Congratulations to Latasha Barnes, Attorney with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, recipient of our 2021 Rising Star in Community Building Award!
The Rising Star in Community Building Award recognizes a person who:
Demonstrates strong dedication to and passion for community building work.
Exhibits leadership, vision, and a commitment to action and results.
Shows promising potential to catalyze outstanding impact in community building policy, investment, and/or community change.
Works to challenge the status quo in the St. Louis region.
Humans of St. Louis storyteller Lindy Drew met with Latasha to learn more about her and her work. Here’s some of what Latasha had to say.
Latasha Barnes, Attorney with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri (Humans of St. Louis / Lindy Drew)
What was the first award you ever got?
You know when you get honor roll certificates in school? It’s like, ‘Yay! I remembered a bunch of facts.’ But my favorite award was when I was in high school. My senior year I was voted Most Likely to Become the First Female President. Like, what? And then in law school, I got the Saint Louis University School of Law’s David Grant Clinic Student Award for some work I was doing. I will say there are times I’ve gotten awards and felt like, ‘Yes, I did that. I accomplished that.’ But this time, I was notified of the award and I didn’t have the same feeling. Because, really, the work comes from the residents. All I do is stand with them. This is their award. They earned it. Yes, we collaborate, but this is about their effort, vision, and passion for their communities and about their dedication. They’re the ones who inspire me. What am I doing here having this conversation? They should be having this interview talking about how much they love Hyde Park and the West End and Academy and Old North.
If anything, I feel like a spotlight because when I’m advocating for my clients in court or in community meetings or through collaborations with other agencies, I am shining a light on the residents so people see them clearer. Maybe I’m the one on the microphone, but I want people to hear them. I’m just saying, “Look at my residents. Look at my clients. Look at my friends,” because some of them have become friends now, and, “hear what they’re saying. I’m just saying what they’re saying. You shouldn’t respect it coming from me more than when it is coming from those who are the most impacted.” It frustrates me when people say, “You’re a lawyer. We’re listening.” I’m like, “No, if you listened to them the first time, we wouldn’t have to come to court and say these things or take some of the other actions we do on the legal side.”
I was shocked and humbled that people would nominate me for this award. It was their way of saying thank you for how I show up for them, but I should be thanking them because a lot of what I do in my work is driven by what their desires are. We’re not creating new visions for them. They already have these visions and dreams. I’m just pointing them in the right direction, saying, “Here’s a pathway. Here’s an open door. Here’s the administrative process that allows you to get your message out front and center.”
What has been the hardest thing for you when challenging the status quo with the hope of achieving the results you get in the community?
When we think about community development, redevelopment, and commercial development, a lot of times the people who have the money and power are the ones making the decisions about communities. They’re telling residents, “This is what we’re doing and this is what’s going to happen.” One way we can challenge that is by amplifying the residents we serve and allowing them to be the decision-makers about what housing is developed in their communities and what commercial businesses will be invited in and supported. Mobilizing the residents and giving them a voice at the table is so they can participate in the process. That challenges the status quo because, without their input, things will continue to be done the same way and happen ‘to’ communities instead of ‘with’ communities. The biggest thing lawyers like me can do is help residents and communities be a part of what’s happening around them so they can steer things in a way that reinforces their values and supports their vision for their neighborhoods.
When was a time you felt most alive doing the work you do?
There was a vacant property that residents had been concerned about for several years. The neighbors who live on either side and across the street had been complaining about it for quite some time. The yard was overgrown. There were a lot of weeds. People had been dumping trash there. It was unsecured, meaning the windows or doors had been open. There was a lot of trespassing happening. The neighbors had been complaining and filing reports with the City, calling the police about it, and trying to get the owner to improve its condition.
Well, the neighborhood brought this property to our attention because its vacancy brought in a lot of unwanted activity and safety concerns. No one had any way of communicating with the person who abandoned the property. The police wanted to enforce the trespassing laws, but the owner was not available to press charges. The building inspector wanted to enforce the building codes and cite the owner, but the owner was not responsive. City agencies were at a standstill because they didn’t have the cooperation of the house’s owner. So we were able to file a lawsuit on the building and get permission from the court to take possession of the property to help enforce those rules.
A cross-agency team worked to coordinate our efforts and we showed up at the house together — and this is one of my favorite moments of doing this work because we were all there as a group to take back this property so the neighborhood could clean it up, get it fixed, and hopefully see a new family move into it soon. There were four or five officers in uniform, the neighborhood improvement specialist, a private developer, the president of the neighborhood association, the alderwoman, the building inspector, and myself. And we all represented different government agencies, organizations, and parts of the system.
