A Comprehensive Plan for the City of St. Louis: 70 Years is Too Long to Wait

By Robert Lewis, FAICP, CEcD, Principal at Development Strategies

Public safety was a foremost topic of our St. Louis mayoral and aldermanic candidates in this spring’s elections. But there were also undercurrents about development and developer incentives in the Central Corridor versus the lack thereof in the rest of the city. How are decisions on development and the distribution of incentives determined in St. Louis?

While I have my own opinions on such questions, more important to me is the lack of a comprehensive vision of how we—the residents, workers, businesses, and institutions of St. Louis—want our city to function and look. Almost all of us have no idea how decisions on incentives, zoning, parks, traffic flow, streetscapes, public health, and so on are made by the Board of Aldermen and the Board of Estimate and Apportionment.

As a career-long urban planner—two years in the public sector and 39 (so far) as a consultant—I am astonished that we do not have a functioning comprehensive plan to guide such decisions at the political and citizen commission levels. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a common vision, expressed in text, graphs, and pictures, of how we want our city and neighborhoods to evolve? Wouldn’t decision-making be easier if the politics and horse-trading could be eliminated? Development decisions and priorities could be determined by comparing ideas to the common vision.

Technically, St. Louis does have a comprehensive plan on the books. It was adopted in 1947 at virtually the height of the city’s population and economic density. Since then, we’ve had astounding challenges in urban decline, but also great successes with pockets of revitalization. The population is less than half what it was, the tax base has dramatically declined, and we now have many square miles of redevelopment opportunities. We have space and infrastructure to support roughly double our current population and employment. Yet we have not adopted an up-to-date plan.

We tried in the early 1970s. It’s a beautiful plan that was well-conceived and involved a lot of citizen engagement, but the Aldermen couldn’t agree. Racism, elitism, and the paranoia of urban decline got in the way.

We’re a lot more grown-up now. Aren’t we? We should act that way.

Downtown St. Louis got its act together in the late 1990s with the Downtown Now! plan, which triggered substantial, coordinated changes. Washington University Medical Center Redevelopment Corporation has adopted and adapted plan after plan to lead the Central West End and much of Midtown from the ravages of urban decay in the 1960s to a national model of urban functionality. Forest Park Forever prepared and is updating a master plan for this world-renowned park.

It can be done! Sure, Downtown and the Central West End had well-funded leaders (banks and a world-class university, for example), and so did Forest Park, thanks to its world-class institutions. All those strong leaders worked with and continue to work with city officials and state-enabled planning and development laws to re-shape crucial parts of the city.

The 2013 Sustainability Plan for the city is a remarkable achievement that encompasses many comprehensive planning and visionary concepts. It lacked some citizen engagement, but all City government departments helped shape it into a comprehensive plan by another name. We don’t call it that, and we don’t use it that way. And the Board of Aldermen has never formally adopted it as City policy (although the City Planning Commission did, to its credit).

There are inklings that planning could once again be held in higher regard in St. Louis. The Board of Aldermen is working closely with St. Louis Development Corporation to perfect better policies and quantitative analysis of development proposals to remove political motivations from decisions and ensure that not too much is given away in parts of the city that don’t need it. Several neighborhood plans exist, most created by the neighborhoods themselves. There are Great Streets plans in the city, community development plans, parks plans, economic development strategies, and public health plans. And the recent mayoral and aldermanic elections (including those of 2015) show signs that more progressive political leadership is emerging.

In short, St. Louis has a disaggregated appreciation of the value of planning for the common good. What we need now is to pull this city together into a one-to-two-year engagement process, with ample technical support and formalized facilitation, to civilly discuss our likes and dislikes, our trusts and mistrusts, and our wide range of visions and desires. A properly designed planning process will make this city-wide conversation fun, exciting, and even exhilarating. We’ll learn more about one another and that we have far more in common than otherwise. We’ll find unexpected ways to develop leadership, share funding, attract investment, and guide our decision-makers instead of relying on them to tell us what will happen.

St. Louis was a big city. It has capacity—functionally and in our hearts—to be big again. We continue to demonstrate creativity in addressing challenges. Just look at Cortex or Great Rivers Greenway or any number of city and regional efforts that we’ve invented and now serve as examples to other cities. And we can learn from other cities, in turn.

But we need to agree on our direction, mission, vision, and the paths to collective success. We need a comprehensive plan, now 70 years in the waiting. The process to create it will be stimulating. Let’s get started!

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Bob directs economic planning and implementation assignments at Development Strategies, based in St. Louis. He was part of the team that created Development Strategies in 1988 after ten years with Team Four and two years with the St. Louis County Department of Planning.

The focus of Bob’s professional work is analyzing the market, economic, and organizational forces that influence urban development and economic growth. His consulting services yield strategic recommendations for clients seeking to maximize economic value. Clients include state and local governments, private property owners and developers, corporations, government agencies, non-profits, and institutions all around the United States.

A native of Glencoe, Illinois in the Chicago area, Bob holds a master’s degree in city and regional planning from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (1976) and a bachelor’s degree in business economics from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio (1973). He is a member of the Leadership St. Louis class of 1986-1987.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

City Needs to Invest in Neighborhood Capacity, Not Just Bricks and Mortar

By Glenn Burleigh, Community Activist in the City of St. Louis

Last week, City of St. Louis voters passed Proposition 1, which establishes a 1/2 cent Economic Development Sales Tax that is expected to raise $20 million annually. The tax’s final proposal allocates 60 percent of funding (about $12 million) to MetroLink expansion. The rest will be divided evenly (about $2 million each) among four areas: neighborhood revitalization, workforce development, public safety, and infrastructure.

Now that voters have approved this tax, we need to turn our attention to implementation. As written, the proposal has faults that need to be addressed. In light of recent conversations about the tax, I’m concerned that priorities for allocation are out of balance. It favors brick-and-mortar projects without giving equal attention to long-term staffing and community organizing. As we consider how to manage this new funding source, we need to make sure that sustainable investments in human capital are part of the community development equation, too.

After attending a public hearing for the sales tax in January, I was stunned to find out how little detail was given to the community development/reinvestment portion of the plan when compared to the proposal’s other categories. I decided to find out what volunteers and staff in the community development/reinvestment arena thought about the plan.

My conversations have led me to believe that there wasn’t significant input sought on this plan and that many supported it because “something is better than nothing.” Few have seemed to understand how little community development funding the proposal actually commits. Few recalled much internal conversation. Some even believed that the proposal reserved $500,000 (instead of $50,000) for an annual planning grant. This is the proposal’s only “hard number.”

