Tipping point

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TIPPING POINT

ILLEGAL DUMPING

‘IT’S JUST DISGUSTING’ ST. LOUIS CAN’T SEEM TO SOLVE ITS TRASH PROBLEM

ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

A woman walks along Conduit Drive in the Baden neighborhood last month. The street, which runs parallel to heavily traveled Hall Street, has become a popular dumping spot.

Refuse-related complaints spiked 20 percent in past 5 years City fails to invest in basic maintenance for trash truck fleet Budget cuts have shrunk staff, causing a ‘scheduling nightmare’

BY CELESTE BOTT AND JANELLE O’DEA • St. Louis Post-Dispatch

T CRISTINA M. FLETES • cfletes@post-dispatch.com

James and Arlene Price are joined Wednesday by their neighbor’s dog, Pepper, outside their home of 50 years in the Greater Ville neighborhood of St. Louis. The couple have struggled to deal with the illegal dumping that frequently occurs in the alley behind their house.

‘TIPPING POINT’ IS A SERIES OF SPECIAL REPORTS THAT EXAMINE CRITICAL CHALLENGES FACING ST. LOUIS NEIGHBORHOODS

ST. LOUIS

he stench hits you before you see anything: the sharp sourness of rotting food, the musk of discarded cardboard and drywall left out after a rain. Round the corner into the alley behind James and Arlene Price’s home in the Greater Ville neighborhood, and you’ll find piles of garbage and construction materials stacked and scattered next to the dumpsters.

“It’s unbearable. ... It’s open season for dumping,” said James Price, 85. He used to be the block captain. Now, there’s too little interest or too few permanent property owners to warrant a block unit.

But multiple neighbors still point to James Price as the man to talk to about the trash problem. Despite his age and his walker, he remains their advocate in a less official capacity, doing whatever he can to instigate cleanup efforts, hound city officials and get his neighbors to care about the garbage left to fester behind their homes. Old habits die hard.

Coming Monday: See who the city nailed when it used cameras to catch illegal dumpers.

See TRASH • Page A6

Nursing homes here face staffing shortages; several cited for neglect

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Hundreds of nursing homes nationwide have inadequate staffing levels, according to payroll data collected by Medicare and analyzed by Kaiser Health News. In Missouri, 112 skilled nursing

Take out the trash

TODAY

homes have staff levels below or well below the national average. There are 280 facilities with low staff levels in Illinois, the data show.

Federal inspection reports show several local nursing homes with low staffing rates have been cited recently for neglect, putting their Medicare funding at risk: • Between May 31 and June 7 at Northview Village in St. Louis, three residents

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A6 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

M 1 • Sunday • 08.19.2018

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A7

Larry Hilboldt questions a panel of aldermen and public safety officials last month, asking where the increase in refuse collection fees was being spent.

The meeting at the Sheet Metal Workers Union Hall included discussions on trash pickup, illegal dumping and enforcement of fireworks ordinances.

Hilboldt has been a proponent of privatization of garbage pickup.

Betty Mitchell catches bluegill as she fishes on O’Fallon Park Lake last month. Alderman John Collins-Muhammad has called for the closure of the park due to prevalent trash and the lack of park rangers. “It's too beautiful of a park to let it go to waste,” said Mitchell of the trash surrounding her in the water. “This is where I like to fish.”

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Repair technician Jared Rieger works Thursday on fixing a radiator hose leak on an 18-year-old refuse truck at the city vehicle maintenance building. Fourteen trucks filled the repair bays Thursday; technicians staff the facility six days a week.

TIPPING POINT

ILLEGAL DUMPING

CALLS REPORTING PROBLEMS DON’T ALWAYS YIELD RESULTS TRASH • FROM A1

Over the 50 years the Prices have lived in their house on North Taylor Avenue, they watched the city’s trash problem grow worse.

Time and again, they saw garbage pile up in their north St. Louis neighborhood. Trash pickup, especially bulk pickup, can be hit or miss, the Prices said. The couple feel like they’re calling the city constantly, and when they do, they’re often passed around to different people or agencies.

“One (department) shifts me to the other,” James Price said.

Arlene Price, 83, sucks in oxygen from her tank and pulls out her family’s trash bill. The city began charging $11 a month for garbage pickup in 2010 after facing a $46 million budget shortfall. While the fee increased to $14 in 2017, the service hasn’t improved, she said.

One of the Prices’ neighbors, Don Davis, said the trash piles in the alley behind his house have at times risen higher than the dumpsters, making it difficult to navigate through even on his motorcycle.

“You know what that brings? Rats. We have a big rat problem. And come the end of this summer, they’re going to find their way into the house,” he said.

The city empties the dumpsters somewhat consistently, he said, but illegally dumped waste concentrates behind a vacant, cityowned building, often blocking passage through the alley. A nearby house is under renovation, and the materials from that process tend to wind up stacked behind Davis’ well-kept home. His children aren’t allowed to play outside of his small, fenced yard, for fear of stepping on nails or broken glass, or getting too close to the inevitable, unsanitary trash pile behind their house.

More often than not, Davis has to clean the alley just to be able to leave his home.

“I don’t have a choice. It does get frustrating. But there isn’t very much you can do about it,” he said.

ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM A move toward more dependable trash service is part of a new “Clean Up St. Louis” campaign from Mayor Lyda Krewson, which includes the deployment of 100 new surveillance cameras throughout the city to catch illegal dumping in lots and alleys.

But St. Louis’ biggest hindrance to timely trash collection has been a lack of operable trucks. On any given day, nearly half of this city’s fleet of 84 garbage trucks are out of service. On some days, that number is even higher.

With 55 trash routes to run a day, the city struggles to pick up the waste residents are legally discarding, much less the refuse from outside actors who come to the city specifically to dump their waste.

“If we’re in the hole every day, in the red as far as what you can cover with your manpower to those routes because of some of our truck situations, you’re always inevitably, mathematically, going to have an issue covering those,” said Streets Director Jamie Wilson, who oversees the refuse division and has

‘They say they’re going to do something,

but it doesn’t happen.’

Rauchel Anderson

been called on at recent town halls and committee hearings organized by city aldermen to investigate the issue. “It ends up being, ‘I can pick this up, but that means I miss that.’”

City residents are invited to call the Citizens’ Service Bureau to report those problems, but that doesn’t always yield results.

Some call their alderman, hoping that will spur action. A new “trash task force” in the police department, led by Sgt. Joseph Calabro, also welcomes direct calls. There’s a $100 reward for reporting a dumper if the complaint leads to an arrest.

Illegal dumping has been an acute problem in St. Louis for decades, and Krewson isn’t the first mayor to attempt a fix.

In February 2003, former Mayor Francis Slay announced his own “Clean Up St. Louis” initiative. He tasked several full-time police officers with going after those who dump trash illegally, joining seven officers who did the work part time, for a task force similar to the one Calabro oversees. With some funding from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, he also installed surveillance cameras to catch illegal dumpers.

Flash back to a chilly March morning in 1996 when Slay’s predecessor, Mayor Freeman Bosley Jr., was handing out fliers announcing a $100 reward for residents who report anyone dumping garbage.

“We’re going to bust you and punish you.

We’re not going to stand for it anymore,” Bosley told the Post-Dispatch at the time.

His campaign to crack down on the city’s trash problem included organized cleanups of known dump sites and four designated police officers to spearhead the effort.

Sound familiar?

While the initiatives by all three mayors have caught some dumpers in the act — Calabro’s task force and footage from the new surveillance cameras have led to 18 guilty pleas and more than 120 summonses for dumping so far this year — the city has failed to invest in even basic maintenance required for reliable trash service.

Last year, the Board of Aldermen voted to raise the fees residents pay for garbage collection by $3 a month to buy cameras and trash trucks. But some aldermen balked, questioning how the money collected from the existing fee had been spent.

The revenue had flowed into the city’s general revenue fund, where it could be spent on a myriad of other priorities, forcing city officials to acknowledge that they’d dropped the ball by not paying to replace or maintain garbage trucks.

WHO COMPLAINS THE MOST The top 10 neighborhoods for trash complaints (adjusted for population): Martez Williams (left) and Joe Nelson clean trash from between vacant buildings in the JeffVanderLou neighborhood on June 30. Area contractors and volunteers, partnering with the Regional Business Council and Better Family Life, demolished five vacant houses as part of a monthly Clean Sweep program.

1. College Hill 2. Fairground 3. Hyde Park 4. Walnut Park East 5. Academy 6. Vandeventer 7. Walnut Park West 8. Hamilton Heights 9. Fountain Park 10. Lewis Place SOURCE: Post-Dispatch analysis of Citizens’ Service Bureau trash complaint data for January 2009-July 2018 and U.S. Census data.

CHAT WITH OUR REPORTERS

Chat beginning noon Wednesday about garbage and illegal dumping in the city with the reporters who wrote these stories. postdispat.ch/ STLtrashchat

HOW IS YOUR PART OF TOWN?

Is your St. Louis city neighborhood looking like a garbage dump lately? Submit your photo to our gallery: postdispat.ch/ STLtrashpix (You can also submit a news tip there.)

St. Louis police Sgt. Joseph Calabro (right), commander of the Trash Task Force, investigates a dumping complaint with Detective Sisavath Singharath behind an apartment building in the 6200 block of Dewey Avenue in the Holly Hills neighborhood of St. Louis last month. The belongings appeared to be from an eviction or house clean-out.

At the time, 1st Ward Alderman Sharon Tyus, who voted against the increase, compared the worsening situation to parents taking their children to Disneyland but failing to buy them food.

“It was not placed into a special fund or enterprise account to pay for trash services including the cost to replace the rolling stock,” Tyus said. “Why isn’t and hasn’t the entire $14 payment been put into an account for trash? Then we could buy so many more trucks and hire additional staff.”

Recently, money just from the increased fees has allowed the city to purchase 16 new trucks, with 15 more coming by the end of the year, all part of a plan to reduce the average age of the fleet and replace dying trucks over a decade. A fleet of 65 to 70 working trucks would be ideal, Wilson said, to cover the city’s 55 routes.

Nick Yung, the city’s longtime refuse commissioner, retired this month after more than 40 years overseeing trash operations. The streets department is advertising for his replacement, and the city’s garbage problem will soon be the responsibility of someone of Wilson’s choosing.

TRASH LOUIS TRASHININST. ST. LOUIS

Complaints people Complaintsper per100 100 people per neighborhood, 2009-18

per neighborhood, 2009-18 25

50

75 100

Parks or neighborhoods with fewer than 100 people

WHO TO CALL? In the meantime, residents faced with overflowing dumpsters or trashed alleys often find themselves with two options: reporting complaints to the Citizens’ Service Bureau and hoping for assistance, or taking on cleanup themselves.

Rauchel Anderson says her calls to the city have been mostly fruitless.

“They say they’re going to do something, but it doesn’t happen,” she said.