So we pulled up, took out the court order, and talked to the trespassers who claimed they had the right to be there. We knew that wasn’t the case. We told them we had permission to come in, inspect, and assess the condition of the building. We wouldn’t have been able to do that if we hadn’t told the judge what was happening and shared the neighborhood’s safety and health concerns. Showing up with that piece of paper made a world of difference. Since that time we have been able to secure the property, which made the neighbors really happy.
As lawyers, we recognize we can’t do this type of work by ourselves. We need the support and collaboration with other agencies that have the power to do things we can’t do. And on that particular day, we were all there in alignment. It was so perfect. And this is gonna sound so corny, but — I really like Marvel films! — and you would have thought we were the Justice League or the Avengers. We were all there, we were all ready. Everybody had their superpower. Everybody had their role and they were there to play their role so we could accomplish what we needed. The neighborhood association and residents were there to coordinate the process. The inspector was able to find out what was going on with the building. The police were able to remove the individuals who brought crime and safety concerns to the block. Together, we restored a level of safety for the neighbors. Now, the neighborhood has possession of the building. It’s being cleaned up and we have a contractor rehabbing it.
What’s the biggest obstacle in the work you do? How difficult can it be when you’re looking at the light at the end of the tunnel and it just takes time to get there?
There are so many vacant, abandoned properties. The hardest part we do is finding individuals willing to partner with neighborhoods to address these concerns and realize they’re probably not going to get rich in the process — especially during a time when it’s hard to find labor, material costs are increasing, and the housing market has a shortage. What we do also depends on the availability of private developers or contractors who care about these communities, who want to engage in this work, and who recognize there may not be a substantial profit to be made. We have one property that needs over $300,000 worth of improvements to restore it to its former glory. People may be able to invest that money and maybe they’ll break even, but they do it because they care about the community. That is the biggest challenge because our clients may not have the resources to fix or repair these houses. They have to depend on others to make things happen and sometimes it doesn’t seem profitable enough to do it. If we can’t find a rehabber for a project, everything comes to a pause. We can’t move forward on a property if there’s no one to invest in it. Imagine preparing a case for trial, going in front of a judge, getting that final victory, and not being able to find anyone to say, “We care enough about this building to fix it up so the family across the street doesn’t have to live in front of a crumbling four-family flat.”
Building up the infrastructure in our neighborhoods supports our city and our region in ways you can’t imagine. But there’s an incongruity where the people who actually care enough to do it, may not have the skills, resources, or money to take on the number of properties in disrepair. And those who have the skills, resources, or money may not care enough to join the effort. Often the neighbor who has to look out their window at the crumbling house next door, worried that it is collapsing or could collapse onto their property, will step up to fix a house or two near them and restore their neighborhood if they could. Why wait for the private market to decide they care enough to do it when you can be a part of the effort to alleviate environmental hazards for the people who live there?
What’s your connection to St. Louis and why do you care so much about the work you’re doing here?
I was born in St. Louis, and I lived in a six-family unit in the West End off of Cabanne across the street from Russell Park. My family attended church in the neighborhood and has a lot of ties there. We moved to Atlanta when I was young and I came back here for law school. When I saw the opportunity to do the work I’m doing in this neighborhood, it was like coming back home. This is where I lived. These are streets I used to walk. This is a park I used to play in. It felt so familiar to me because it is. This is a community I remained a part of and my family remains connected to after so many years. Supporting residents who care about this neighborhood has been really important to me. Sometimes when I see the level of disinvestment in parts of St. Louis, or when I drive through the City or County and see rows of vacant, collapsing homes, it can create this intense feeling of hopelessness. I used to have those feelings of hopelessness, but now I know there are solutions.
My son is 17, but when he was a kid, several large anchor stores in our neighborhood started closing. There were these massive empty buildings in our neighborhood and he and I would ride past them and play this game: I would ask him, “What would you open there? What kind of business would you put in that building? What would it look like?” He was a kid in elementary school at the time and he always came up with some cool ideas. He thought of a Chuck E. Cheese or something similar to Monkey Joe’s or Sky Zone. We didn’t have anything like that in our neighborhood or on our side of town at all. He’d say, “We can put that here! And what if we had a go-cart place? Mom, there’d be pizza and a Subway!” It was so cute. As he'd just think of stuff I’d ask, “Who would work there?” and he’d name people in our family. There we were, a legal aid attorney and an elementary student, making stuff up. We didn’t have the resources or skills to do any of it, but, “It would be really cool if we could turn that old Lowes into a rock climbing gym!” At that time, the only thing I knew about development was that you needed people with capital to come in and create businesses. So we’d just dream about how we could make a Magic House in North County and North City. Then all the kids who went to school in Kirkwood could come over to our neighborhood and play in the castles over here.