Most of the folks that I spoke with agreed that the sales tax proposal isn’t built to balance this new community development spending. Many also agreed that the proposal doesn’t seem to hold much promise for CDCs and other advocates that need funding and programming to sustain community organizing efforts.

Place-based development strategies are extremely important. But without community organizing infrastructure to deal with the issues that neighborhoods face, new LIHTC spending and other developments cannot be a panacea. Bricks and mortar are critical, and some CDCs might be able to combine sales tax funds with loans and LIHTC funding to create more affordable housing—but bricks and mortar constitute only part of a neighborhood.

A conversation I had with Community Development Administration (CDA) Director Alana Green several months ago indicated that proponents of the sales tax envision using it to fund planning-type projects for many CDCs—projects akin to the community engagement work that the CDC where I serve as Housing Committee Chair (Dutchtown South Community Corporation) is currently doing with the Jefferson Corridor and Historic Gravois Neighborhoods.

This is an important part of community development work. But when a CDC focused on neighborhood organizing receives a grant to do community planning and engagement, they are left accountable to the public after the grant cycle ends. After their two years of funding are up, the CDC will likely need to scale back programming. Residents will associate this scale-down with the local CDC that coordinated outreach, not the organization that’s collecting revenue from the LIHTC units added to their property portfolios.

The proposal does call for some evidence of sustainability and matching funds. But if private entities do not also commit significant dollars up front, much of the non-bricks-and-mortar programming tied to this proposal will ultimately suffer. Unless we can craft a realistic plan to replace short-lived City funds with significant private donations, most new programming won’t continue after the two-year funding period is over—or at least not at the scale to which neighbors will have grown accustomed.

We have seen many promises to dedicate significant cash to this type of programming in the wake of #Ferguson. But that cash has not materialized. Given that shortfall, I find it hard to believe that philanthropic dollars for long-term community organizing funding will now suddenly become available. To be clear, the key phrase in that sentence is “long-term.” Redlining has devastated huge swaths of our city for decades. It will take many years of affirmative, intentional work to reverse generations of economic discrimination and inequity. We should neither shrink from the tasks at hand nor pretend that modest, short-lived capital infusions will suffice to solve these problems.

This is not to say that bricks and mortar and tax credits aren’t important—only that the implementation plan for this new sales tax seems unbalanced. It favors a sustainable funding stream for construction, but guarantees little for community organizing. Week after week, I attend meetings where folks are asking for investments in human capital just as much as investments in the built environment. Both are vital for our community.

Here’s the good news, though: this vague plan leaves us with an opportunity to reformulate how to approach the new funding. The community development/reinvestment sector has a chance to hold its own discussions, select and prioritize best practices, and lobby the incoming administration to codify those practices in department procedure. I hope we can make these critical conversations a reality, even on the back end of this process. Our policy should be as intentional as our rhetoric.

Glenn Burleigh is a community activist in the City of St. Louis. This commentary should not be construed as the official position of any of the nonprofits or coalitions that he works for or with which he serves in a leadership capacity.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Our Communities Need Us to Fight Missouri State Senate Bill 285

By Kimberly McKinney, Chief Executive Officer of Habitat for Humanity Saint Louis, and Sal Martinez, Executive Director of North Newstead Association

This column is partially adapted from a letter that Kimberly McKinney sent out about Senate Bill 285 earlier this month.

Kimberly McKinney

In January, State Senator Andrew Koenig of the 15th District introduced Senate Bill 285. This legislation threatens crucial funding that supports affordable housing and community development work.

Sal Martinez

The bill would modify the Neighborhood Assistance Act by changing the cap on the Affordable Housing and Neighborhood Assistance Tax Credits and by repealing the Development Tax Credit. Additionally, the Affordable Housing Tax Credit cap for investments in affordable housing activities would be reduced from $10 million to $7 million per fiscal year. The Neighborhood Assistance Tax Credit cap would be reduced from $16 million to just $5 million per fiscal year (Sections 32.100 to 32.125). The bill would also place an initial cap of $160 million on Missouri’s Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program and decrease that cap annually until it reaches $90 million in 2020 (Section 135.352).

Frankly, this could be catastrophic for organizations like ours.

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Kimberly McKinney:
Habitat for Humanity Saint Louis benefits greatly from our participation in the AHAP tax credit program, which allows donors who make qualified contributions to our organization to receive a significant tax liability benefit in exchange for their generosity. It encourages donors to give larger contributions and gives Habitat Saint Louis an extremely effective incentive to present to donors who have significant tax liabilities.

As an example, AHAP tax credits supported the startup, full rent and related expenses for operating ReStore Des Peres—an invaluable income stream for Habitat Saint Louis and a resource for affordable building materials for the Des Peres community. Just last year, ReStore Des Peres took in more than 5,000 donations and diverted 6,000 tons of usable materials from landfills. The facility provides full-time employment for 10 people.

Imagine if those tax credits hadn’t been available to make the dream of ReStore Des Peres a reality.

Over the past three years, tax credit allocations of almost $2.5 million have supported $4 million in donations to Habitat Saint Louis. We rely on this program for much-needed funding to build housing for deserving, hardworking, local families who simply want to raise their families in a safe place they can afford.

Like most organizations doing community development work, Habitat Saint Louis runs a very tight ship, with 86 cents of every dollar going directly to program costs, and just 14 cents going to administrative and fundraising costs. Part of the reason we are so effective at keeping costs down is because we have been able to leverage the AHAP tax credit program to encourage larger donations from qualified donors.

Sal Martinez:
The North Newstead Association has developed over 125 units of quality affordable housing in some of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis, including Penrose, O’Fallon, and the Greater Ville. These developments would not be have been possible without the support of LIHTCs.

Real families live in these units and contribute to our city in positive ways. These residents are community leaders, parents, shoppers, and friends who make an ongoing positive impact on the socioeconomic reality of their neighborhoods.

During my tenure as Chairman of the St. Louis Housing Authority, LIHTCs were also used to spur the development of quality affordable housing in neglected neighborhoods like St. Louis Place, Peabody Darst Webbe, Covenant Blu, Columbus Square, and Carr Square. These developments provided vital affordable housing opportunities to families and spurred the future development of mixed-income for-sale and rental housing in these same neighborhoods. The LIHTC program was a major catalyst in helping these neighborhoods transform into more viable places to live and work.

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We cannot lose these resources and continue to build as many homes in our community. We need these tax credits. The families who turn to us for hope need them, too.