Anderson, 26, lives in the Penrose neighborhood in a house that she inherited from her father. Like him, she’s often forced to clean up the alley off of Calvin Avenue when the dumpsters overflow or the rancid smell

SOURCES: U.S. Census Bureau, St. Louis Citizens’ Service Bureau NOTES: Population data is from the 2010 census.

Complaint data includes only what has been called in to the Citizens’ Service Bureau.

increase in call volume this summer that the bureau has needed “all hands on deck” to take calls and direct complaints to the departments that can help. Residents can also make complaints on Twitter.

The Post-Dispatch found that in the previous five full years of data, trash-related complaints increased by 20 percent. The growth has forced the bureau to hire three new operators who are now in training, McDowell said.

“There’s just a constant breakdown of communication here. And that’s an accountability issue,” said Alderman Sarah Martin, ST.11th LOUIS Ward.

becomes too much to bear.

TRASH IN “It’s just disgusting. I see people pulling up here and dumping trash that don’t even live Complaints per 100 people PROBLEM A PERSONNEL around here,” she said. per neighborhood, 2009-18 Anderson’s neighborhood is among those The city’s trash collection problems extend that generate the most garbage-related far beyond equipment. From 2000-2015, complaints to the city, according to a Postthere were 82 full-time refuse workers. After 50 75 budget 100 cuts, that number has dropped to 67 Dispatch analysis of data from the 25 Citizens’ Service Bureau, the city’s customer service employees, said Rick Frank, the city’s perdepartment. sonnel director.

Parks or More than 23,000, or 19 percent, of com“That’s a 20 percent decrease. We have not neighborhoods plaints about excess trash, with overflowing had a 20 percent decrease in the amount of fewer dumpsters or illegal dumping come from 10 trash pickup,” Frank said. “So you’re seeing than 100 of city’s 79 neighborhoods. In order of most natural implications of a tremendous reducpeople complaints to least, adjusted for population, tion in the number of full-time positions.”

At one point, Frank said he had to authothey are College Hill, Fairground, Hyde Park, Walnut Park East, Academy, Vandeventer, rize emergency work because only 39 emWalnut Park West, Hamilton Heights, Founployees showed up one day. Some were out on worker’s compensation, others on family tain Park and Lewis Place.

All of those neighborhoods are in north medical leave, but bottom line: there weren’t St. Louis, but the data also show a problem enough drivers to cover more than 50 routes, that’s citywide. When the complaint numhe said. bers are not adjusted by population, neigh“The city’s cut too deep, in terms of the borhoods such as Dutchtown, Tower Grove number of positions it’s authorized,” Frank South and Gravois Park fall in the top 10. said. “It’s not just equipment. It’s staffing isThe bureau has taken more than 123,000 sues.” complaints regarding excess trash, overflowThose who have remained are “completely ing dumpsters or illegal dumping from Janudemoralized,” said Eric Wisner, one of the ary 2009 through July this year. city’s refuse collectors.

The trash complaints only show what is As they wait for new trucks, the refuse direported, and may not reflect the full picvision has made three shift changes since the ture of where problems are happening. Some spring, asking trash collectors to start earlier, neighborhoods may have residents who are or work later or come in on weekends. That more vocal about those issues, or have almeans missing time with family, children’s sporting events, and even holidays, refuse dermen who encourage residents to call the bureau more often. workers SOURCES: U.S. Census Bureau, St. told Louisthe Post-Dispatch.

Service Bureau Sometimes, the city has to turn to overBut some of those aldermenCitizens’ have grown frustrated after hearing from NOTES: constituents Population data time. is from Refuse the 2010 workers engage in a daily balwhose complaints have been closed ancingonly actwhat between picking up trash on census.without Complaint data includes has been called in to thescheduled Citizens’ Service any tangible resolution. routes and going back to cover Bureau.

Dotti McDowell, a neighborhood developroutes that have been missed, Wilson said. ment executive who oversees the Citizens’ “It’s a scheduling nightmare,” he said.

Service Bureau and the city’s neighborhood Low salaries can also make it hard to retain stabilization team, said there’s been such an collectors, as Yung testified to city aldermen

this year.

“We want to be treated with civility and respect and paid what we’re worth,” Wisner said. “You can obviously see right now, we’re doing everything we can just to make sure everyone gets a single collection.”

It’s been a struggle to make up for a longterm lack in investment, Wilson said, but the equipment on order will ease some of the burden.

“That’s kind of what helps us sleep at night, honestly,” he said.

LOOKING AHEAD North St. Louis has been fighting the trash battle alone for a decades, Tyus said. As a longtime alderman, she says she is frustrated that serious movement to address the issue only kicked into gear when it extended to other, whiter areas of the city.

“It is amazing to me that this trash problem, which I have complained about since 1993, is now a story because it affects south St. Louis. But has not been a story when it just affected north St. Louis,” she said.

Alderman Brandon Bosley, who represents the 3rd Ward — the ward with the highest number of trash-related complaints to the Citizens’ Service Bureau — says he wants to capitalize on the recent momentum at City Hall by exploring harsher punishments for dumpers. The existing maximum $500 fine clearly isn’t a deterrent, he says, if it costs so much more to dump garbage properly.

Bosley said he hopes to introduce legislation in coming weeks to toughen punishment for dumping in St. Louis by raising fines and increasing the amount of community service hours violators must perform if caught.

The goal is to have to do so much community service, you’ll never want to do this again,” said Bosley, who wants to see offenders cleaning up the city for a minimum of 100 hours.

Cleaning up the community should be a top priority if St. Louis wants to attract new residents and improve the quality of life for those who already call it home, he said.

“I think to a degree, it’s a mental thing.

People throw trash because they see trash,” Bosley said. “These neighborhoods don’t look like a place you’d want to lay your hat.

We can’t have the city look like a dump if we want people to live here.”

Celeste Bott • 314-340-8119 @celestebott on Twitter cbott@post-dispatch.com

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TIPPING POINT

BROKEN BUILDINGS

SENSE OF URGENCY

DECADES OF NEGLECT HAVE LEFT A CRUMBLING LANDSCAPE More neighborhoods may be reaching ‘hypervacancy,’ a point of no return Cash-strapped city seeks assistance as thousands of abandoned properties pile up Leaders look to nonprofits, business community to help tackle the challenge

ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Five vacant homes, reflected in water from a rainstorm last month, line the 3900 block of Labadie Avenue in the Greater Ville neighborhood of north St. Louis. Of the five, four are owned by the Land Reutilization Authority; one is privately owned. Two of the five were slated for demolition after a fire in 2017. The single block contains 14 vacant properties.

HOW WE GOT HERE Population loss outpaces housing decline

Number of vacant buildings doubles

Number of demolitions slides in recent years

Population slid by 57 percent from 1960 to 2010; the number of dwelling units fell 33 percent.

St. Louis’ declining population fuels growth in residential vacancies.

Demolitions hit a high of 963 in 2002 and a low of 260 in 2012.

Dwelling units 800,000 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 0

1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Private

Total vacancies

Population

8,000 7,000 6,000 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 ’90 ’94 ’98 ’02 ’06 ’10

SOURCE: U.S. Census Bureau

Public

1000 800 600 400 200 ’14

’18

SOURCE: Geo St. Louis

0

BY JACOB BARKER, CELESTE BOTT AND JANELLE O’DEA St. Louis percentage of Post-Dispatch housing

High here built before 1940

the 3900 block of Labadie Av-

enue, she sees 58.5% crumbling homes St. Louis all around her.

Cleveland 53.9% To her right are five vacant buildings, inChicago 42% cluding Detroit one frequented 33.9% by drug users and two Kansas Cityby fire. 21.4% gutted To her left, next to an empty Louisville, 19% brick building that’s been lot, isKy. a two-family Indianapolis empty for at17.1% least three years. Across the Memphis, Tenn.facing 7.5%her, are more vacants. street, Nashville, Tenn.

6.6%

’00 ’02 ’04 ’06 ’08 ’10 ’12 ’14 ’16 ’18

SOURCE: City of St. Louis Building Division NOTE: 2018 data through June

‘TIPPING POINT’ IS A SERIES OF SPECIAL REPORTS THAT EXAMINE CRITICAL CHALLENGES FACING ST. LOUIS NEIGHBORHOODS Coming Monday: How St. Louis plans to fix the biggest owner of blighted property: the Land Reutilization Authority

Ten votes that have helped define the views of Sen. Claire McCaskill

W

ST. LOUIS Comparing St. Louis to Cleveland hen Shadiah Thomas steps out and Detroit plus other large metros the front door of her duplex in about 300 miles from St. Louis.

“It’s depressing here,” she says.

Thomas and her family have lived in the Greater neighborhood SOURCE: U.S.Ville Census Bureau’s 2016 Americanof north St. Louis Community Survey since 2015, surrounded by long-abandoned houses that serve as magnets for crime and drug use. Those broken buildings — most owned by the city — represent just a fraction

MORE COVERAGE INSIDE • How many vacant properties does St. Louis really have?

Story, A10 • City has struggled for decades with abandoned housing.

Timeline, A10

See BUILDINGS • Page A8

Empty feeling

TODAY

FLORENCE DEATH TOLL RISES

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BY CHUCK RAASCH St. Louis Post-Dispatch

WASHINGTON • Sen. Claire McCaskill,

D-Mo., has cast scores of consequential votes in almost 12 years in the Senate.

Some have come under strong criticism from Attorney General Josh Hawley, her Republican opponent in the Nov. 6 election.

The 10 votes below are markers in determining the validity of her claims of independence — and of Hawley’s asser-

tions that she is usually a reliable liberal vote.

The topics range from guns to abortion rights to bank regulations. All were cast after Hawley began running for attorney general.

The Post-Dispatch asked Hawley to say how he would have voted on all 10. He declined, although his spokeswoman, Kelli Ford, provided background material or statements Hawley See MCCASKILL • Page A5

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M 1 • SUNDAY • 09.16.2018

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Brick cleaner David Higgins (center) sorts through bricks alongside Albert Toliver (left), 16, and Johnathan Smith in an industrial lot off Goodfellow Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue in July. Through a job-creating initiative of Fred Weber Construction and Better Family Life, workers recover bricks from homes demolished during summer Clean Sweep events, selling them for reuse. As homes were taken down, materials were hauled to this lot, where cleaners sort, pick and clean the bricks. The men were paid $50 per pallet of 520 bricks.

TIPPING POINT

BROKEN BUILDINGS

PROBLEM IS DECADES IN THE MAKING BUILDINGS • FROM A1

of a problem that’s plagued St. Louis for decades but has gotten much worse in recent years.

As is the case in most older, industrial cities in the United States, the number of abandoned properties has festered for decades, a symptom of dramatic postwar population loss, suburbanization, flat regional population growth, older housing stock and a history of racial bias.

