Affordable Housing

A provision introduced at the St. Louis Board of Aldermen on Friday would charge people in some neighborhoods $10,000 to remove dwelling units in a single building. That would include converting a duplex into a single-family home, or converting a four-flat into a duplex. The money from those fees would contribute to a fund to create, improve and maintain affordable housing.

Even though Kansas City made it illegal for prospective landlords or employers to ask applicants if they have a felony conviction, the law hasn't stopped discrimination — especially for ex-felons whose past crimes are readily found on the internet.

The saga facing Kim Daniel to find affordable, safe housing using Section 8 vouchers reaches a happy conclusion.

Four St. Louis nonprofits will develop nearly 200 affordable apartments and homes across St. Louis over the next few years, thanks in part to a grant from the Missouri Housing Development Commission.

Alderwoman Megan Green, who represents the 15th Ward, says her neighborhood is losing affordable housing units and people are getting priced out. She hopes imposing a conversion fee on developers who flip multi-unit buildings into single-family homes will help.

An Affordable Housing Trust Fund Coalition report found that St. Louis and St. Louis County failed to provide Black renters, households and low-income families with affordable housing.

As of the end of September, the state had awarded only 18% of the $323.7 million it received as part of the COVID-relief package Congress approved in December.

Terrell Carter, the new executive director of the nonprofit Rise Community Development, talks about his vision for the local community development organization.

We wanted to share a follow-up conversation with Myisha Johnson, one of the three working members of State Street Tenant Resistance and the founder of Community First Plus, a new housing and environmental justice organization. She’s been connecting the dots between health problems and pollution from facilities like Kinder Morgan for over a decade. In this episode, we hear how Myisha felt when residents like her were asked to sign onto an administrative complaint to the EPA about the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. Then, attorneys Sarah Rubenstein and Bob Menees of Great Rivers Environmental Law Center will share about what happened when they filed the administrative complaint to the EPA on behalf of the Missouri and St. Louis City NAACP and Dutchtown South Community Corporation.This is Part II of a two-part series on how tenants are organizing to hold problem landlords accountable, and what happens when large companies and the state need to be held accountable too. If you haven’t listened to Part I: Tenant Rights and Resistance, listen to it now!

The pandemic triggered a major housing crisis, resulting in millions of renters and unhoused people across the country becoming at risk for being evicted or displaced. Meanwhile, those living in apartments with mold or pests have been stuck with environmental conditions that exacerbate asthma and COVID-19. Locally, tenants and housing advocates are pushing back by advocating for eviction moratoriums, holding landlords accountable, and working to create a tenants bill of rights. In this episode, we hear from the three working members of State Street Tenants Resistance about what motivates them to advocate for a tenants bill of rights, and the Community Empowerment Organizer of a local community development corporation will explain how to hold problem landlords accountable and what’s at stake when large companies and the state need to be held accountable, too.