You can help. We urge you to please use your voice to tell your State Senator how vitally important these tax credits are in creating affordable housing for families teetering on the brink of poverty. We and other organizations like ours are deeply grateful for your help in preserving this critical source of income that benefits affordable housing in our region.

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As Chief Executive Officer of Habitat for Humanity Saint Louis for over a decade, Kimberly McKinney is responsible for the overall operation of the St. Louis affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International. Locally, Habitat for Humanity Saint Louis has built almost 400 houses. Kimberly’s primary duties include board recruitment and development, strategic planning, community relations, and advocacy.

Kimberly initially began as Development Director with Habitat for Humanity in 1997 after relocating to St. Louis from Tennessee, where she held management positions in both the public and private sector. In 2012, she was selected as one of the twenty-five “Most Influential Women” by the St. Louis Business Journal.

Kimberly serves on the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of Rise (formerly RHCDA), the Board and Executive Committee of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis, the Board of Innovative Technology Education Fund, and the Board of Nonprofit MO. She is a past member of the US Council for Habitat for Humanity International and a current member of St. Louis Women’s Forum and CREW.

Kimberly and her husband, Kevin, reside in the City of St. Louis.

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Sal Martinez has established himself as a force in the comprehensive revitalization of the St. Louis region. Martinez, who received his Bachelor of Science degree in Urban Education in 1994 from Harris-Stowe State College, was employed by the college as Neighborhood Services Coordinator from 1996-1998. During his tenure at College, Martinez served as a liaison to many local social service and non-profit agencies. These experiences had a profound effect on Martinez, as he developed a keen interest in assisting in the rebuilding of St. Louis’s many disinvested neighborhoods.

Since then, Martinez has spent years working with St. Louis-area efforts to develop and promote mixed income and affordable housing, innovative economic development, historic revitalization, and safety, security, and health programming for residents. He has served as Executive Director of the Grand Rock Community Economic Development Corporation, the Vashon/Jeff-Vander-Lou Initiative, and Community Renewal and Redevelopment, Inc. In January of 2017, Martinez was appointed as the Executive Director of the North Newstead Association (NNA). The NNA (which recently merged with CRD) is recognized as a community development corporation and has developed over 180 units of affordable housing in addition to promoting a number of human development initiatives for families residing in North St. Louis City.

Martinez has served two terms with the St. Louis Housing Authority Board of Commissioners; during his first, he was elected as the Board’s youngest-ever chairman. He serves on several advisory boards and committees designed to increase minority (MBE), women-owned (WBE), and Section 3 business and workforce participation on both publicly and privately funded construction projects, and is the co-founder of the Minority Contractor Initiative (MCI), which provides training, capacity building and technical assistance to St. Louis-region MBE/WBE/Section 3 construction firms. Martinez is also a long-time member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Martinez has received numerous community service awards from regional and national organizations, including the Human Development Corporation; Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.; Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.; Better Family Life; Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.; Metro Sentinel Journal; Senior and Disabled Services Committee; St. Louis Argus Newspaper; Employment Connection; St. Louis Housing Authority; Community Asset Management Company; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Committee; and the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council. He also has received the Harris-Stowe State University Distinguished Alumni Award. Martinez serves on the boards of several civic organizations, including the Community Builders Network, Central Patrol Business/Police Association, Civil Rights Enforcement Agency, North Grand Neighborhood Services, Inc., the City of St. Louis Community Jobs Board, and the City of St. Louis MBE/WBE Advisory Board.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Closing the City’s Growing Wealth Gap

By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Director of the Racial Wealth Divide Project at the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED), and Jason Purnell, Associate Professor at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University

This column was originally published in The St. Louis American.

Dedrick Asante-Muhammad

Conversations about race often feature reminders that, although imperfect, our society has made much progress toward racial equity. Although a comparison between antebellum America and the world we live in today may support that finding, evidence abounds that when it comes to racial wealth inequality, things are getting worse, not better.

Take, for example, a recent report released by CFED and the Institute for Policy Studies, which revealed that if the trends of the past 30 years continue, it will take African-American households 228 years to accumulate the amount of wealth white families enjoy today. Latino households would need 84 years to reach the point where the average white household is today.

Jason Purnell

More than two years after the senseless killing of Michael Brown Jr. and the months of unrest that followed in the wake of the Ferguson tragedy, racial wealth equity is no better than it was then. Perhaps the only thing that has changed is that we’ve started paying attention.

Some of that attention has been directed toward understanding the true depths of the racial wealth divide. To understand the ever-growing racial wealth gap in America, one needs to look no further than right here in the St. Louis area.

The liquid asset poverty rate in the city of St. Louis—the percentage of residents who lack the savings needed to weather a job loss or other financial emergency—stands at 53.1 percent, nine percentage points higher than the national average. Likewise, the percentage of un- and underbanked households in St. Louis stands at 37.9 percent, meaning that nearly four in 10 households in St. Louis are likely to rely on predatory financial products that strip them of their hard-earned money because they don’t have access to a safe, affordable banking account.

However, we know that the story for households of color—although incomplete, given the challenges associated with disaggregating data by race—is even worse. Nationally, black households are twice as likely to be liquid asset-poor than their white counterparts. Hispanic households nationally are liquid asset-poor at an astonishing rate of 71 percent. These numbers explain, in part, why the average net worth of black and Hispanic households is $7,113 and $8,985, respectively, while the average net worth of white households exceeds $110,000.

We also know that these poor financial outcomes for St. Louisans of color are contributing to poor outcomes in other areas as well. Health disparities between black and white households, for example, run deep. Black residents in St. Louis County are more likely to die at a younger age than their white counterparts. In fact, the 2014 “For the Sake of All” report released by Washington University in St. Louis noted that a child born in predominantly white Clayton can expect to live 18 years longer than a child born in the majority-black Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood in North St. Louis. Research also indicates that black residents get sick at younger ages, have more severe illnesses and are aging, biologically speaking, more rapidly than whites. Scientists say this is the result of cumulative stress.

Michael Brown Jr. and Ferguson raised national awareness of the racial wealth and health gaps in St. Louis, and yet neither of these gaps were mentioned once during the presidential debate held here in early October. Perhaps this is because solutions don’t fit neatly into sound bites.

But the good news is that around the country, city leaders are implementing local initiatives to combat some of the biggest factors driving racial and economic inequality—unemployment, low wages and expensive housing—with the potential to have impact beyond financial well-being, including health. Both “For the Sake of All” and the Ferguson Commission made recommendations for how to get this done in St. Louis, and a diverse, cross-sector set of stakeholders is working to translate recommendations into action.