In a city of just over 300,000 people now — a big drop from its postwar high of 856,000 — there are about 25,000 abandoned properties, according to a city estimate. More than 7,000 of those are vacant buildings, including about 4,000 that have been condemned. The rest are empty lots.

Those numbers are higher than they were just a couple decades ago despite the slowing pace of the city’s population decline. The median vacancy rate in St. Louis rose from 14.7 percent in 1990 to 18.5 percent in 2010, according to a recent paper on vacancy in Rust Belt cities by Alan Mallach, an urban scholar and senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress.

With a heavy concentration on the city’s predominantly African-American North Side, at least 19 percent of all of St. Louis’ properties are vacant, according to a mayoral report, a little less than half of which are owned by the Land Reutilization Authority, or LRA, the city’s land bank.

Almost every city administration since the Great Depression has vowed to do something about property abandonment and blight — and Mayor Lyda Krewson has been no exception. Elected mayor last year, Krewson pledged to tackle the vacancy issue in her inaugural speech and has rolled out a number of initiatives in recent months.

It’s not easy to tackle a problem that’s been a half-century in the making. Taking down just the existing crop of condemned buildings would cost roughly $40 million, officials say. There are scant resources to keep the number of condemned buildings from growing.

Thomas, 32, knows there will be no easy solutions to a challenge of that scale. But what she wants for her own block is really quite simple: She’d just like her five young children to be able to play outside safely.

“I just want it so where they can come outside and I don’t have to worry about the violence. Gunshots. Kicking syringes in the grass so they don’t see it. Grass growing as tall as us,” Thomas said.

A utility pole covered with vines mirrors two Land Reutilization Authority houses in June in the rear of 2839 and 2841 St. Louis Avenue in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood. The LRA was deeded the properties in 2007 and 2013, respectively.

VACANT BUILDINGS

VACANT BUILDINGS

Numberofofvacant vacantbuildings buildings Number perneighborhood neighborhood 2018 per in in 2018 120 240 360 480 Parks or neighborhoods with fewer than 100 people

SOURCE: Geo St. Louis

TWO CITIES City records show the number of vacant buildings in the Greater Ville, Thomas’ neighborhood, rose by 50 percent, to more than 550, in the past decade. Only the WellsGoodfellow neighborhood has more.

They’re among 10 of the city’s 79 neighborhoods that together account for more than half of the vacant buildings in the city.

All 10 are north of Delmar Boulevard.

In his 15 years on the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, Jeffrey Boyd has watched the vacancy problem balloon in the 22nd Ward, which includes parts of the Hamilton Heights, Wells-Goodfellow and West End neighborhoods. On his own street, half the buildings are vacant or abandoned, he said.

“It’s psychological trauma, OK?” he said.

“We’re frustrated. We’re tired of looking at these buildings on our blocks.”

Inside the vacants, Boyd says, you’ll find drug use and prostitution. Squatters try to keep warm, and sometimes the buildings burn.

Boyd’s constituents are past the point of

Neighborhoods with most vacant buildings 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Wells-Goodfellow Greater Ville Jeff-Vander-Lou O’Fallon Walnut Park East Baden Penrose Hamilton Heights Hyde Park Kingsway East

605 557 459 391 361 330 311 283 276 243

> See an interactive version of this map showing changes year by year since 1990 at STLtoday.com

wanting to try to preserve some of the properties and beg officials to tear them down, he said.

His complaint underscores the desperation in some areas of the city where property values continue to slide and where the housing market has virtually ceased to function. Even for qualified buyers, comparable sales for an appraisal don’t exist, so banks don’t lend.

There are no signs of recovery in the city’s weakest neighborhoods, even while others rebound from the Great Recession.

The percentage of St. Louis’ low-vacancy areas — those below 5 percent — rose from 18 percent in 2010 to 28 percent in 2015, according to Mallach’s research. But areas with very high vacancy — between 15 percent and 25 percent vacant properties — stayed unchanged at 22.6 percent.

Portions of some neighborhoods may have reached a point of no return; others have reached a critical juncture where if nothing is done now, they also will be difficult to save.

Mallach says that while blocks in the Ville and Jeff-Vander-Lou often have more empty lots and abandoned houses than occupied homes, other North Side neighborhoods, including Penrose and O’Fallon, have yet to descend into “hypervacancy” — when the number of vacant buildings and lots exceed 20 percent of an area’s total number of properties, creating a nearly impossible-to-reverse feedback loop.

“It’s really important to try to save those neighborhoods,” Mallach said.

“These are physically intact neighborhoods. Their social fabric is definitely being stretched, but I don’t think it’s gone. If you don’t find a way to stabilize those neighborhoods you could find yourself with a lot more vacant housing three, five, 10 years from now.”

‘EVERYONE IN THE ROOM’ A growing sense of urgency appears to have gripped City Hall, where the Krewson administration is working closely with a coalition of nonprofit and community development groups on the vacancy problem.

Krewson’s office estimates vacant proper-

ties cost the city as much as $66 million last year. Vacant lots need mowing and tree removal. They foster illegal dumping and use up police time because of the crime they attract. Over the last two years, city firefighters have responded to more than 500 fires at vacant properties, Krewson’s office says.

The fiscal impact doesn’t even include the loss of tax revenue — and household wealth — that vacant buildings cause by hurting the values of nearby homes. According to one estimate in 2016, the city loses about $8 million a year in property tax revenue just because of the effect vacant buildings have on nearby properties.

“It’s never been tackled before in a significant way,” Krewson told the Post-Dispatch.

“We’re doing our best to prioritize taking down the worst of the worst. … If we had unlimited funding, this would be a faster process.”

Already, Krewson and the Board of Aldermen managed to find an extra $2 million for demolitions in the recently approved budget, tacking it on to the roughly $1.5 million that has been earmarked for tear-downs in recent years.

“It’s my commitment every year I’m here to send to the Board of Aldermen a budget that includes at least that much,” Krewson said this month.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District is supplementing that with a program to add green space to absorb rainfall as part of its effort to cut sewer overflows. Many recently demolished houses in Walnut Park East were taken down using MSD funds. The sewer district is expected to contribute an additional $2 million or so a year to demolish houses, mainly on the North Side, an effort expected to take down about 300 properties this year.

But even with MSD’s $13.5 million commitment to demolition, St. Louis’ resources pale in comparison to those of other cities facing the same challenge. Detroit has spent nearly $150 million in federal money in recent years for demolition under a program that did not include Missouri. Ohio has received tens See BUILDINGS • Page A9

09.16.2018 • SUNDAY • M 1

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A9

“We may be able to stop the decline.

But we’re not going to be able

to bring back everyone we lost.”

Christopher Prener, a professor of sociology at St. Louis University

Brick cleaner David Higgins sorts through a pile of bricks in an industrial lot off Goodfellow Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue in St. Louis in July. About 4,000 vacant buildings in the city have been condemned.

BUILDINGS • FROM A8

of millions under the same program, and its attorney general set aside $75 million from a $93 million mortgage settlement in 2012.

Two years ago, Maryland’s governor pledged $75 million over several years to demolish vacant buildings in Baltimore.

St. Louis, by contrast, struggles to keep a fleet of garbage trucks rolling. Securing an extra $2 million for demolitions in a city budget that grows tighter each year was a lift.

With little help expected from the state or federal government anytime soon, “we’ve got to play the hand we were dealt here,” Krewson said.

A big boost came just days ago in St. Louis Circuit Court, where the city successfully fought for a small property tax increase meant to raise about $6 million a year to stabilize vacant properties for future rehabs.

The measure, known as Proposition NS, received more than 58 percent of the vote in April 2017 — a large number, but short of the 66 percent required under the city charter. The city argued this tax measure didn’t fall under the charter requirement — and on Thursday, a judge agreed. City leaders also hope to generate interest from philanthropic and business interests to address the issue.

As of June this year, the city has taken down 164 buildings — compared with 88 in the first half of last year. And while the city promises to pick up the pace, Krewson and her staff emphasize the city’s strategy is about more than demolitions.

The St. Louis Development Corp., the city’s economic-development arm, this year contributed $100,000 to help Legal Services of Eastern Missouri hire lawyer Peter Hoffman, who plans to assist agencies and homeowners clear titles to prevent future vacancies.

SLDC also hired a vacancy coordinator, Austin Albert. And Krewson’s administration found money to retain Patrick Brown, its resiliency coordinator, after the expiration of the grant that funded his position.

Albert and Brown are leading a committee called “VacancyStat” that has begun hosting regular gatherings of representatives of key city divisions, the city counselor’s office and the Citizens’ Service Bureau.

“You’re getting everyone in the room,” Albert said. “Can we pool these resources in a way that’s more effective?”

The city’s committee plans to begin meeting with a newly formed coalition of nonprofit, community development and university representatives known as the Vacancy Advisory Committee. Together, the two committees will fall under the umbrella of the Vacancy Collaborative.

The nonprofits, too, have brought on their own coordinator. Through a Missouri Foundation for Health grant and assistance from the Missouri Department of Conservation, Tara Aubuchon was hired this June by the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis, which assists neighborhood development groups and is run out of the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

One of the key recommendations from a 2016 report from the Center for Community Progress on St. Louis’ vacancy problem was to form a collaborative, Aubuchon said.

“My sole focus is vacancy,” she said.

Grass-roots neighborhood groups have been pushing for years to make vacancy a top priority. The St. Louis Association of Community Organizations (SLACO) was one of the chief backers behind Proposition NS. They pushed the administration of former Mayor Francis Slay to elevate the issue, building some momentum before the Krewson administration’s initiatives.

“The whole complexion of the North Side can change within 10 years if we get starting now,” said SLACO Executive Director Kevin McKinney. “What I don’t want to see is us continually giving people reports. ‘Here’s another report, here’s another study.’”

QUALITY OF LIFE

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

An excavator demolishes 1701 Marcus Avenue, seen from the stairwell of its neighbor at 1707 Marcus. Both LRA properties were demolished July 28 in the Kingsway East neighborhood as part of the Clean Sweep initiative. The houses, built in 1889, had been LRA property since 2003.

Keith Howard, a St. Louis forestry worker, cuts the growth enveloping 4817 Cote Brilliante Avenue in the Kingsway East neighborhood on July 28. The LRA home was deeded to the city in 2013 and was demolished in late August.

After decades of neglect, it’s difficult to predict how the city’s efforts will turn out.

Throughout much of the Rust Belt, older cities responded to property abandonment by trying to attract new development — often with big subsidies — in the hope that people would move back. But they’ve struggled to compete with the magnet cities along the East and West coasts and in the Sunbelt.

That suggests that a strategy here that banks on growth — repopulating areas that have been hollowed out — may not succeed.

While some St. Louis neighborhoods can be saved, others have deteriorated to the point where once-populated blocks have turned into “urban prairies” — areas more hospitable to wildlife and plants than people.

