsened the existing problem. National problems slammed St. Louis, and because of the city’s lack of support, these crises caused much more devasting effects here.

But the news about vacant housing is not all bad. St. Louis City and many local groups are fighting to gain more control over abandoned properties in their neighborhoods. St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative has taken a neighborhood-based approach and worked with communities to brainstorm solutions, such as creating special communities for artists, more affordable housing and community gardens. The Collaborative has also worked to find legislative solutions to destroy red-tape barriers that cause houses to sit empty for years. Last year, the Missouri State Legislature passed a measure to allow 15 million dollars in funding for clearing vacant cityowned property. This legislation also included ways to streamline the redevelopment process for vacant properties. Hopefully this measure will help reduce the number of vacant properties and make them beautiful, valuable parts of the neighborhood.

Wash U can also play a role in helping develop new legislative solutions, pressure lawmakers to adopt them, and find ways to institute many of these community projects. For example, the Wash U Interdisciplinary Environmental Law Clinic works to find landlords of vacant properties and hold them accountable. In the future, Wash U students, with their diverse backgrounds and expertise, can find innovative ways for communities to create gardens or plan new housing complexes. Some students even have experiences with revamping vacant properties from their home communities that they can share with St. Louis neighborhoods. While some may think these actions would qualify as gentrification, they actually demonstrate the positive impact that Wash U students can have on the St. Louis community. If we all work to use our skills to support St. Louis neighborhoods, maybe in five years if you drive through St. Louis City neighborhoods you will see rows and rows of old, beautiful brick houses standing proudly.

Emily Woodruff ‘24 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. She can be reached at ewoodruff@wustl.edu.