Our economic success as a region depends on addressing the racial wealth and health gaps. We know we can get there, but doing so will take all of us. To learn how you can get involved, visit strongfinancialfuture.org.

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Dedrick Asante-Muhammed is Director of the Racial Wealth Divide Project at CFED. As Director, Dedrick’s responsibilities include strengthening CFED’s outreach and partnership with communities of color, as well as strengthening CFED’s racial wealth divide analysis in its work. CFED’s Racial Wealth Divide Project will also lead wealth-building projects that will establish best practices and policy recommendations to address racial economic inequality.

Before CFED, Dedrick worked for the NAACP, where he was the Senior Director of the Economic Department and Executive Director of the Financial Freedom Center.

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Dr. Jason Purnell is an associate professor in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis. He is trained in both applied psychology and public health. After undergraduate study in government and philosophy at Harvard University, he received his doctoral degree in counseling psychology from the Ohio State University and his Master of Public Health degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry.

Dr. Purnell’s research focuses on how socioeconomic and sociocultural factors influence health behaviors and health outcomes and on mobilizing community action to address health equity and the social determinants of health. He is currently leading a Missouri Foundation for Health-funded project called For the Sake of All. A final report was released in May of 2014. The project, now in its third phase, is focused on implementation of the report’s recommendations with a broad set of cross-sector stakeholders.

Dr. Purnell is very active in the St. Louis community, both personally and professionally, including service on the boards of Beyond Housing and the American Youth Foundation. Dr. Purnell is a member of the Leadership Council and co-chair of the Data and Technology Committee for the Ready by 21 St. Louis collective impact initiative focused on positive outcomes for children and youth in the region. He was appointed by Archbishop Robert J. Carlson to the Peace and Justice Commission of the Archdiocese of St. Louis in 2015. In 2016, he was named Person of the Year by The St. Louis American newspaper. Also in that year, he received the Dr. Corinne Walentik Leadership in Health Award from the Missouri Foundation for Health, FOCUS St. Louis’s Leadership Award, and Eden Theological Seminary’s Reinhold Niebuhr Award.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Where Do St. Louis City Mayoral Candidates Stand On Affordable Housing?

Candidate Responses from the February 22nd Mayoral Forum at the Sheldon

Question: A fourth of African-American families in the city spend more than 50 percent of their monthly income on housing. The need for affordable housing in the city is therefore overwhelming. As mayor, if you become mayor, how will you address the issue of affordable housing in the city?

Lewis Reed

Lewis Reed: Well, the first thing we have to do is establish development zones. Take a look at all the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA) property that the City owns, take a look at our carrying costs, and roll those carrying costs up into a first-time homeowners’ program. When we establish these development zones within our city, we can work to bring renters in, and we can work to bring new homeowners into these development areas, and make sure that there are housing options available from the lowest all the way up to the highest in housing. I think that’s how we begin to make sure that we have areas that are integrated across the City of St. Louis, and we take care of affordable housing all at the same time. One of the things that we cannot do is repeat the problems of the past by continuing to warehouse poor people all within the same area. I think that that’s a problem. But if we do it in a cohesive and a planned manner, we can make a big difference in the lives of people.

Andrew Jones

Andrew Jones: Again: I’m not a politician, but again, I work in those areas, working with community development corporations in Southern Illinois. What you’re trying to do in that particular region—you’re trying to integrate different stratas of income, class, and things of that nature. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But when it does work, it’s because you have a comprehensive plan. And what I need to know and see is the comprehensive plan for community development for the City of St. Louis. Every city that I work with has a comprehensive plan that they stick to to the letter, and they know what fits their particular community. I don’t know if we know what fits our community in trying to get people to move and get into areas where there is affordable housing. It is critical to have affordable housing. But you have to have the right strategic plan so you can have the right mix in order for it to work.

Lyda Krewson

Lyda Krewson: I think certainly there is a need for more high-quality affordable housing in the City of St. Louis—and, frankly, in our region. So we would need to spend more funds on that. There are funds allocated every year to affordable housing that are actually not spent. If you look back historically, the way affordable housing happened during the turn of the century—the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s—it was integrated housing. Mixed-use housing works the best. We don’t need to have all affordable housing in one area. Affordable housing should be mixed into all neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis. That’s the way it was originally developed, and it should be continued to be developed there. There are 25,000 vacant properties in the City of St. Louis. About half of them are owned by LRA. About 7,000 or 8,000 of those are buildings. We’ve got to figure out how to get people back into those LRA buildings that can be rehabbed—perhaps work with the community development housing corporations that already exist, and neighbors and small developers.

Jeffrey Boyd

Jeffrey Boyd: Over 25 years ago, my wife and I moved to our distressed neighborhood, and we transformed a four-family flat into a three-family because we were concerned about providing affordable housing for people. So for over 25 years, we’ve been providing affordable housing, and as landlords, we have never increased the rent. And we’ve had tenants as long as 10 and 15 years. But in the City of St. Louis, with thousands and thousands of vacant lots, there’s a great opportunity for us. There’s a great opportunity for us to transform all of our distressed neighborhoods, north and south. We need to package all of these LRA vacant lots and buildings and give developers a chance to bid on them and create mixed-used developments throughout the City of St. Louis. The City of St. Louis has been doing development so backwards. What we do is we wait for developers to hand us a proposal and decide whether we’ll fund it or not. We need to stop doing that. We need to plan our own development for our own success in our communities, and we have to include affordable housing as well as other mixed-income uses. And homeless has to be part of that conversation. So I have a plan I’ve been talking about for all of my campaign, and I look forward to implementing it.

Tishaura Jones

Tishaura Jones: I’m not afraid to say that I agree with a Republican. Mr. Jones was right when he said we don’t have a comprehensive citywide plan for development, and that’s exactly what we need. And it needs to include inclusionary zoning for affordable housing. I would include that on new projects, like the tower that’s going up on Kingshighway and West Pine—that would be nice if there was some affordable housing there. We need to rebuild the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and make sure that we can use those funds as creatively as we can to help small developers. Also: include community benefit agreements in new developments, stop focusing on large developers, and help our small developers get access to properties so they can rebuild and rehab homes.

