This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund.
In November 2023, a first-time homeowner closed on an affordable, fully rehabbed single-family home in St. Louis’ Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood.
The home, distinguished by its inviting yellow door against a soft charcoal brick, stands unrecognizable from its former self — an uninhabitable vacant home with contents exposed to the street like a dollhouse for 20 years. A side gate now attaches the home to its red-bricked neighbor, the office of North Grand Neighborhood Services, the nonprofit organization behind its rebirth.
NGNS sprang from a gathering of north St. Louis churches, though it’s no longer affiliated with any of them. Its mission is to provide access to affordable rentals and homeownership in the three-block radius of Cottage Avenue, North Market Street and Garfield Avenue, an area only a three-minute drive north of the Fabulous Fox Theatre. NGNS believes affordable homeownership and rentals help stabilize communities, a vision that incentivized the rehab at 2423 Fall Ave.
In 1968, Timothy Bleck wrote of Jeff-Vander-Lou in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “There are rotted apartments and rutted streets — the broken pavement and broken promises of decades of downtown neglect.” Ten years later, in Proud magazine, C. Christopher Lee called JVL “a neighborhood that refused to die.”
The neighborhood has experienced injustice in the form of disinvestment and neglect. Much of what Bleck witnessed remains true today: dilapidated properties, high crime and drug use and the marked discrepancy between the needs of the community and the government response. Yet Lee’s words still resonate. JVL has always been — and still is — a neighborhood with tenacity and generations of families that call it home.
When NGNS first began, vacancy rates for its chosen radius pushed 55%. Two decades of physical and mental grit from a two-man team and loads of volunteers have helped bring that figure down to less than 5%.
These blocks illustrate a story of the uphill struggle to bring back north St. Louis, which has suffered from neglect and disinvestment for decades on end. The success also tells a story about Prop NS, a city-sponsored program aimed at bringing new life to vacant homes in both north and south city.
St. Louis voters approved Proposition NS in 2017 after years of community organizing. A lawsuit over the election outcome and other complications delayed its launch, but the program finally began in 2020, earmarking up to $30,000 for each single-family home or $60,000 for each small multifamily building, then hiring contractors to do the work to shore up the building and incentivize its eventual private purchase and full rehabilitation.
In total, the program allocates just $6 million each year to revitalize vacant buildings owned by the city’s land bank — a small sum for a big problem. Currently, the city owns 1,319 vacant buildings.
When Joe Feld, president of NGNS, first sought to acquire 2423 Fall Ave. in 2021, the vacant home adjacent to the nonprofit’s office had already been nominated for Prop NS support. Prop NS proved critical for the edifice, abandoned since 2003.
“It was beyond our ability," Feld said. "When we see these brick walls collapsed in, though we have good volunteers, that’s where we get a little nervous.”
The city spent $29,600 to stabilize the property to a point where Feld said, “We could take it and finish it.”
In March 2021, NGNS placed a winning bid of $5,000 for the property and got to work. The nonprofit fields volunteer assistance from hardworking students, largely from De Smet Jesuit High School, as well as occasional college students from St. Louis University or Fontbonne University.
On Wednesdays, a group of retirees dedicate their time, many bringing engineering or handiwork skills from their past. Without professional contractors, the team relies on collaborative communication, a depth of YouTube videos and hours spent reading city code. “We figure it out and learn as we go,” Feld says. For this home, Feld learned how to tuckpoint — the process of finishing mortar joints between bricks with putty to prevent water damage.
Eighteen months later, NGNS laid the final touches — updated appliances and a stack washer/dryer. The full rehab cost an additional $94,000, paid for by the nonprofit via private donations and bridge loans from volunteers — making it a home literally built on trust.
Feld says it’s great to break even on a rehab, adding, “Without that Prop NS funding, there’s no way that project would’ve been, because we can’t absorb that kind of a loss.”
A source of funding
The rehab on Fall Avenue generated excitement in Jeff-Vander-Lou. People came from all over to the open house, thrilled to see an abandoned pile of bricks brought to new life. NGNS fielded many offers for the new home, including from several priced-out south city residents. Ultimately, the two-bedroom, two-bath rehab sold for $97,000 to a first-time homeowner from north city.
Feld mentions two properties in the neighborhood — 2521 North Spring and 2600 North Spring — nominated for Prop NS in April 2024 but currently waiting for the program’s assessment. He’s hoping they get picked. “The Prop NS, from our perspective, was a home run. We will not have been able to do this, that house would still be vacant, or might be torn down.”
Since 2021, Prop NS has stabilized 170 vacant properties previously owned by the city’s land bank in both north and south city, from Baden to Dutchtown, and sold about a third of them. A total of 631 nominations for 553 properties have been received, but a third of them were not eligible for the program for various reasons, including not being owned by the land bank. Some of the nominations were beyond the capacity of Prop NS.
Under the ordinance drawing up the program, no more than 200 properties that have been fully stabilized but not sold can be in the program at any given moment, leaving it with capacity for 88 more buildings. The program is funded by general obligation bonds, and more properties could overwhelm its coffers.