Stores and restaurants started closing where I currently live too. These buildings are just sitting empty and I wondered, “What’s happening?” When you get buildings neglected over a decade and they’ve partially collapsed, you think about what that means for the people who live near them. My cousin bought her first house next to a long-standing vacant property. I’d visit and hear her talk about concerns she had about what might be happening in that house and the condition of it affecting her and her son living next door. It’s easy to turn a blind eye to things when you’re not personally impacted. This work has given me a greater level of empathy for residents and friends who live in high-vacancy communities. They don’t deserve that. We all deserve to live in communities we can be proud of. St. Louis should feel like home to everybody who lives here.
I watch residents get together and support each other and they really fight for what they believe. They’re fighting against elements that detract from their neighborhood. They have development meetings, pop-ups at parks, and community cleanups. And people from one neighborhood support and attend events from other neighborhoods nearby. They’re so connected. For example, there was a conditional use zoning hearing a couple of months ago and residents from other neighborhoods came out to show their support saying, “Nope. We’re doing this together because what affects you over there affects us over here.” I love that they have that synergy. I’m lucky I get to be a part of it.
What would make a difference for the work you’re doing now and especially when we come out of the pandemic?
I want people to desire to live in the neighborhoods I work with the way they might desire to live in Clayton, Ladue, Chesterfield, or the Central West End. The residents I work with love their neighborhoods and I want them to have neighborhoods deserving of them — neighborhoods that are safe and developed, that look the way the residents want them to look, where building codes are enforced like in other places, where permitting processes work the same as in other places. They deserve better than what they’ve been getting.
More collaborative urban planning would make a tremendous difference in how neighborhoods look and develop, as would working with communities to develop neighborhood plans. Some neighborhoods have established plans, but the ones I work in do not. Oftentimes professional urban planning has not been available to neighborhoods north of Delmar and historical planning efforts have not included residents in a meaningful way. Having resident voice at the table is important and necessary. It is better than making decisions in a vacuum without input from the people impacted by them. It’s about making sure residents are consistently part of the decision-making process and that their perspectives are heard, respected, and incorporated into the outcomes. Planning would help a lot of our neighborhoods better implement their vision to create communities they can continue to be proud of.
What are some of the high-level band-aid fixes you see when a neighborhood plan isn’t in place?
If there was a plan in place for a neighborhood that outlines what they aspire to, how many single-family homes and multi-family homes they want to build, and how and where they want them placed, you wouldn’t have as many big-money private developers swooping into neighborhoods to build housing that residents don’t want. If there was a plan for what businesses were allowed in our commercial districts, we wouldn’t have as many predatory businesses swooping in to buy properties and set up businesses residents don’t want. There are development tools available to help address and prohibit some of these things. Other neighborhoods have them — just not always the neighborhoods I work with.
So say somebody wants to open up a new liquor store. The band-aid for that might look like showing up at administrative hearings to fight and convince the excise division that the establishment shouldn’t have a full-package liquor license because of ongoing safety concerns. The reality is that if there was a plan in place that regulated if and when a store could operate, this would be an issue for residents to address in a piecemeal fashion. Residents may know they can go to their alderperson and complain. Beyond that, they may not know if they establish a Special Use District, they wouldn’t have to chase behind these types of bad actors. They can establish a protective bubble that prevents unwanted development from coming into the neighborhood in the first place. Instead of fighting it one by one, guidelines can be in place to provide greater protections and transform the way a lot of things happen.
A neighborhood plan is expensive to develop, technical assistance is often needed, and many neighborhoods may not have access to be able to build one. And that’s what they need to protect themselves from outside influences that can take advantage of their communities.
Is there an inspirational person in your life or a mentor who’s driven you to do community development work?
That’s a hard question because this work is new for me. I’m learning from my colleagues and picking up information all the time from whoever is willing to talk to me. I’ve learned a lot from the residents I work with. Some have been doing this for years. They love it, understand how important it is, and know how to use systems to get the most benefit for their neighborhoods. So I watch and learn from them. Then, being a part of the St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative and connecting with people who are developers and people in the financial industry, I’m gleaning a little here and there — just taking direction where I can.
What does community building mean for a place like St. Louis?
Community building means we can create a place where our values are truly reflected in how we build and sustain our neighborhoods. Through building that is resident-driven, we can create a St. Louis that feels like home to everybody. That resonates with me because it does not feel like home for everyone. We live here, but some of us live in places because we have to and not because we really desire to. If we had our choice, we might go somewhere else. But in my head, when something feels like home, it’s where you want to be and you’re able to access what you need to thrive. It’s important to feel like you belong, you’re safe, and that there’s no place you’d rather be because your neighborhood is the absolute best and most desired. St. Louis can be that for everyone.
- Latasha Barnes, Attorney with Legal Services of Eastern Missouri
We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Latasha at our Community Development Family Reunion event on September 23!
Photostory by Humans of St. Louis and Lindy Drew. Photostory narratives represent the opinions of the speaker(s) featured only and do not necessarily represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis.