Antonio French

Antonio French: So the first the thing we need to do is fully fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and as mayor, I pledge that we will fully fund that every year. That has to happen. The second thing is when we give large incentives to developments in the nicer parts of town, the more affluent parts of town, we need to require that it has a certain percentage of affordable units so people can have economic diversity in these areas as we rebuild our city. And lastly, when it comes to LRA buildings, we need to make sure that we are getting these buildings off of our rolls and back into the hands of people who want to rehab these houses and live in them. And if that means giving it to them for $1.00 and also giving them some grants to help them do it, then that’s what we need to do. Because we need to get these buildings back occupied and off our rolls.

Click here to read more candidate responses from last week’s forum.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

St. Louis City Mayoral Candidates on Community Development Issues

Select Candidate Responses from the February 22nd Mayoral Forum at the Sheldon

On February 22nd, 2017, CBN partnered with nine regional initiatives to host a two-hour mayoral forum at the Sheldon. Transcribed here are select responses to forum questions that are especially relevant for those involved in community development work.

“Lightning Round” Questions

How will you vote on the ½ cent sales tax increase for economic development?

• Antonio French: Yes, but keeping in mind that all of that money will not go to a MetroLink.

• Jeffrey Boyd: Yes, but I do think we should also redistribute the proportions that we’re considering for MetroLink to neighborhoods.

• Andrew Jones: No. Poor people can’t afford it.

• Lyda Krewson: Yes, but don’t be mistaken: the amount of money that is allocated to MetroLink is not going to be enough to do the match for MetroLink and build North-South, which we need to do.

• Tishaura Jones: No. I think we need to go back to the drawing board and come up with another proposal.

• Lewis Reed: Yes, absolutely—because we need a North-South MetroLink, and we need it to grow.

Public funding for a major-league soccer stadium?

• Antonio French: No.

• Jeffrey Boyd: I don’t have enough data. I want to make sure that it actually creates jobs and brings revenue to the City—gives pay raises, delivers City services more effectively. And is it part of our overall strategic plan?

• Andrew Jones: MLS soccer has not turned a profit in 21 years of its existence. It should have never gone past the first person’s desk. No.

• Lyda Krewson: I think it’d be great to have MLS soccer, but I don’t think the City ought to own the soccer stadium.

• Tishaura Jones: No. We have 99 problems and soccer ain’t one.

• Lewis Reed: We have 99 problems and soccer ain’t one.

New restrictions on payday lenders: will you vote yes or no?

• Antonio French: I’m going to vote no on that one, and I’ll tell you why. I don’t think it’s fair that we make that business ten times more expensive than liquor stores and real nuisance businesses in our neighborhoods. So I think that’s too high.

• Jeffrey Boyd: Yes. They are predatory lenders.

• Andrew Jones: No. Free market: they have an opportunity to conduct business.

• Lyda Krewson: Yes. I think we have way too many payday lenders. I don’t really like the $5,000 fee for a payday lender, because I wonder where that goes next. Does it next go to a business that you don’t like? But I will vote for it.

• Tishaura Jones: Absolutely. We need to get rid of payday lenders.

• Lewis Reed: Absolutely. But I think we’re going to be challenged. We may lose in court because of what Mr. French said over there.

Consolidating the Recorder of Deeds and Assessor’s Office and using the savings for police body cameras. How will you vote?

• Antonio French: No. I think it’s completely dishonest to say that this is about body cameras. This is a political attempt to eliminate the office. We need body cameras, but that is not enough to pay for it. So people have been conned into doing that.

• Jeffrey Boyd: Absolutely no. I think it’s a fraud. I reject the fact that a state legislator like Senator Jamilah Nasheed gets on board and dictates to us what we should do instead of coming to talk to us about how we should govern ourselves.

• Andrew Jones: No. And if we were taking care of our fiduciary responsibilities, we would have had the money to pay for the cameras.

• Lyda Krewson: No, although I think both of those are good subjects to really, seriously consider. They’re not related, and they shouldn’t be in the same question.

• Tishaura Jones: No.

• Lewis Reed: Absolutely not, because it does not cover the cost of body cameras. It’s a ruse.

From bicycle lanes to MetroLink expansion, and from trails to sidewalks, many transportation projects are discussed in the city. As mayor, what is the most important transportation initiative other than MetroLink expansion that you would pursue?

• Antonio French: Better bus transportation. Most people use buses. So bus transportation needs to improve in the City of St. Louis.

• Jeffrey Boyd: I would also say bus transportation. I think Metro should come with express service so that people can not take an hour and 45 minutes to get from St. Louis City to St. Louis County.

• Andrew Jones: I think the highest ridership is in North St. Louis. I think if we can make sure that we have the adequate buses, the state-of-the-art buses, I think that’s our primary focus. That’s the reason I’m not for MetroLink expansion.

• Lyda Krewson: Better bus service, more frequent bus service. Also—simple things: syncing the traffic lights, considering eliminating some of the one-way streets. Using some professional planning, traffic planning services.

• Tishaura Jones: I agree with everything that’s been said about expanding bus services.

• Lewis Reed: Expanding bus services, number one. But we also need to take a look at what we can do to be more renewable in the city. I think we should look at a car-share program. We have that downtown. I also think we should look at a bike-share program.

On development projects that receive City support, should developers who fail to meet minority participation requirements be financially penalized?

• Antonio French: Yes, and I’ve introduced legislation to do just that.

• Jeffrey Boyd: I think absolutely, over a certain dollar amount. We couldn’t do that with people that are just doing two houses.

• Andrew Jones: I think we should not discriminate across the board.

• Lyda Krewson: Yes, absolutely. There ought to be clawback provisions for any incentives if the developer doesn’t meet the terms of the redevelopment plan. And that would include the minority participation goals.

• Tishaura Jones: Yes, absolutely. We should hold developers accountable when they don’t meet those goals.

• Lewis Reed: Absolutely. We should treat it as a breach of contract.

Should the City spend about $100 million over the next 30 years to upgrade the Scottrade Center?

• Antonio French: No.

• Jeffrey Boyd: I’m not convinced it’s a good deal.

• Andrew Jones: Ditto.

• Lyda Krewson: I voted against that at the Board of Aldermen.

• Tishaura Jones: No.

• Lewis Reed: Yes. If we’re talking about creating jobs and economic activity, we have to invest, especially in our own property. We own the building. We can shutter it or fix it.

Select Questions from Round 2 and Round 3

This goes to the four members of the Board of Aldermen. In the spring, voters will decide whether or not they want to use public funds to build a major league soccer stadium, and part of the stadium’s funding source dips from the same tax revenue used to fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Affordable housing advocates say that if the stadium initiative passes, there is no chance that the funding for affordable housing will increase or even be funded at its minimum level of $5 million annually. So for the four aldermen: please explain why you voted for or against the Board Bill that established the funding structure for the stadium, and how will your decision impact affordable housing opportunities?