When a building is approved for Prop NS, program staff prepare a full, itemized scope of work to stabilize the building and post the various projects on STLCityPermits.com for contractors to bid on that work.
“It is a challenge to find enough contractors to do the work,” Sean Thomas, Prop NS program manager, reveals. “We know that they have limited capacity, and they can't take on 10 different buildings at the same time.” One success is that the comparatively small rehabs paid for by the program attract small-scale contractors, often minority- or woman-owned, or startups. He adds, “Now that we have three years worth of successes to show, it's easier to attract new contractors.”
Despite its successes in Jeff-Vander-Lou, Prop NS seems to fly under the radar a bit. “I feel like it's not a well-known program. I mean, this is an awesome thing,” Feld emphasizes.
Kevin McKinney, executive director of St. Louis Association of Community Originations, echoes this point. He recalls how the late Sundy E. Whiteside, SLACO’s former board president, whom McKinney refers to as “the heart and soul of the whole project,” played a key role in going door-to-door to garner support for Prop NS.
He commends the program for its ability to address vacancy in a way that keeps homes from continuing to rot and provides a chance for homeownership: “That increases the opportunity for somebody next door the next block over to do the same kind of thing.”
McKinney feels strongly about increasing the city population by increasing access to affordable homeownership. “As opposed to giving tax abatements to market-driven developments that are charging $2,000 a month for rent or $2,500 a month for rent, as opposed to giving those those developers tax abatement, give these folks that are coming in low to moderate income, trying to be a first-time homebuyer, buying a prop NS house or any other home. Give them a five-year abatement.”
Feld stresses the need for affordable homeownership. “As strange as it sounds, there is a shortage of affordable housing in north St. Louis,” he says. In the time NGNS has been working on its current rehab, Feld has had five people stop and ask to buy it.
Working block by block
NGNS’ current project lies a block south of Fall Avenue at 3630 Garfield. The nonprofit purchased the property, abandoned since 2002, from the city’s land bank, known as the Land Reutilization Authority, for $750.
This one needed even more work. Feld says NGNS was awarded a $100,000 grant from the city’s federally funded Community Development Administration in October 2023 to assist with extreme repairs, including a caved-in roof. It also sought funding from the North City Commercial Corridor Grant Program. “$100,000 is life-changing,” Feld says. “The biggest donation we’ve ever gotten is around $5,000. But the process has been so scarring. I don’t think we’ll do it again.”
Though Feld bent over backward to meet deadlines, update licensing and meet standards, the promised money has yet to come. Of the CDA, he says: “The people we interact with are all really good. I think they're well-intentioned. They're overwhelmed by the bureaucracy within the city and with this being from federal funding and all the strings attached. They're trying to figure this stuff out.”
Nahuel Fefer, executive director of the CDA, stresses, “Affordable housing is just absolutely essential.” He brings the numbers. “In our city, we have about 140,000 households, of which about 78,000 are tenants. About 60,000 are homeowners. Of the 70,000 or so tenants, about 37,000 are cost-burdened, and about 15,000 homeowners are cost-burdened.”
Fefer says, “Collectively, these groups pay over $250 million more than they can afford to rent and mortgage each year” — which could otherwise go toward child care or food. “There's this need to invest in housing as diverse as our city, from transitional housing, shelters, tiny homes with supportive housing, to regular affordable housing and affordable for-sale housing.”
The rehab on Garfield continues NGNS’ effort of intentional, block-by-block regeneration to encourage neighborhood stability. Several programs assist first-time-buyers with access loans or down payment assistance in north city, including an initiative by the St. Louis Development Corporation. “But they can be overwhelming for someone who’s never done this before,” Feld notes. He wants to encourage current renters to buy their homes but says groups like his will have to break down anxiety to encourage ownership and residents building long-term equity.
NGNS owns and leases 10 rental homes in its targeted three-block radius: seven single-family homes and three tiny homes, all of which the nonprofit either built or rehabbed. The tiny homes function primarily for individuals coming out of homeless shelters (predominantly from St. Patrick’s Center). Meant to be transitional, they provide access to affordable housing at a rent of $400 per month.
NGNS charges $600 per month to its other tenants, many of them women taking care of multigenerational families. “We charge below market rate because we want to keep them in the neighborhood.”
The neighborhood has long relied on such micro-size efforts. Detailing positive movement in Jeff-Vander-Lou in the Post-Dispatch in 1968, Timothy Bleck wrote, “The significance of these northside improvements is that they are being purchased not by sweeping federal programs or gigantic business-industrial consortiums, but by the sweat and enterprise of a group of persons for whom this slum is home.” (Bleck’s use of the word “slum” reminds us that the word used to hold the political power to destroy majority Black neighborhoods in the name of revitalization.)
According to the Jeff-Vander-Lou Neighborhood Association, JVL was one of the first neighborhoods in the city where Black St. Louisans were allowed access to real estate and homeownership. Beginning at the turn of the 20th century, white flight, disinvestment and institutionalized racism caused the extreme degradation of the neighborhood. Fed up with the city’s neglect, neighborhood organizer Macler Shepard founded Jeff-Vander-Lou Inc. in 1966. According to Bleck, Shepard firmly believed that “housing is the key to neighborhood stabilization” and grassroots rehabilitation could turn the neighborhood around.