Christopher Prener, a professor of sociology at St. Louis University, says cities like St. Louis need to be “honest with ourselves” and focus on serving the people who remain.

“We may be able to stop the decline,” he said. “But we’re not going to be able to bring back everyone we lost.”

Demolishing problem properties and maintaining vacant lots — perhaps adding attractive green space for the residents still living there — needs to be done, Mallach, the vacancy researcher, said.

“That doesn’t mean the neighborhood is wonderful. It means it’s reasonably healthy, it’s reasonably safe and it’s reasonably clean.

How you deal with vacant properties affects all three of those criteria,” he said. “These aren’t steps that are necessarily going to lead to redevelopment. I don’t think people should have any illusions.

“These are steps to make sure people who live in those neighborhoods can have a decent quality of life.”

That’d be a start for Shadiah Thomas, who says living among so many vacant properties means never being able to relax — always worrying about shootings on the corner and sketchy people who move between her duplex and the nearby empty buildings.

“Every night, you hear sirens. You can lay in your bed and see red and white lights. You hear the ambulances all day, every day,” she said.

“It shouldn’t be like that.”

Jacob Barker • 314-340-8291 > jbarker@post-dispatch.com Celeste Bott • 314-340-8119 > cbott@post-dispatch.com Janelle O’Dea • 314-340-8349 > jodea@post-dispatch.com

S E RV I N G T H E P U B L I C S I N C E 1 878 • W I N N E R O F 1 8 P U L I TZ E R P R I Z E S

MONDAY • 09.17.2018 • $2.00

TIPPING POINT

BROKEN BUILDINGS

12,000 PROPERTIES NOBODY WANTS LRA OWNS HALF OF CITY’S VACANT LOTS, BUILDINGS Land Reutilization Authority can’t afford maintenance, demolition Reducing its inventory is going to take changes in law, more staff Some aldermen see $1 home purchase program as solution

KAVANAUGH CONFIRMATION

Professor details her allegation of assault VOTE IN JEOPARDY? Democrats call for delay; 2 GOP senators want to hear from accuser before vote ‘I DID NOT DO THIS’ Kavanaugh repeats earlier denial of woman’s accusation of misconduct

BY DARLENE SUPERVILLE AND LISA MASCARO Associated Press

WASHINGTON • President

Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was thrust into turmoil Sunday after the woman accusing him of high school-era sexual misconduct told her story publicly for the first time. Democrats immediately called for a delay in a key committee vote set for this week. They were joined by two Republicans, including one who said he’s “not comfortable” voting on the nomination without first hearing from the accuser.

The woman, Christine

See KAVANAUGH • Page A4

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Paige Wings, 3, pushes her brother Daylin Young, 4, past a vacant home as their grandmother Jennifer Walter keeps watch in the 5000 block of Alcott Avenue in Walnut Park East on Tuesday. Some of the vacant homes surrounding Walbridge Elementary School are being torn down.

LRA demolitions since 1999 300

I

250 200 150 100 50 0

BY CELESTE BOTT AND JACOB BARKER St. Louis Post-Dispatch

’00 ’02 ’04 ’06 ’08 ’10 ’12 ’14 ’16 ’18

SOURCE: Building Division (data through June 2018)

“TIPPING POINT” IS A SERIES OF SPECIAL REPORTS THAT EXAMINE CRITICAL CHALLENGES FACING ST. LOUIS Miss Sunday’s story on the city’s vacant building problem?

Read it at STLtoday.com.

ST. LOUIS

n January, someone hid behind the empty house next to Jennifer Walter’s home in the Walnut Park East neighborhood and shot her husband.

A case of mistaken identity, she believes. Her husband survived, but the shooter was never found.

“They’re running from the police, running through these vacant houses,” Walter said, gesturing to the empty buildings that dot her street.

The dilapidated building where the shooter hid had been owned since 2012 by the Land Reutilization Authority, the city’s land bank.

As the owner of almost half of St. Louis’ 25,000 vacant lots and buildings, LRA has long been in the crosshairs of city residents unhappy with the way the agency maintains its vast property holdings.

That’s not news to Laura Costello, LRA’s director of real estate. “I get beat up at every neighborhood meeting I go to,” she says.

LRA became the city’s biggest owner of abandoned property because of forces unleashed in the 1960s, as people and businesses left for the suburbs — and unpaid realestate taxes piled up in the city. State law at the time required the city to file suit against each individual parcel of

BY BLYTHE BERNHARD St. Louis Post-Dispatch

This two-story home at 2150 E. College Avenue in the College Hill neighborhood is the longestowned LRA property, acquired on Dec. 19, 1986. It was built in 1884. This photograph was taken in July.

See LRA • Page A8

Death toll at 17 as ‘angry waters’ of Florence continue steady rise

BY CHUCK BURTON Associated Press

WILMINGTON, N.C. • Catastrophic

flooding from Florence spread across the Carolinas on Sunday, with roads to Wilmington cut off by the epic deluge and muddy river water swamping entire neighborhoods miles inland. “The risk to life is rising with the angry waters,” Gov. Roy Cooper declared as the storm’s death toll climbed to 17.

The storm continued to crawl west-

ward, dumping more than 30 inches of rain in spots since Friday, and fears of historic flooding grew. Tens of thousands were ordered evacuated from communities along the state’s steadily rising rivers — with the Cape Fear, Little River, Lumber, Waccamaw and Pee Dee rivers all projected to burst their banks.

In Wilmington, with roads leading in and out of the city underwater and streams still swelling upward, residents See FLORENCE • Page A5

Doctors hope for mild flu season after 2 brutal winters After one of the worst flu seasons since records began being kept, scientists say it’s hard to predict what will happen this winter.

“Here we go again,” said Dr. Sharon Frey of St. Louis University’s Center for Vaccine Development. “It’s a fascinating disease, really.”

The 2017-2018 flu season saw about 134,000 illnesses and 279 deaths in Missouri alone, according to the state health department. That was about twice as many cases of flu from the season before, when 71,469 illnesses hit a 10-year high. In an average year, there are closer to 20,000 recorded cases of flu See FLU • Page A6

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TODAY

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• A2

• B1

Pollster sees grim outlook for GOP

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Vol. 140, No. 260 ©2018

A8 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

M 1 • Monday • 09.17.2018

St. Louis firefighters work a vacant home fire in the 2400 block of Bacon Street in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood in April. The remains of at least seven burned vacant homes sat in one block of Bacon near North Market before most were demolished in late May. Many were owned by Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration.

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A9

Construction volunteers from McCarthy Building and Castle Contracting recover loose bricks as a multifamily home at 3860 Maffitt Avenue is demolished in June. This was one of five vacant houses removed during a Clean Sweep event. Area contractors, partnering with the Regional Business Council and Better Family Life, joined volunteers in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood for the house demolition and neighborhood cleanup effort.

Elle Spence plays recently under her grandmother Jennifer Walter’s watch outside her home in the 5000 block of Alcott Avenue in Walnut Park East. Elle’s grandfather and Walter’s husband Neil Woolfork was shot earlier this year by someone hiding behind the vacant LRA-owned house next door, but survived. Workers spread straw on the property, which was recently demolished.

TIPPING POINT BROKEN BUILDINGS

‘LARGEST SLUM LANDLORD’ IS THE CITY LRA • FROM A1

tax-delinquent land in order to attempt to collect revenue — an unfeasible task.

City Hall at the time decided St. Louis needed a state law that would allow it to hold, maintain and eventually sell vacant property with a clear title for redevelopment, in hopes of revitalizing decaying neighborhoods. In 1971, the LRA — the nation’s first city-run land bank — was born.

Once LRA began taking properties that didn’t sell at St. Louis sheriff’s office tax sales, its inventory quickly swelled, and it ended up with thousands of broken buildings and empty lots. In 1991, just 20 years after LRA was created, then-Building Commissioner Martin Walsh told the Post-Dispatch that “the largest slum landlord in the city is the city.”

That’s still true, 27 years later.

The LRA sells somewhere between 500 and 550 properties a year, but it can’t seem to make a significant dent in the amount of land under its control.

Some on the Board of Aldermen have called on the land bank to be more aggressive in reducing its inventory.

The small staff tasked with managing and marketing about 12,000 parcels say they’re open to new ideas to get more of those properties back on the tax rolls or into the hands of nonprofit groups that can maintain them.

But that’s hard to do without resources.

LRA is funded primarily through its own sales and federal pass-through grants, not the city’s general revenue fund. It operates at a near constant deficit, writing IOUs to the city’s economic-development arm, the St. Louis Development Corp., for the difference.

“We don’t make enough money every year to take care of these properties,” Costello said. “We could use a lot more help. We could use a lot more demolition money and more maintenance people.”

‘WE ARE COMING’ The slow pace of demolition has been a major reason why the number of vacant buildings in the city has risen dramatically. It’s up 40 percent since 2009, topping 7,000 buildings, including about 4,000 that have been condemned as unsafe. While LRA once spent roughly $3 million a year on demolitions, the money has been systematically cut over time.

“Being mad at LRA is like being mad at someone because they’re poor,” Mayor Lyda Krewson told the Post-Dispatch this summer.

At least in the short term, that’s improving. With vacancy a top priority for Krewson, she pushed for roughly $3.6 million in the fiscal 2019 budget to tear down some of the city’s most dangerous properties, and she says she’s committed to pushing for at least as much every year she’s in office.

As a north St. Louis neighborhood meeting last month veered into complaints about vacant property, Costello’s boss, SLDC Director Otis Williams, touted the new demolition money and a commitment from the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District to supplement it with another $2 million to create stormwater-absorbing green space. The pace of demolition will pick up, he told the residents.

“While we may not get there next week, we are coming,” he said.

An elderly woman sat on her Davison Street porch this month, watching as a backhoe ripped into the LRA-owned house next door. Some of that MSD money had reached Walnut Park East.

People — drug users, she said — came in and out of the house, and she wanted it gone.

“I’ve been asking for five years,” she said, de-

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Portraits of local African-American leaders created by artist Chris Green cover boarded LRA properties in the 4800 block of Page Boulevard in June. Better Family Life commissioned the artwork in an effort to beautify the Fountain Park neighborhood. Of these four vacant homes, one is privately owned.

clining to give her name.

A block away, construction crews were scattering straw on the newly created empty lot next to Walter’s house, the one that once held the building where her husband’s shooter took cover.

“We need to get rid of some more of these things,” she said.

‘NO ONE WANTS IT’ The best way to keep properties from getting to the point that they pose a danger to neighbors may be to keep them out of the hands of the LRA. A new push to reach out to residents and neighborhood organizations may be paying off at the tax sales that offer a last chance for someone to buy a property before it heads to the LRA. The agency is sending representatives to more meetings, educating the public on how to acquire vacant property. It’s only taken in 187 properties this year after three of five annual tax sales.