• Jeffrey Boyd: Boy, that’s a good question. I don’t remember that finance package affecting affordable housing. If that got by me, I absolutely oppose that. For too long, for many years, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund has been shortened by the current administration. I believe we’re $2 million in the hole based on what they extracted from it by not funding it fully at $5 million. So if that’s part of the deal, I would absolutely be opposed to that particular bill. But that was not part of my understanding, that it would negatively impact the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

• Lyda Krewson: It does not need to negatively impact the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Frankly, the use tax, which is the source of revenue that this is coming from, has plenty of money in it to fully fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. We have been using it for other things. But this new piece of use tax is unrelated to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. We ought to fully fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and frankly, we ought to spend all the money every year that we budget there, because we don’t do that.

• Antonio French: I voted no, because I was fully aware that the money that the stadium would be using would normally go towards the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, demolition of vacant buildings, and the police department. And so it is a slap in the face for people who need better housing in the city, who rely on the Housing Trust Fund that we have not fully funded—and we’re going to take that money and give it to millionaires to build a soccer stadium at the same time we are closing a homeless shelter downtown. It makes no sense to me. I think it’s immoral, and we need to get our priorities straight down in City Hall.

• Lewis Reed: It will not dip into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The way the funding structure is set up there, like Alderwoman Krewson stated a little bit earlier, we have enough money in the fund to fully fund it. So it does not impact the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

Just to be clear, can you raise your hand if you voted to put the stadium measure on the ballot?

[Jeffrey Boyd, Lyda Krewson, and Lewis Reed raise their hands.]

And raise your hand if you didn’t.

[Antonio French raises his hand.]

I’d like to get the other two candidates’ say on this entire stadium situation.

• Tishaura Jones: I have been consistently against using public funding for stadiums, and if I were on the Board, I would have voted no.

• Andrew Jones: Well, previously I mentioned that the MLS has not turned a profit. They utilize cities to get funds and raise capital. They did that. I sit on the Economic Development Commission for the City of Edwardsville and other commissions. And they tried it at the City of Edwardsville eight years ago. If the project doesn’t work, if it doesn’t pass muster with conventional financing, the economic development policy should be to pass it on and tell them to get their financing together. The project doesn’t make any sense, but we’re entertaining this stuff. And then we’re saying we’re broke.

If you look at tax incentives through a racial equity lens, the barometer for success is whether or not these incentives have created a more inclusive and equitable city. Please critique yourselves on the tax incentive projects that you have been involved in or publicly supported or opposed. For aldermen, please talk about the board bills that you have written for TIFs and tax abatements. Again, the barometer is whether or not the incentives have encouraged gentrification and a stronger divide between the haves and have-nots.

• Jeffrey Boyd: I am proud of my use in my community with tax abatement, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and historic tax credits on a state and federal level. We did a $34 million housing project in my neighborhood to bring affordable housing against all odds. I was told that it would never be done for 15 or 20 years. But we bundled these tax incentives together to create a $34 million housing development that has 112 new residential units and 7,500 square feet of commercial space between Martin Luther King, Cote Brilliante, Clara, and Burd Avenue. And we saved Arlington School that had been vacated since 1993. It was pigeon-infested and had drug activity and all kinds of illegal activity going on. They begged me to tear that building down, but I resisted, because I had hope and a vision that one day a developer would come and rehabilitate that school. And we have 22 loft apartments in that school as a model of what they’ve done in the Central West End and in the southern parts of the City of St. Louis. I am so proud of my use of tax incentives on that project. It gave us great hope in the 22nd Ward and one of the most distressed neighborhoods in our city.

• Tishaura Jones: As I said before, we’ve given away over $700 million in TIFs and tax abatements over the last 15 years. I often say that we give it out like Halloween candy. And 85 percent of that went to the Central West End and Downtown, and it’s absolutely led to gentrification of those neighborhoods—because thousands of African-Americans have moved out of those areas and can no longer afford to live in those areas. So going forward, I would support having a citywide plan with community input and attaching community benefit agreements to all large developments so we can make sure that we’re getting a return on our investments for any future developments that take our tax dollars, or when we use tax incentives for those developments. As Treasurer, I have publicly opposed the stadium—all of the stadiums, actually, for the last four years that I’ve been a local elected official.

• Antonio French: The largest TIF the City has ever done is this Paul McKee TIF. I’m the only alderman up here who voted against that, primarily because of how that community was treated. So I don’t understand how you can say you view things through a racial equity lens when you support legislation like that, or take money from Paul McKee. What he’s done in that community is a shame. That is development that is destructive, that moves people out, like much of the development that we’ve seen in the Central Corridor and some other areas. We might have seen these areas come up, but what happened to those poor people that used to live there? They don’t live there anymore. They’ve been pushed out. So the kind of development that we have to have in this city is one that includes the people who live in those areas right now, and brings more people in. We need more diverse communities—not just racially diverse, but also economically and class-diverse communities. Too often we think that bringing an area up means pushing people out. I don’t support that.

• Lyda Krewson: Tax incentives, whether it’s a TIF or tax abatement, is about half art and about half science. And our objective should be to give the developer as little incentive as possible without killing the project. Because if we kill the project—if the project does not happen—we don’t have those jobs, and we don’t have the development. I want to cite just a couple of projects: The Loop, for example. Fifteen years ago, there was no Pageant; there was no Moonrise Hotel; there was no Pinup Bowl; there was nothing in the Loop. That did have an incentive: ten years of tax abatement. They’re all paying taxes now. It did not displace anyone, because there was no one there. There were no businesses there; there was no one living there. Olive is another great example. So if you think about Olive—the 4300, 4400, 4500 blocks of Olive—there was no one living there 15 years ago. Those were projects that were tax abated. That would be the Field School, the Lister Building, 4448 Olive. There were no people displaced there, because it was all vacant, boarded up, with some ceilings and roofs falling in. And so I think that was a very good use of tax abatement in both of those locations.

I just wanted to follow up with a couple of the tax abatements that you have, in your past—some of them were just for individual homes. Do you feel that at all causes gentrification? Or what are the impacts of just having the tax abatement on an individual home that’s in a well-to-do area?

• Lyda Krewson: Yeah, I actually don’t think I have tax abated an individual home in the 28th Ward. I’d have to think back over 19 years. But that would be a very rare situation. It would have to be a house—I can think of one house now: the back was off of the house; the garage had fallen down. There are exceptions to this. And I tell you what: if you live on a block with vacant properties, there is nothing worse than having vacant homes unoccupied on your block. So nothing good happens in a vacant building. But by and large, the tax abatement that has been used has been used because the property was vacant, and no one was displaced as a result of it.