The organization orchestrated the successful rehabilitation of a deteriorated home in late 1967, sparking more than a decade of community growth. Its demonstrated successes garnered federal recognition and private partnerships, which increased its budget and capabilities. Jeff-Vander-Lou Inc. expanded with neighborhood resources, including an “opportunity house” for temporarily homeless families, senior living facilities, a monthly newspaper and communications center, youth programs and many more community-based projects. Their efforts attracted long-term residents, many of whom have stayed and want to stay.
Rhonda Carbon has lived in north city her whole life. She attended Central High School in Jeff-Vander-Lou while living in the infamous Pruitt–Igoe Housing Complex from 1969 to 1973. She currently rents a one-story home on Garfield Avenue from NGNS going on eight years. It’s a pocket that sees little turnover among residents, many of whom, like Carbon, grew up in north St. Louis and want to stay in the area. Her sister lives across the street.
Carbon owned a home at Page Boulevard and Newstead Avenue for 10 years before moving to Jeff-Vander-Lou. When she lost her job, she lost the house.
When asked if she would consider homeownership again, Carbon says, “If it fits into my budget, where maybe I can get a lower rate or some kind of subsidy or something to help me, I would definitely consider.” She eyes the three-bedroom home being rehabbed across the street.
From 2010 to 2020, Jeff-Vander-Lou saw its population decrease from 5,557 residents to 4,209. The historically Black neighborhood experienced a 28% loss of Black residents, yet a 64% increase in white ones. Even that increase represents a paucity of white residents (Jeff-Vander-Lou had just 121 at the time of the last census), but the numbers reflect a broader trend of Black residents leaving north city, an alarming driver of St. Louis’ ongoing population loss.
Jeff-Vander-Lou housing stock consists of many vacant buildings, ripe for stabilization. Relatively few rest in the hands of the city’s land bank, but rather under control of private LLCs. Namely, the notorious Northside Regeneration LLC, Paul McKee’s failed enterprise, holds a vast majority of the neighborhood’s vacant buildings, according to the St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative.
Feld mentions he’s seen an increase in speculators, people who buy vacant property and wait until the market promises a profit, near the new NGA site. He also criticizes developers in the area, who he says “come in through low-income housing tax credit, and they'll build these homes, they’ll put people in, and then they're gone.”
NGNS maintains a much more holistic approach. Its three-block area of focus fosters a community of reciprocity. Feld says NGNS cuts grass in about a dozen yards and assists homeowners and tenants with home maintenance projects. In return, he says, residents provide the workers with refreshments: water or even snow cones in the summer. NGNS also used to host community meetings once a quarter with the police captain, neighborhood improvement specialist and neighbors in attendance. While the meetings were sidetracked by the COVID-19 pandemic, Feld intends to be more intentional about hosting them in the future.
Both Feld and Carbon are realistic. As in any other city neighborhood, Carbon says, you have to be smart and know your surroundings in Jeff-Vander-Lou, particularly as a woman. Feld points to locks and bars on current projects to prevent theft. Needles and bullet holes often decorate the sides of homes and alleyways.
He sees hope in the expansion of Great Rivers Greenway’s Brickline Greenway. A segment of the greenway with its bike trails and walking paths would extend through the heart of the neighborhood: from Natural Bridge, down North Grand, west on Cass Avenue, and South on Spring Street, ultimately connecting Fairground Park to the Armory and Grand MetroLink Station.
The city has also promised strategic investment in Dr. Martin Luther King Drive, only three blocks south of the nonprofit’s focus area. Feld sees pockets of the neighborhood that will slowly start filling in the gaps, aided by larger community-oriented projects along North Grand and MLK.
Feld has a long-term vision — one that would connect the area his organization is focused on with other points of light. “The Ville is just about a mile and a half that way. There’s some great organizations in The Ville. If they start pushing east, and we keep pushing west…”
In C. Christopher Lee’s words, “that’s the story of a neighborhood that wouldn’t quit.” As he wrote decades ago, “Through sheer tenacity, guts, daring, strong leadership, and love and concern for one another,” the area held together. Today, with the right amount of pressure and patience, in time, house by house, block by block, north city could see intentional change, rather than yet another “urban renewal” project.
This story was commissioned by the River City Journalism Fund, which seeks to advance journalism in St. Louis. See rcjf.org for more information.
![Rebecca Tallman, executive director for the Veterans Community Project of St. Louis, gives a tour of the community’s homes under construction on Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023, in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood. “It feels surreal right now,” Tallman, who is also an Air Force veteran, said roughly a month ahead of the community’s first veteran moving in. “We’ve come a long way in such a short time. [It’s] exciting knowing that we’re going to hep my fellow brothers and sisters in arms.”](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/f338001/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x1985+0+0/resize/260x172!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F9d%2Fe3%2Fb1f2fbc243ffa2e26becd13c1832%2F090623-bm-vet-homes-1.JPG)