Given that the land bank typically rakes in 500-600 unwanted properties every year, this year’s lower total shows the public is becoming aware that they can buy these properties at those sales, Costello said. That means fewer parcels make it into the city’s

‘Not a phone call, not an offer, anything.

No one wants it.’

Laura Costello, LRA’s director of real estate on the difficulty of selling parcels

inventory.

Selling parcels the city already owns — some of which have sat dormant for decades — is trickier. The reality is that no one has expressed interest in more than 40 percent of the city-owned lots or buildings, Costello said.

“Not a phone call, not an offer, anything.

No one wants it,” she said.

That hasn’t stopped aldermen, though, nor candidates for citywide office from pushing the LRA to more aggressively reduce its holdings.

The Board of Aldermen this month passed a resolution directing the St. Louis Development Corp. to develop a $1 home purchase program, an idea loosely modeled on a similar initiative in Kansas City.

Sponsoring Alderman John Collins-Muhammad estimates that 80 percent of his job is responding to constituents on issues that stem from vacant buildings or lots in the 21st Ward: tall grass, illegal dumping and people illegally moving into abandoned property.

Selling homes for $1 would encourage more people to move to north St. Louis, and the city would save money with fewer properties to maintain, he argues.

The idea of selling vacant homes for $1 isn’t new. In 1976, then-28th Ward Alder-

man Vincent C. Schoemehl Jr., who would go on to be mayor of St. Louis, introduced his own resolution to do just that.

The roadblock then and now is that the LRA is governed by state statute, and a provision in that law states the land bank cannot sell its properties at less than two-thirds of the estimated value without written permission from two of the three offices that appoint LRA board members: the mayor, the comptroller and the School Board. Sometimes, the land bank will sell for less if a property has been in the inventory for a very long time, but it’s difficult to get signatures from the appointing authorities, Costello said.

Some aldermen also fear such a program would yield more residents buying up homes at a rock-bottom rate but finding themselves ill-equipped for the renovations, or unable to secure financing at the bank.

“A lot of times those properties have sat for so long, and what it’s going to cost to fix, they’ll have to go to a lender to get it repaired,” said 27th Ward Alderman Pam Boyd.

If people snatch up $1 homes but later can’t get a loan, the city will just have to take over the property again, she said.

For an agency reliant on sales income, $1 buildings won’t pay the bills. It can cost hun-

dreds of dollars just to get a property into LRA’s inventory, before factoring in annual maintenance and insurance. In the alternative, demolishing a building costs the agency about $12,000. Without any return on that investment, Costello said, the LRA may be rendered unable to operate or perform basic maintenance on its inventory, such as grass cutting and boarding up empty homes.

ADDING STAFF In 2017, LRA sold 551 parcels for a total of $1.2 million. Not every offer was accepted. Some offers are rejected because the LRA is holding onto property for future development, but more often, Costello says, it’s because a prospective buyer has problems with other properties, or because they have almost no money.

Those interested in acquiring LRA property are expected to show they have some seed money to get started. No one is expected to have the full amount needed to fix up the property in order to buy it. If they imposed that requirement, “we would never sell one property,” Costello said.

If owners haven’t paid taxes for three years, and if a property isn’t sold at public tax sales, the LRA takes control.

Land banks in other cities can pick and

choose which properties they take into their inventory, and may only select ones they know they can rehab or sell. The municipalities themselves are responsible for the properties no one wants.

But LRA was formed to relieve St. Louis of that burden, Costello said. They don’t have the option to be selective. They take what no one else wants. The best property is bought by investors at the tax foreclosure sale. The LRA takes the rest.

That makes the LRA’s job of returning abandoned land to productive ownership all the more challenging. Yet it is underresourced compared to similar agencies.

In 2017, the Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a study of the LRA by the firm Asakura Robinson, which found an extremely large land-banked inventory for a city of roughly 300,000 people. While LRA has about 12,000 properties, Pittsburgh and New Orleans, two cities of comparable size, have about 7,000 and 2,000 publicly owned vacant properties, respectively. And with just 10 administrative staffers to handle all those properties, LRA had fewer people and a smaller budget than comparable land banks.

The study recommended doubling the number of LRA employees, performing a com-

prehensive analysis of its inventory and adopting a better system for categorizing properties.

The city should also lobby the state for reforms to reduce waiting periods before taxdelinquent vacant properties can be taken and sold by streamlining the process, according to the report. It also needs to clarify how it takes title to property, because concerns over clear title and proper notice to former owners can make title insurers, and thus lenders, hesitant to deal with LRA properties.

As for adding staff, LRA has made two administrative hires. Costello isn’t sure more are needed — her staff is able to process the roughly 75 offers that come in a month. More staff to market properties could help boost demand, she said. But what would be more helpful is 10 more maintenance workers to help with the upkeep of publicly-owned property, she said.

“I think there’s a hundred things that lead to the property being foreclosed on. I don’t think LRA is the problem, it’s the solution,” Costello said. “I really think unless there’s a lot of fixes everywhere, there’s not going to be a fix for the LRA inventory. We’re not ever going to be at zero.”

Janelle O’Dea of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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UP TO

$147

OF COUPO NS INSIDE

SUNDAY • 09.23.2018 • $4.00 • FINAL EDITION

TIPPING POINT

Deadly crash spurs call for review

BROKEN BUILDINGS

‘We don’t have to be this boarded-up city’ CLEANUPS STIR HOPE IN FORGOTTEN NEIGHBORHOODS

St. Louis County police say that commissioners already provide civilian oversight

Community, contractors team up to cut trees, board buildings Residents laud ‘Clean Sweep’ program but say more is needed

BY JEREMY KOHLER AND CHRISTINE BYERS St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS COUNTY • St.

Louis County police said they weren’t chasing the car that fled a vehicle stop and crashed on Aug. 10, killing two men.

Days later, video footage from a nearby business showed a county police car chasing the car with lights and sirens on.

County police policy does not allow pursuits unless a felony offense has taken place.

Police Chief Jon Belmar then announced he would begin an internal affairs investigation into the moments leading up to the crash, but it won’t start until the Missouri Highway Patrol completes its accident investigation.

In the six weeks that have passed, activists and family members of the dead men have appeared at County Council meetings to demand outside review of the crash

See REVIEW • Page A9 PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Mercedes Reeves, 5, plays this month in a vacant lot beside her grandparents’ home in the 4100 block of Maffitt Avenue in the Ville neighborhood. Antonio Moore made the playground for his grandchildren after the vacant house next door was demolished in 2016. Three more vacant homes sit nearby. “It’s exhausting to look at,” Sheree Moore said. “It’s embarrassing.”

Kavanaugh, Ford may testify on Thursday

BY DOUG MOORE • St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS

T

alk about moving is common in this part of town, broadly called the north side. For Sylvester Clark, who has lived in his Hamilton Heights home since the mid-1960s, the idea of getting out has ebbed and flowed for at least two decades.

It was a discussion he and his wife had again last month when a 23-year-old man was found dead in an abandoned building behind their house, a burned-out shell used by those seeking shelter and an out-of-sight place to do drugs.

The death was sad, but not surprising, Clark said. Another chapter in the very long story of neglect. A city filled with thousands of vacant buildings, an erosion in the quality of life that attracts those up to no good.

Eight years ago — at 2:19 p.m. March 29, 2010, to be exact, Clark said — his wife, Elizabeth, was standing at the kitchen sink peeling white potatoes. He was sitting at a table nearby. The couple See HOPE • Page A4

BY LISA MASCARO, MARY CLARE JALONICK AND JONATHAN LEMIRE Associated Press

WASHINGTON • A tentative agreement was reached Saturday for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear testimony Thursday from Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault from decades ago, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Lawyers for Ford and bipartisan representatives of the committee came to the temporary agreement after a short phone call, said one of the people, who was not

Sylvester Clark uses a weed trimmer Wednesday on one of four vacant lots owned by the city across from his home in the 5900 block of Minerva Avenue in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood. Clark said the city last cut grass on the lots about two months ago and that he and his neighbors have been taking care of it since then.

FINDING SOLUTIONS FOR THE BROKEN MORTGAGE MARKET IN NORTH ST. LOUIS The lack of private lending north of Delmar Boulevard is a major obstacle to the city’s vacancy-fighting efforts. Story in Business • C1

See KAVANAUGH • Page 9

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TIPPING POINT

BROKEN BUILDINGS

‘There is a sense of pride that wasn’t there before’ HOPE • FROM A1

heard gunshots, which they later learned came from the house next to the one where the young man’s body would be found.

As Clark stood up, he felt pain in his right leg. A bullet from the shootout had made its way across the alley and through the back door of his house.

“Luckily,” he said, “I was retired, so it didn’t put me out of work.”

Now 82, Clark can rightly say he has seen it all, or darn near. And over the last two decades, it has not been pretty.

Longtime neighbors die, leaving behind a house their children don’t want and don’t care for. It falls into disrepair, like the one where the errant bullet came from. That crumbling house, a fallen tree on the roof, is one of at least 7,000 vacant structures in the city — an overwhelming number of them on the north side and most of them abandoned and condemned.

Efforts to clean up neighborhoods such as Hamilton Heights come and go, but mainly stay away with city resources spread thin.

So when two long-vacant storefronts were taken down at the corner of Minerva and Hodiamont avenues in May, a few doors down from Clark, neighbors took notice.

Hope sprouted. Someone cared.

The demolitions were part of Clean Sweep 2018, a program initiated by Better Family Life, a nonprofit in Clark’s neighborhood, housed in the former Ralph Waldo Emerson Elementary School.

The program was born in late 2016 during a neighborhood meeting in Hamilton Heights. Residents said they were fed up with the condition of vacant lots and buildings. A St. Charles County church stepped up to help, arriving with tractors and saws.

Trees came down, weeds were cut and discarded tires and other debris hauled away.

It officially became known as Clean Sweep in April 2017, as residents and community groups teamed up with city departments to cut down trees and board up buildings in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood. As another effort was being organized for the following month, serendipity struck, said James Clark, vice president of Better Family Life. no 2018 relation to Sylvester Clark, was CLEANClark, SWEEP CLEAN SWEEP 2018 invited to speak a meeting of the Regional Participating neighborhoodsatfrom Business Council about his organization’s Participating neighborhoods from May-August efforts to reduce gun violence in the city. AfMay-August ter his remarks, Kathy Osborn, head of the ST. LOUIS COUNTY council, said: “Tell us about Clean Sweep.”

ST. LOUIS COUNTY 70 After he sat down, Clark was passed a 70 note. 5 5 I’m Doug Weible, from Fred We“James, ber. We’d like to help. Give me a call.”

Weible 3 is chairman and chief executive of the Maryland Heights-based construc3 1 tion company.

Clark wasted no time, calling 4 1 Weible4 on his way back to the office.

