Private Partnership Has St. Louis Blight Removal In Its Sights

[Sherman A1]

There are 7,000 vacant buildings and more than 10,000 vacant lots in St. Louis. Many of the structures are beyond repair, so the demolition of 30 vacant structures will only put a small dent in the blight problem.

The St. Louis Blight Authority is the organization behind a project to clear a four-block area in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood. The organizers believe the initiative could be just the beginning of a more far-reaching program.

St. Louis native Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, and Bill Pulte, a Detroit real estate heir, joined Alderman Jeffrey Boyd, D-Ward 22, and local residents in front of a vacant house on Burd Avenue in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood on Friday afternoon to launch the effort.

Dorsey and Pulte described the plan to demolish the vacant structures and clean up 130 vacant properties over the next 20 days on four blocks that are bounded by Clara, Maffitt, Belt and Cote Brilliante Avenues.

https://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/private-partnership-has-st-louis-blight-removal-its-sights

[IndyOp]

1. Government should be doing this... not a few wealthy individuals

In Cincinnati private interests have funded a lot of projects like this and the effect has been, IMO, that anti-government sentiment has increased by a power function.

Note: I understand that this may effect people’s lives in the short-term for the good. I don’t begrudge action if local, state, and federal governments aren’t getting the job done, but it would be far better if government did this - like Pete Buttigieg’s 1000 Homes in 1000 days project - which was overwhelmingly popular among the vast majority of South Bend citizens.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. I disagree...why should my government (supported by my taxes literally since I live in STLMO) ...

spend our hard earned money for tearing down old structures? Other than the fact that we all get stuck with the bills when folks abandon these structures.

I know that there have been some efforts to go after these folks who abandoned these structures too, to get them to cough up some dough or take responsibility for them. Probably not a great success since sometimes you can't locate next of kin, etc. easily.

A lot of folks picked up and abandoned these homes (land lords unwilling to put money back into old structures, older folks died off leaving properties abandoned etc.) leaving the city and its residents holding the bag. Like Me.

If we can get private industry to help in this giant task, wonderful. This has been an issue for quite some time and we're making big headways towards eliminating a lot of these properties. Most of these kinds of abandoned properties are pretty well gone in the more upscale neighborhoods such as Tower Grove Park, Dutch Town, etc. (40,000 Households), and so this kind of work is rather limited to certain areas of the city.

We'll get there.