• Lewis Reed: As Alderman of the 6th Ward, I had an opportunity to use tax incentives to rebuild areas like the Gate District. I don’t know if any of you live in the Gate District, but it made a big difference in that area. And one of the things that we did when we went into the area—you can choose to do development with a neighborhood or to a neighborhood. And we chose to do development with the neighborhood. What that meant was that as we came down the block, we worked with individual homeowners who had lived in their homes forever, and made sure that they could take part in the coming up of the area. And it allowed them to stay in their home, and then gain the additional value from their home because we have rebuilt the entire neighborhood. So what the Gate District looks like now is one of the most integrated neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis. We have people of all races, nationalities; we have people of all income groups all living in the Gate District together. And it has been a huge success. We could do that all over the city.

• Andrew Jones: Well, again, I’m not a politician, but I am an economic development practitioner for multiple cities in Southern Illinois. I think what we’re doing here—we’re mixing tax abatements and TIFs as if they’re one unified policy. There’s a policy for residential application; there’s some merit there. But you’re looking at science—probably 99 percent of it, where you’re dealing with commercial and industrial. Smaller cities that I sit on the economic development commissions and boards with—we do not lead with any tax incentives. We do not have the intermodal properties that the City of St. Louis has: phenomenal infrastructure, a lot of things to attract businesses that want to make money. These cities don’t lead with it. Most practitioners in the best practices don’t lead with incentives. That is a last resort. We want to make sure by doing qualitative analysis that these projects, these initiatives, pass the muster of financial analysis. If they don’t, they should be round filed in the first trash can that you can see. And the city that is financially strapped like the City of St. Louis—we should not lead with financial instruments to attract them here. We have enough to attract them if we clean up the crime.

A fourth of African-American families in the city spend more than 50 percent of their monthly income on housing. The need for affordable housing in the city is therefore overwhelming. As mayor, if you become mayor, how will you address the issue of affordable housing in the city?

• Lewis Reed: Well, the first thing we have to do is establish development zones. Take a look at all the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA) property that the City owns, take a look at our carrying costs, and roll those carrying costs up into a first-time homeowners’ program. When we establish these development zones within our city, we can work to bring renters in, and we can work to bring new homeowners into these development areas, and make sure that there are housing options available from the lowest all the way up to the highest in housing. I think that’s how we begin to make sure that we have areas that are integrated across the City of St. Louis, and we take care of affordable housing all at the same time. One of the things that we cannot do is repeat the problems of the past by continuing to warehouse poor people all within the same area. I think that that’s a problem. But if we do it in a cohesive and a planned manner, we can make a big difference in the lives of people.

• Andrew Jones: Again: I’m not a politician, but again, I work in those areas, working with community development corporations in Southern Illinois. What you’re trying to do in that particular region—you’re trying to integrate different stratas of income, class, and things of that nature. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But when it does work, it’s because you have a comprehensive plan. And what I need to know and see is the comprehensive plan for community development for the City of St. Louis. Every city that I work with has a comprehensive plan that they stick to to the letter, and they know what fits their particular community. I don’t know if we know what fits our community in trying to get people to move and get into areas where there is affordable housing. It is critical to have affordable housing. But you have to have the right strategic plan so you can have the right mix in order for it to work.

• Lyda Krewson: I think certainly there is a need for more high-quality affordable housing in the City of St. Louis—and, frankly, in our region. So we would need to spend more funds on that. There are funds allocated every year to affordable housing that are actually not spent. If you look back historically, the way affordable housing happened during the turn of the century—the 1910s, 1920s, 1930s—it was integrated housing. Mixed-use housing works the best. We don’t need to have all affordable housing in one area. Affordable housing should be mixed into all neighborhoods in the City of St. Louis. That’s the way it was originally developed, and it should be continued to be developed there. There are 25,000 vacant properties in the City of St. Louis. About half of them are owned by LRA. About 7,000 or 8,000 of those are buildings. We’ve got to figure out how to get people back into those LRA buildings that can be rehabbed—perhaps work with the community development housing corporations that already exist, and neighbors and small developers.

• Jeffrey Boyd: Over 25 years ago, my wife and I moved to our distressed neighborhood, and we transformed a four-family flat into a three-family because we were concerned about providing affordable housing for people. So for over 25 years, we’ve been providing affordable housing, and as landlords, we have never increased the rent. And we’ve had tenants as long as 10 and 15 years. But in the City of St. Louis, with thousands and thousands of vacant lots, there’s a great opportunity for us. There’s a great opportunity for us to transform all of our distressed neighborhoods, north and south. We need to package all of these LRA vacant lots and buildings and give developers a chance to bid on them and create mixed-used developments throughout the City of St. Louis. The City of St. Louis has been doing development so backwards. What we do is we wait for developers to hand us a proposal and decide whether we’ll fund it or not. We need to stop doing that. We need to plan our own development for our own success in our communities, and we have to include affordable housing as well as other mixed-income uses. And homeless has to be part of that conversation. So I have a plan I’ve been talking about for all of my campaign, and I look forward to implementing it.

• Tishaura Jones: I’m not afraid to say that I agree with a Republican. Mr. Jones was right when he said we don’t have a comprehensive citywide plan for development, and that’s exactly what we need. And it needs to include inclusionary zoning for affordable housing. I would include that on new projects, like the tower that’s going up on Kingshighway and West Pine—that would be nice if there was some affordable housing there. We need to rebuild the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and make sure that we can use those funds as creatively as we can to help small developers. Also: include community benefit agreements in new developments, stop focusing on large developers, and help our small developers get access to properties so they can rebuild and rehab homes.

• Antonio French: So the first the thing we need to do is fully fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and as mayor, I pledge that we will fully fund that every year. That has to happen. The second thing is when we give large incentives to developments in the nicer parts of town, the more affluent parts of town, we need to require that it has a certain percentage of affordable units so people can have economic diversity in these areas as we rebuild our city. And lastly, when it comes to LRA buildings, we need to make sure that we are getting these buildings off of our rolls and back into the hands of people who want to rehab these houses and live in them. And if that means giving it to them for $1.00 and also giving them some grants to help them do it, then that’s what we need to do. Because we need to get these buildings back occupied and off our rolls.