2 “It was a Thursday.

The next Clean Sweep 2 ST. LOUIS was Saturday in Walnut Park. Doug showed ST. LOUIS 64 up with about 50 men and at least 20 64 trucks, ” Clark said. “His men went to work MAY MAY Heights like locusts. ” 1. Hamilton 1. commercial Hamilton WeibleHeights said he was struck by Clark’s comTwo buildings Two commercial buildings mitment and passion.

“AJUNE lot of people in this town are having JUNE 2. Jeff-Vander-Lou a lot of meetings talking about all the great 2.

Jeff-Vander-Lou Four multifamily buildings things they are going to do in north city,” Four multifamily buildings JULYsaid. “While they are having meetWeible JULY 3. Penrose ings, James Clark and Better Family Life are 3.

Penrose One family outsingle in the streets of north city, so I’ve got a One single family 4.

Kingsway East lot of time for the guy.”

4. Kingsway East Three single family; two-family Weibletwo said his company’s dedication to Three single family; two two-family Clean Sweep grew after hearing from his AUGUST AUGUST employees Monday morning after crews 5. Walnut Parkthe West 5.

Walnut Park West knocked down buildings, Nine single family; one two-family cut down trees and Nine singlecleaned family; up onevacant two-family lots that Saturday in May 2017.

“Every one of my guys said: ‘When can we go back and do it again?’” Weible said.

Weible and Clark kept in touch, having lunch occasionally and talking about ways to make Clean Sweep bigger. The result was a cleanup one Saturday a month over the last four months, focusing on a different neighborhood each time. Ten construction companies contributed to the efforts with more than 300 workers joining 1,500 volunteers PROOFING LOOP and residents.

PROOFING LOOP PLEASE RETURN TO GRAPHICS DESK! “TheTOmagnitude of the despair is bigger PLEASE RETURN GRAPHICS DESK! Josh ARTIST: thanJosh anyone will realize,” Weible said. “NoARTIST: MAC SLUG: body who lives west of (Interstate) 270 unMAC SLUG: derstands the scope of the problem in north 180923hope STORY SLUG: 180923hope STORY SLUG: city. ” TODAY’S DATE: 9/20 And the only way to make it better is a 9/20 TODAY’S DATE: 1 x 5” commitment to doing so, he said.

SIZE: sustained 1 x 5” SIZE: GRID: “It6-column is never ever going to get better until GRID: 6-column you start. has to start doing someINITIAL AFTERSomeone PROOFING thing. ” INITIAL AFTER PROOFING Reporter/Editor: Reporter/Editor: CHANGING THE PSYCHE Copy desk: buoyed by Weible’s commitment, CopyOsborn, desk: tapped contractors to get involved. It plays News editor: News editor: into the Regional Business Council’s com-

helpB&W the city tackle its high vioCHOOSE mitment COLOR to OR CHOOSE lent COLOR OR she B&W crime rate, said.

“It is clear that law enforcement has a role, but a prevention role is something we can all participate in,” Osborn said. After talking with St. Louis Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards and Police Chief John Hayden, it became clear those with resources have to invest in the areas of town where disinvestment has been the norm for decades, she said.

Tony Thompson, head of Kwame Building Group, took on the role of operations manager, communicating with city departments and contractors to make sure the weekend cleanup efforts ran smoothly.

Overall, Clean Sweep is a good program, Thompson said. But it did shine a light on how those who are poor and black are treated in the city, he said. For example, the

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

John Strubberg paints the side of a home in the Old North neighborhood last month after tuckpointing in the 1400 block of Chambers Street. Behind him is a vacant house, deeded to the city in 2001.

Doug Weible

James Clark

CLEAN SWEEP 2018 CLEAN SWEEP 2018

Participating neighborhoods CLEAN SWEEP 2018 Participating neighborhoods from May-August Participating neighborhoods from May-August from May-August ST. LOUIS COUNTY ST. LOUIS COUNTY 70 70

1 1

5 5 3 3 4 4

ST. LOUIS 64 ST. LOUIS

2 2

64

MAY

MAY Heights 1. Hamilton 1.

Hamilton Two commercialHeights buildings Two commercial buildings JUNE

JUNE 2. Jeff-Vander-Lou 2.

Jeff-Vander-Lou Four multifamily buildings Four multifamily buildings JULY

JULY 3. Penrose Penrose One3.single family One single family 4.

Kingsway East 4. Kingsway East Three single family; Three family; two single two-family two two-family AUGUST

AUGUST 5. Walnut Park West 5.Nine Walnut Park West single family; Nine single family; one two-family one two-family

older woman in Hamilton Heights who had a tree fall on her roof and tried for five years to get help from the city.

“Think about that for a minute. There is no way a tree would fall on a house in the Central West End or midtown, or any other community and stay there for five years,” he said.

Construction crews, coming in to clear trees and brush, haul away discarded refrigerators and tires and take down vacant properties. It changes the psyche of the residents.

“There’s a sense of pride that comes over people and it changes the way they think — and how others think — of the neighborhood,” Thompson said.

Scott Wilson, chief executive of S.M. Wilson construction company, said there was no hesitation to get involved. But he wonders if it’s too late.

“Is it at the tipping point where people don’t give a (expletive) anymore?” Wilson said. The neighborhoods that are in dire shape will continue to struggle when residents don’t have the finances to make improvements on their homes and more and more properties become rentals.

“On a lot of these streets, plenty of homes have been taken down,” Wilson said. “What my big concern would be is how do you get these neighborhoods back again? Or do you?”

Ultimately, he thinks so, if there is more buy-in. Not just from other contractors but other companies that can rally a team of employees to chip in. It will take more than four clean-up efforts a year.

Pat Burt, a resident of Hamilton Heights for more than 50 years, said the Clean Sweep efforts came after many of her neighbors moved away. But the work is paying off for those who stayed.

“Initially, there was a gloom that kind of took over us,” said Burt, a retired administrative assistant with St. Louis Public Schools who volunteered at the Clean Sweeps.

“I just want to be part of the solution,” Burt said. “We don’t have to be this boarded-up city.”

BUILDING ON SUCCESS

BY THE NUMBERS

25,000 People living in the Clean Sweep 2018 footprint

75

Blocks improved through demolition, litter pickup, weed cutting and tree removal

20

Tons of garbage and other debris removed

1,500 Volunteers

300

Construction workers from 10 companies

$1 million

Value of labor from construction crews Note: These numbers reflect the results of four Clean Sweep events in north St. Louis so far this year. A fifth has been scheduled for Oct. 27.

To volunteer, go to betterfamilylife.org/clean-sweep.html.

James Clark, 51, started work at Better Family Life when he was 22, after a three-year stint in the Army. When joined the military, violence and drug dealing were taking over neighborhoods, including Jeff-Vander-Lou, where he grew up. Had he not left, Clark insists he would have either ended up dead or in jail. His friends were using and selling crack cocaine.

He saw how the racial divide was widening. How neighborhoods south of Delmar Boulevard were rebounding while those north continued to slide. He wanted to help remake a part of town that created idyllic childhood memories for him. Working for a social service agency that offers afterschool programs, workforce development and mental health counseling seemed the right fit.

Cleaning up neighborhoods has been a cornerstone of the agency’s efforts since its founding in 1983. One of its most noticeable efforts is the painting of murals on vacant homes along Page Boulevard. The artwork features prominent African-Americans with St. Louis ties. Bringing the Regional Business Council and construction companies on board for neighborhood cleanups earlier this year broadened efforts to shine a light on the vacancy problem. It brought people into parts of St. Louis they would not have set foot in otherwise.

“We were seeing white people come out in large numbers,” Clark said.

“We saw the racial divide being chipped away at with an African-American 17-yearold male passing a 70-year-old white woman a bottle of cold water. You begin to see these episodes play out and you know this is only budding. It’s not even hit full stride.”

‘IT TAKES EVERYONE’ Sheree Moore has seen news accounts of the Clean Sweep program and is heartened by the work. But so far, the efforts have been in neighborhoods around her home and not in the Ville, where she and her husband, Antonio, have lived for 22 years.

The living room of their house on Maffitt Avenue has been turned into an indoor playground for their two granddaughters.

Toys fill the dimly lit room, which includes several pictures of the girls, ages 5 and 4.

The television above the fireplace is off.

Instead, Sheree Moore keeps an eye on a screen hanging in the corner, displaying images captured by the four security cameras outside.

One is trained on a playground her husband built for the girls in a vacant lot that he maintains next to their home. He has placed orange construction fencing between his house and the vacant one next door to discourage using the lot as a cut through.

Sheree Moore, 51, grew up in the neighborhood. It has been hard to see its decline, accelerated by the closing of two schools, Simmons Elementary in 2009 and Turner Middle the following year. The corner stores, once supported by families who went to the schools, are gone too.

“It’s a different generation now,” she said.

It is tenants renting from apathetic landlords.

“They don’t care who is moving in. They just want the money. Slumlords.”

The Moores talk about moving, but the occasional glimmer of a brighter future keeps them from fleeing. She points south to a large mixed-income housing development on North Sarah Street. Investment inching closer to her neighborhood.

“We keep thinking it’s coming, right around the corner. But it’s taking so long,” she said. “Still, I’m hopeful.”

Hopeful that she and other homeowners can hang on a little longer. Their house needs work; most pressing, a new roof. But money is tight. Sheree Moore works the occasional office job through a temp agency but spends most of her time caring for her grandchildren. Antonio Moore has a job in building maintenance and does house painting on the side.

The vacant houses that dot the block would be good candidates for the Clean Sweep program, she said.

Organizers agree. After the success of the four Clean Sweeps this year, contractors and Better Family Life decided to add a fifth. It will be Oct. 27 in The Ville. Sumner High School alumni and church groups are being tapped to participate. But first, a cleanup effort in East St. Louis on Sept. 29.

For Sylvester Clark, who lives four miles to the west, his Hamilton Heights neighborhood will not come back. Not to how it once was. Too much of it is gone. Houses have fallen down, burned down, or been taken down. And more need to go, including the two directly behind him.

This house in the 5900 block of Minerva Avenue is where he raised his seven children, made a decent living as a mechanic and outlived his first wife. In the vacant lot beside his house, he tends to a garden. The back deck is nice, but keeping a grill, furniture or anything of value there is futile.

Thieves jump the fence. Rats also are a problem, making their way through the backyard from vacant lots and homes.

“I’ve had to shoo them off the windowsills,” he said.

Clark and a few other men on the street pick up litter and mow vacant lots.

But he’s getting old. And younger homeowners aren’t moving in. He will keep going as long as he can.

“I’ll stay until the Good Lord calls me,” Clark said. “We still have a few good people here. But to keep the neighborhood up, it takes everyone pitching in.”

