Vacant Properties

Realtors and housing providers in St. Louis want city leaders to adopt home improvement programs from Pennsylvania to increase affordable housing.

Proposition B would have allowed aldermen to increase budget line items without the approval of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, a fiscal oversight board.

The 28-story, 780-room hotel closed in 2014. The foundation plans to work with the city, Greater St. Louis Inc. and the St. Louis Development Corporation on a plan to redevelop the site.

Last month, the Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority Board first brought up the possibility of a blighting study and redevelopment plan, but the board voted to table that item as the draft of the study wasn’t complete.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has given St. Louis $500,000 to remove hazardous materials from vacant properties.

There are almost 25,000 vacant houses, commercial buildings and land plots in St. Louis, and about 60% are privately owned. Some nuisance properties can be a blight on communities, so neighborhood associations have been trying to acquire them or compel owners to fix them.

The law makes technical changes on privately owned vacant properties with the goal of redevelopment, while millions in federal funding would go toward the removal of city-owned buildings.

Community leaders in the Baden neighborhood of north St. Louis are going to court to claim vacant houses for potential new homeowners.

After firefighter Ben Polson died while battling a fire in north St. Louis, the Fire Department is renewing efforts to rate the structural integrity of vacant homes.

A coalition committed to reducing vacant property in the city of St. Louis is backing a bill with a number of seemingly small legislative fixes that could have a big impact.