By Jennifer Allen
Jennifer Allen is Trailnet’s Active Transportation Manger where she oversees the Neighborhood Greenways St. Louis project, helps coordinate activities for strategic partnerships, and assists with advocacy campaigns. Jennifer is an urban planner with a Master of Arts in Urban Planning from UCLA. Prior to her work in bicycle and pedestrian planning, Jennifer worked in affordable housing development. A native St. Louisan, Jennifer returned to her hometown in 2009 to be part of the exciting work to transform St. Louis into a world-class city again.
There are many new projects happening in the city that should strengthen the local economy and enhance the quality of life for residents. The new Arch grounds, the Cortex Innovation District, and improvements to Grand Center are examples of the myriad of projects under development in the city. These projects will provide important connections and economic, environmental, and social benefits.
The question is how do we assure that revitalization projects do not become forces of displacement–neighborhood change characterized by residents being involuntarily forced out when they cannot afford their gentrified neighborhood? Displacement will chip away at one of the greatest assets of our neighborhoods – their racial/ethnic and economic mix of residents.
Anti-displacement policies are often created when displacement has reached a fever pitch after building for years. What if St. Louis developed comprehensive policies and initiatives now as a means of preventing significant displacement rather than waiting for dire consequences? These policies and initiatives could be designed to evolve over time to match the strength of the City’s market.
The research of rebound neighborhoods by Todd Swanstrom of the University of Missouri St. Louis and Hank Webber from Washington University in St. Louis (Rebound Neighborhoods in Older Industrial Cities: The Story of St. Louis) found diversity to be an asset to neighborhood revitalization in the City over the last 30 years. Overall, the City’s rebound neighborhoods have significantly higher levels of racial/ethnic and economic diversity than non-rebounding neighborhoods. But their research also asks if our rebound neighborhoods are simply in the first stage of classic displacement found in strong market cities.
In the interest of preserving the diversity of our neighborhoods, I propose that we take a proactive approach and assume some of our neighborhoods are in the first stages of significant displacement. The Community Builders Network should form a partnership with the City of St. Louis, and others, to make sure we are collecting the right data about how households are impacted by development. A series of indicators should be tracked in a regional context, such as rising rents, property appreciation rates, and rental to single-family home conversions.
The partnership should also begin collecting information on the myriad of tools used across the country to prevent displacement, and begin sifting them along a continuum of their appropriateness for weak market to strong market cities. Finally, the partnership should propose policies and initiatives that should be put in place given our weak market. Financing for local businesses, community land trusts, tightening code enforcement to avoid land speculation, workforce readiness training, and promoting homeownership for current residents are all potential solutions given the current state of our market.
Over time, our community organizations and City agencies have worked on many initiatives that have helped prevent displacement, even if they were not expressly designed to do so. What appears to be missing is a clear, unified voice warning of the potential new levels of displacement possible as we undertake major revitalization projects at a time of significant demographic shifts. What also appears to be missing is a coordinated response at a city/regional scale. The Community Builders Network should use its strong reputation and growing influence to be the visionary leader to take action on this important issue.
The death of Michael Brown has spotlighted many inequities in our region. As we work to heal them, it is our job to make sure our city’s revitalization is a source of prosperity for all–this includes providing residents the choice to stay in their neighborhoods as conditions improve.
Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the view of the Community Builders Network or Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