Doug Moore • 314-340-8125 @dougwmoore on Twitter dmoore@post-dispatch.com

S E RV I N G T H E P U B L I C S I N C E 1 878 • W I N N E R O F 1 8 P U L I TZ E R P R I Z E S

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SUNDAY • 12.02.2018 • $4.00 • FINAL EDITION

TIPPING POINT

IN THE SHADOWS

BROKEN HOMES, BROKEN LIVES

Bush left lasting mark on America

ABANDONED BUILDINGS ARE LAST REFUGE FOR MANY Folks living outside the system find shelter where they can Some seek solitude, escape among crumbling bricks

President George Bush died Friday.

BY MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press

HOUSTON • He was the man

who sought a “kinder, and gentler nation,” and the one who sternly invited Americans to read his lips — he would not raise taxes. He was the popular leader of a mighty coalition that dislodged Iraq from Kuwait, and was turned out of the presidency after a single term. Blue-blooded and genteel, he was elected in one of the nastiest campaigns in recent history.

George Herbert Walker Bush was many things, including only the second American to see his son follow him into the nation’s highest office. But more than anything else, he was a believer in government service. Few men

See BUSH • Page A7

MetroLink ridership mirrors U.S. slide

BY LEAH THORSEN St. Louis Post-Dispatch

It bothered her that few passengers were ever checked for valid fares. And she hated the stench of urine at the Eighth and Pine station.

Those annoyances, though, weren’t enough to keep Karen Bretz from using MetroLink for her daily commute between Clayton and downtown St. Louis.

She liked the convenience, low fares and ability to use her phone and check email on the train.

But Bretz quit riding after Craig LeFebvre, a St. Louis County Health Department employee, was killed by a stray bullet Aug. 21 near the MetroLink station on South Grand Boulevard.

See METRO • Page A8

Falling down

TODAY

47°/36° CLOUDY, COOLER

TOMORROW

39°/29° RAIN OR SNOW

WEATHER D11 POST-DISPATCH WEATHERBIRD ®

ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

As the morning temperature begins to rise in late October, Jimmy Johnson sweeps dust and burning embers from a fire out of his living room in a crumbling row home in north St. Louis along Interstate 70. The structure is owned by the city’s land bank. Johnson, 58, lives in the living room and sleeps in an adjoining closet. He says he is happy to have some place to dwell to keep the cold away.

BY JESSE BOGAN St. Louis Post-Dispatch

ST. LOUIS • There are so many abandoned

houses to pick from and as many reasons why people occupy them. Jimmy Johnson said his was strategically situated between the north riverfront salvage yards and a large apartment complex that throws out

a lot of junk.

Johnson earned $15 on a recent day from cutting the metal out of a shaggy recliner and other finds. He spent $2.50 of that on a pair of cold and flu tablets at the convenience store. The money could have bought more beer, but he wasn’t feeling well, and the temperature was dropping fast.

“I really need to see a doctor or some-

10 new kids’ books to savor this season • B1 Nicklaus: GM bet on sedans — and lost • C1

thing to get back on track,” Johnson, 58, said from a home that looked like a forgotten shipwreck.

Attempts to secure the two-family brick row house, built in 1892, couldn’t keep up with decay. The living room was open-air because the brick wall caved in. The floors See SHADOWS • Page A16

2 M Vol. 140, No. 336 ©2018

THE FABULOUS FOX • DECEMBER 11-16 • 314-534-1111 • METROTIX.COM

A16 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

M 1 • Sunday • 12.02.2018

TIPPING POINT

IN THE SHADOWS

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

The first light of a late November day awakens Ronnie Cox from his sleep, as he emerges from carefully stacked blankets covered by a sleeping bag in a long abandoned Catholic church in north St. Louis. “It don’t look good, but I lay my head here to talk to God,” says Cox, 54, who has lived for more than a year in the old church.

BROKEN PEOPLE IN BROKEN HOMES SHADOWS • FROM A1

and roof were full of holes. Tires were piled in the basement. A 30-foot tree jutted out from the second story at a 45-degree angle.

And yet Johnson found refuge here in a closet, a protective womb of sorts in the broken house that shielded him from the wind and falling debris but not the roar of traffic on nearby Interstate 70.

Right outside the closet door, he propped up the ceiling with a long fourby-four to allow escape, should the building finally collapse.

“I am hoping all this will be resolved one day, and I will put this behind me,” he said before settling down for the night.

No candles lit, it was pitch dark in the closet, which was big enough for a bed and a few belongings. Johnson planned to regain heat under thick covers. If that didn’t work, maybe he’d look up one of his relatives to stay with for the night, then start anew the next day.

But he’d have to get very cold for that to happen. He doesn’t want to put people out.

He liked his own space.

“In order to receive your blessing, you need to wait your turn,” Johnson said, often invoking the divine.

He waited for that blessing in one of at least 7,000 vacant buildings in St. Louis and one of 12,000 properties owned by the city’s bloated land bank.

Many of the structures seem beyond repair. So do the people who flock to them for shelter.

How many Jimmy Johnsons are holed up in these abandoned buildings isn’t known. The annual homeless census doesn’t capture them all and land bank officials suggest the number is small, at least in city-owned buildings.

But they’re there — if you look.

While Mayor Lyda Krewson’s administration champions more demolitions, occupants of the abandoned buildings speak to a chronically homeless population that St. Louis hasn’t been able to reach. Even when you tear things down, entrenched criminal histories, neglected mental illness, untreated trauma and out-of-control addiction remain — on the run from one neglected place to the next.

The dwellings tend to be hot spots for quick crimes. But to longer-term occupants, these are places for camaraderie and solitude that offer an alternative to societal rule and judgment.

An interior view of an abandoned Catholic church in north St. Louis, where Ronnie Cox has been living. “Most of the people I talk to can’t relate to what I am talking about, the situation I am in,” he says.

Liberty is the motto. Milwaukee’s Best Ice — strong and cheap — is the unofficial drink.

“I don’t like programs to go through,” said Edward McGehee, 58, a veteran of the streets, staying in a tiny old shed. “I live the way I want to. If I come in drunk, fine. If I come in high, fine.”

Ronnie Cox, 54, preferred to stay in an enormous old Catholic church. He slept on a wooden pew in the back, below the choir loft, to avoid falling debris in the vast nave.

“I talk to God when I am in there,” he said. “Most of the people I talk to can’t relate to what I am talking about, the situation I am in.”

He folded his blankets on a recent morning, left the church at daybreak to help restore a house built in 1904.

‘AIN’T THEM PRETTY’ Johnson decided to stay put through the night. He opened the closet door the following morning to a dusting of light

“This is my haven. This is where I put my head,” says Ronnie Cox, as he passes from the sanctuary of the long-abandoned Catholic church to the rectory, where he leaves unseen from a side door. He was about to start a four-mile walk to work in mid-November. Cox has slept on the last pew in the rear of the church for more than a year.

“I got a little heat.

I am getting by.”

Jimmy Johnson

snow and wind in the face.

“It’s going to be another nasty day, I can tell,” he said.

He broke wood molding and placed the pieces in a metal box with other trash. Once a fire was going, he sipped beer and cooked shrimp-flavored ramen noodles for breakfast.

He said the living arrangement was temporary. He’d been there nearly a year. Before that, he stayed next door until two men set that house ablaze. Vacant buildings account for more than 40 percent of the city’s fire calls.

“People do strange things that wake

up the devil,” Johnson explained.

It wasn’t enough to scare him away.

Johnson said he clung to a belief instilled in him as a young boy by his parents: When times get tough, do whatever you can to hold on. Beer helps cover feelings of doubt, he said, but once the alcohol wears off he finds himself in the same place.

There are moments of joy. He flashed his fingers through the flames and smiled.

“Oh, man, heat!” he said.

Random eye candy from I-70 fueled his excitement, especially recreational vehicles and trucks.

“Ain’t them pretty,” he said of a big rig hauling a trailer full of new motorboats. “I could have been the guy who put them together.”

He stared into the fire again.

“I got a little heat,” he said. “I am getting by.”

See SHADOWS • Page A17

Ronnie Cox strips paint from woodwork from a home on Vernon Avenue in the Academy neighborhood in late November. Cox sleeps in an abandoned Catholic church in north St. Louis but still maintains a job. “I haven’t given up on me, so you can’t either,” he says.

12.02.2018 • Sunday • M 1

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A17

TIPPING POINT

IN THE SHADOWS

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Eddie McGehee (left) and Bebe McBride keep warm in early November around a kerosene heater inside the vacant home where she lives in north St. Louis. McBride, 55, has leftover ravioli for breakfast, remains from a meal served the night before by a homeless outreach group. McGehee, 58, chain smokes hand-rolled cigarettes, declining McBride’s offer to share her food. He lives next door in a shed behind another vacant home.

SHADOWS • FROM A16

MIDNIGHT AND BEBE Violence struck earlier in the fall, when Bobbie Lee “Midnight” Barrow was gunned down 10 blocks away. He was 63. He lived in a group of privately owned abandoned homes for about nine years.

Though he was found dead in the area, he’d once said in an online video interview that he had been forced out in 2017.

“America has its policies where they keep making poor people,” Barrow says in the video. “The rich keep getting filthy rich. You have some people in this country that have three homes. …

I just wanted a vacant building. … This was home, you know what I mean? I protected it, just like anybody would do their home.”

Police said no one has been charged in his death.

Barrow left behind grandchildren and children, including some who didn’t know him well but mourned him. At his funeral, he was remembered as somebody who listened to the news, didn’t care what others thought and suffered from depression.

“The city was a better place when he walked its streets,” Phil Berwick, an artist who hires homeless people for a tree-cutting ministry, told the crowd of 60 people.

After the funeral, he and a small group came back to where Barrow lived to gather some of his belongings for family. Barrow seemed to have stayed above the garage, near a decrepit porch and leaning staircase. There was a lot of trash. A few cats.

“OK, Sweet Pea, where are your babies at?” Bebe McBride asked one of them. “You are showing what kind of mother you are.”

McBride, 55, stayed in another vacant home and used to visit Barrow.

She found a new pair of black work boots that he had previously tried to sell her for $20.

“I never thought I’d come over here to receive them this way,” she said, trying the boots on. “Thank you, Midnight. I love you.”

She thanked him again for a cat cage, then walked to a row of town houses that were bombed out by neglect and fire.

McBride pulled back a piece of plywood, went up a set of stairs, then down another to her secluded lair.

She said her spouse and children lived somewhere else.

“When you are drunk, you forget everything you agreed to when you are sober,” McBride said.

So now she comes to the abandoned home to get blitzed.

Renting an apartment would mean too many rules to follow.

“I just want to do what I want to do,” she said.

WHERE THE MISFITS FIT A tiny woman scurried through a hole in the door of an automotive shop that hadn’t fixed a car in years. She was angry. She didn’t want to talk about why she lived in a tent community set up inside the cavernous building.

Instead, she later returned outside to drop off a handwritten note that said she came from an abusive family and living in a homeless shelter had triggered “many instabilities in my mind due to my traumatic past.”

“But here ... I am free of that,” she wrote of the building, owned by developer Paul McKee’s NorthSide Regeneration. “I feel safer than I have for a long time. Not simply because I am in Continued on page A18

In early October, Bebe McBride pushes back a plywood-covered doorway to the vacant home where she lives in north St. Louis. To draw minimal attention, McBride, 55, comes and goes at quiet hours in the neighborhood, taking care not to disturb fallen tree branches pinned against the plywood. The home with crumbling walls is privately owned, with taxes paid up to date.

Phil Berwick, owner of Living Tree Care, and Bebe McBride challenge each other to a traffic-cone version of horseshoes as they finish working on tree trimming in downtown De Soto in late October. Berwick, also an artist, hires the homeless as part of a tree-cutting ministry.

“My heart bleeds for people who need a place to stay, but you have to look at this both ways.

They need to get the help they need to get and can’t be living in these unsafe homes.”

13th Ward Alderman Beth Murphy

Bebe McBride (right) sharpens chain saw blades while helping trim trees in De Soto. McBride lives in an abandoned home in north St. Louis. McBride says she has a spouse and children who live elsewhere, but renting an apartment would mean too many rules to follow. “I just want to do what I want to do,” she said.

A18 • ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

M 1 • Sunday • 12.02.2018

TIPPING POINT

IN THE SHADOWS

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Jimmy Johnson heats a can of soup in late October for his “lady friend” while she sleeps in the closet of an open-air living room where Johnson lives in a crumbling row house in north St. Louis. Johnson keeps a Lime bike handy for beer runs or for times he needs to go downtown.

SHADOWS • FROM A17

a ‘vaco,’ but because of the people I have found here. Misfits, like me.

“Here … I have Space. I have Air; Sun; Moon; Earth; Butterflies. I have friends … And no judgment from the busy streets trying to figure out what I ‘have.’”

A few weeks later, her tent caught fire.

She wasn’t harmed, nor was a stack of books.

Tim Farr, 37, a neighbor, said the woman read the books over the phone to children. He didn’t know for sure who the children were. He said he didn’t ask personal questions, only listened if residents wanted to share.

Farr was the leader of a small group of people he described as the “inner circle.” They shared a gas generator to power cellphones and appliances. They washed themselves with water collected in a large rubber trash can that was replenished through a hole in a broken skylight.

A blue tarp covered a makeshift bathroom. An overturned utility spool served as a wooden table. Resting on it were an empty beer can with yellow flowers inside and a copy of Southern Living Magazine.

Farr, who had two children in Ohio, said he stayed in St. Louis because of ongoing criminal cases. Traditional shelter programs didn’t work out.

“I don’t have nowhere else to go,” he said.

He recently worked feeding production lines at Procter & Gamble that made Febreze air fresheners and dishwashing liquid. That, and other temp jobs, fell through.

On a recent Friday, it took Farr an hour and a half by bus and train to get to his main gig at a Hazelwood strip mall, where special offers and slogans were painted on the windows, such as “FALL RED CARPET PROMOS” and “Donate Plasma Save Lives.”

The busy room at Octapharma Plasma had the feel of an airport terminal. Farr checked in at one of the five kiosks, then waited in line. At about $30 a pop, he planned to come back in two days.

“Can I just get a step?” he said of forward momentum.

‘LOOKING TO DIE’ Nearly 100 people packed the latest 22nd Ward meeting, and they were angry. They shouted frustrations at a panel of public officials about open-air drug markets, prostitution and neglected

Amid snow and a 20-degree wind chill in November, Jimmy Johnson gathers wood to burn from a neighboring house. Johnson, who was a squatter in this house before it was set on fire, lives next door in a crumbling row house in north St. Louis owned by the city’s land bank.

properties.

There were recently 1,013 vacant buildings and the equivalent of 127 football fields worth of vacant lots in the ward, city forestry division records show.

“That’s sad!” a woman yelled from the audience about the situation.

Charles Rogers’ block on Hamilton Avenue illustrated their grievances.

He’d seen so much disinvestment happen over generations that the brick structures, many of them in ruins, were the only thing that resembled what the neighborhood used to look like.

“When crack came to town, everything went to hell in a handbasket,” Rogers said.

This year, the city demolished a historic group of buildings at the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Hamilton Avenue. They were storefronts with residences on top that been damaged by fire.

Facing imminent demolition, Rogers said, squatters fled down Hamilton to another abandoned property, owned by the city.

Tim Farr gets himself together before heading out to catch the bus to donate plasma in Hazelwood in early November. Farr lives inside a former automotive and truck repair shop north of downtown, where he leads a small tent community of homeless people.

“All they want to do is get high,” he said.

A few blocks away on a different day, Monte Connelly stood in line at a Better Family Life community outreach tent that offered food, clothing and emergency medicine to treat overdoses.

“Right now, I am trying not to let pride get in the way,” said Connelly, 55.

He was addicted to heroin.

“Am I looking to die? I guess. But I am not like, ‘Hey, baby, shoot me,’” Connelly said, nudging a prostitute beside him on the shoulder. “I am chasing something that is physically hurting me.”

He said he’s been doing drugs since he was 18.

“Mentally, I have not had a break since I started,” he said.

Raised in the area, he sometimes ducks into one of the many vacant houses.

“Anywhere I can find a spot,” he said.

A vacant residence in the 5800 block of Theodosia Avenue that’s privately owned was a favorite. It stood by itself, open to the elements, amid a swath of

overgrown lots left from long-ago demolitions in the 22nd Ward.

In other neighborhoods where vacant residences are less obvious, they still pose challenges.

A family of Liberian immigrants in south St. Louis said they would hear odd noises late at night coming from the frame home next door in the 4700 block of Adkins Avenue, across from St. John the Baptist Catholic Church.

The house caught fire in May, and a man they didn’t know was rushed to the hospital, where he later died. The victim was Billy Eugene Martin, 66, a Vietnam veteran with drug problems and a lengthy criminal history.

Officials later determined that the accidental fire was caused by careless smoking in close proximity to an “excessive amount” of combustible material, mainly painting supplies. An AK47 was found in the burned area.

“My heart bleeds for people who need a place to stay, but you have to look at this both ways,” said 13th Ward Continued on page A19

Food, beer cans and a 2017 copy of Southern Living magazine are spread on top of a old wire spool used as a table in Tim Farr’s tent community in north St. Louis. The building is a long-shuttered automotive and truck repair shop.

“TIPPING POINT” IS A SERIES OF SPECIAL REPORTS THAT EXAMINE CRITICAL CHALLENGES FACING ST. LOUIS Did you miss earlier stories in the series? Catch up at STLtoday.com.

12.02.2018 • Sunday • M 1

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH • A19

TIPPING POINT

IN THE SHADOWS

PHOTOS BY ROBERT COHEN • rcohen@post-dispatch.com

A memorial to Bobbie Lee “Midnight” Barrow sits in early October on the stoop of a vacant home, where Barrow, 63, was gunned down in the middle of a north St. Louis street in late September.

SHADOWS • FROM A18

Alderman Beth Murphy. “They need to get the help they need to get and can’t be living in these unsafe homes.”

TEETERING ON THE EDGE Virginia Shelton, an advocate for the homeless, resisted believing people choose to live this way.

“They might be hopeless and worn out and resigned to it,” she said. “Once you are homeless for so long, you can’t really picture yourself moving into an apartment or something like that. The leap is too big. You would have to work with somebody for a long time.”

Kandie Cronice illustrates the obstacles well.

At 52, she still gets choked up talking about sexual abuse she endured as a child that set her up for a lifetime of alienation from her parents. She has eight children and four grandchildren. She’s been shot and has done prison time.

Weighed down by alcoholism, she uses a walker and adult diapers.

“I made it,” she said. “I survived under bridges, in vacant houses, in areas where dumpsters are supposed to be.”

Cronice even used to stay in the vacant home that Johnson occupied near I-70. She couldn’t believe the closet floor hadn’t caved in. She fled the hideout not because of structural insecurities, but to avoid an abusive man who used to stay there.

“I woke up to a ball bat to my face,” she said.

Cronice has been getting more help these days. Ray Redlich, a minister at New Life Evangelistic Center, checks on her a lot and assisted in her recent baptism. She’s been attending meetings at Places for People, a nonprofit organization that helped her get up to date on medication and into an apartment this summer.

She said she fought to cut beer consumption from eight 32-ounce cans of Milwaukee’s Best Ice a day to two 12-ounce cans. Cronice, weighing about 110 pounds, said she needs some alcohol to sleep through the night.

“I am encouraged to see progress,” said Redlich, 66. “It’s slow but, I believe, real.”

This summer, her Hampton Avenue apartment, in a complex that’s had multiple fatal overdoses, didn’t work out. She has since moved to a one-bedroom apartment in the

Joe Bourque talks with Eddie McGehee, 58, as he makes a list of items in early October to bring homeless people he visits regularly. Bourque runs a homeless ministry called the Street People, focusing on finding people housing. McGehee lives in a shed behind a vacant city-owned home in north St. Louis.

LEARNING TO SURVIVE Jimmy Johnson talks about living near the highway, where a warm fire and a beer are sometimes enough. video.stltoday.com

4500 block of Gravois Avenue that rents for $550 a month and is also grim.

A syringe recently lay in the parking lot.

Residents bolstered the heat with open ovens. In Cronice’s unit, bathroom ceiling tiles fell. She had a fresh bruise on her chin and a much larger bruise on her hip that she said happened from falling down the front stairs — in her sleep.

“I am not liking what I got,” said Cronice, wondering how her apartment passed inspection.

Her mood teetered on a steep ledge, at one

point angry, the next grateful.

“Even though I have problems here, I am glad I am locked in,” she said. “I have four walls, a roof and a building, where I don’t have to freeze.”

But she got worked up talking about the sacrifices she has made to be sober. She said she had threatened to give up. Go back to the life where day is day and night is night.

“I am doing what you want me to do, but what I want you to do ain’t getting done,” she said of her living conditions. “You think your authority is better than mine? I have no rights.

I should have as much rights as you.”

It wouldn’t be the first apartment she had lost.

Jesse Bogan • 314-340-8255 @jessebogan on Twitter jbogan@post-dispatch.com Robert Cohen • 314-340-8280 @kodacohen on Twitter rcohen@post-dispatch.com

Kandie Cronice receives a water baptism with the help of ministers El-Cid Strickland (left) and Ray Redlich, at Trinity Assembly of God in October. Cronice, 52, lived on the streets in vacant buildings for years. “I made it,” she says. “I survived under bridges, in vacant houses, in areas where dumpsters are supposed to be.” She’s been attending meetings at Places for People, a nonprofit organization that helped her get up to date on medication and into an apartment this summer.