Forward through Ferguson and For The Sake Of All have called for policies that force developers to include low- and moderate-income housing within development projects with public funds. As mayor, would you move the city toward an inclusionary zoning policy that encourages or requires mixed-income neighborhoods? Why or why not?

• Andrew Jones: Well, I think this is a no-brainer. I certainly want to give people an opportunity. You want them to be able to lift themselves up, to be a part of a community where they can benefit just like everyone else within that community. And certainly, when I become mayor, I certainly will look at implementing that type of philosophy, because again—everyone should have an opportunity. I look at it through a human lens, and if we can get people opportunity to move in a particular area and take advantage of all the benefits that come from a growing, vibrant area, they should not be not permitted.

• Lyda Krewson: Absolutely. I think that goes to the way I answered the last question, which is that affordable housing ought to be in every neighborhood. All neighborhoods should be mixed-income. Mine as well. And there actually is affordable housing in my neighborhood. I think it’s critical to do that. And I would certainly fully fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and cause that to be a mixed-use neighborhood.

• Antonio French: The answer is yes, but I tell you, the problem with the current process is that it is completely developer-driven. The City does not have a strategy, a plan, for what we want to do with this city and how we want to build our neighborhoods. And so what we do is we wait for developers to present these plans, and it often follows campaign contributions as well—that’s where the incentives go. So what we need is a strategy for the entire city to make sure that we are growing our city for the first time in a very long time, and doing so in a way that makes it economically, racially, and class-diverse.

• Jeffrey Boyd: I think Alderman French just kind of talked about what I wanted to do. I just said it in my past remarks. I think the City of St. Louis needs to take a comprehensive approach to the whole city, look at how we allocate incentives, and find all the opportunities to provide affordable housing and mixed-income housing.

• Tishaura Jones: I believe I answered this in my last response. Absolutely. I would include inclusionary zoning in every new project to make sure that we have mixed-income housing and affordable housing in new developments.

• Lewis Reed: Absolutely. And I’d also issue an executive order to make sure that each and every department understands that that is the will of that office.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis recently ranked generational poverty, meaning families in poverty for at least two generations, as the greatest issue affecting low- to moderate-income households. What is your plan to address the growing concern? Which City resources would you leverage to address the issue?

• Lyda Krewson: I think that most all of us know that generational poverty is a very, very serious issue, not just in the City of St. Louis, but in our country. Education, frankly, is the starting point to breaking the cycle of generational poverty. Congratulations to St. Louis Public Schools—three or four weeks ago, they were fully accredited. It does start with education. And then, frankly, it starts with opportunities for all to have a good job. There are very few things that a good job won’t cure. So we need to prepare people to have and obtain those jobs.

• Lewis Reed: Absolutely. You know, if we’re not creating jobs and opportunities for people throughout our community, we should not be surprised at the end of the year when we come back and we see our murder rate still at 188. But if we begin to reconnect people to our community and begin to create jobs and opportunities for them so that they can move into new careers, we can see a mass change across our city. So I absolutely would support.

• Andrew Jones: Well, again, I think if you remember earlier, I talked about how jobs cure just about every ill that we have in society. When you look at workforce development—and I do sit on a workforce development board for Bond County, Fayette County, and Madison County in Illinois—you’re looking at jobs that are not being fulfilled because people don’t have the skill sets, and they’re not attending the trade schools—things of that nature. We have to get people trained to be able to take on these career-wage jobs that are available. We have to do this. Therefore, I am absolutely for building initiatives, having private partnerships as well with the City, so that we can get people in positions so that they can take advantage of it—so we won’t have to talk about minimum wages. We can talk about career wages, and people can be full participants within the system, because if they do that, they will flourish and take off. And the last thing, since I have a little bit of time: when they talk about households, because I look at numbers all day long, that is a static picture, when you take a household at a notice. But I think we should look at some of the IRS numbers, and you will see that people are doing a whole lot better than what they report.

• Antonio French: I think it starts with two things: education and jobs. Education is key. Now, I know what it’s like to be poor. I grew up in a single-parent household. When my mom passed away, I moved in with my grandma, and we were still poor. And my mom and my grandmother always told me that the way to success was through education. I’ve reached the highest level of education of anybody ever in my family: I’ve got my MBA and my bachelor’s degree. And now I have opportunity. And that’s what we have to give every kid. The largest group of poor people in the City of St. Louis are children. And so if we don’t start making sure we give them the tools to be successful in life, they will continue that cycle. Now, also related is jobs. For the folks that are already adults, 18 and older, we have to make sure that they have jobs. Now, the truth is that 20 percent of our adult population in the City of St. Louis doesn’t even have a high school diploma. So we have to make sure we are getting them skills to be able to get better jobs, and also currently put them in positions where they can get jobs right now. That, to me, means investing in small businesses. Because it’s the small businesses located in neighborhoods that are more likely to give them a shot. And so as part of my crime plan, actually, it involves investing in small businesses in crime-ridden neighborhoods.

• Tishaura Jones: The City of St. Louis still continues to suffer from the legacy of Jim Crow. And as a result, we have a huge gap between haves and have-nots. The median wealth of a white family is $134,000—versus a black family is $11,000. And that’s why I’m so passionate about the work we’ve done in the Office of Financial Empowerment to help people make better decisions with their money. I also think that we need to expand our STL Youth Jobs Program to be a year-round jobs program, because that way it puts money into youth’s pockets, and helps them take of their family. And when we talk about education and jobs, we have to marry it with financial literacy, because a lot of us get our habits—good, bad, or indifferent—from our families. And we have to change that trajectory.

• Jeffrey Boyd: Yes. As a young man growing up, I surely understand what poverty looks like. I often tell people I’m allergic to poverty, because I didn’t like it—I didn’t appreciate it. But I had a great-aunt that taught me the value of an education, and she told me, “If you get a good education, then you don’t have to live this lifestyle, and connect with resources.” So what I believe is that we have to work with our public schools and make sure we’re preparing our children for jobs of the future. And we need to work with our institutions of higher learning to make sure that adults that want to be retrained and young people graduating from high school are entering into our institutions of higher learning to get the educational experience that they need to take advantage of these jobs, like in the high-tech industry and cybersecurity. We also need to make sure that trainee opportunities through our SLATE program are available. I took an opportunity to go to the military to get training. It was a phenomenal opportunity for me. It made me a better adult. So I know the value of training and education. As mayor, I will make sure that our SLATE program is well-funded—where young people and people who want to change careers will have access to training opportunities so that they can have a better quality of life, and not have to be stuck in a cycle of poverty.

I want to be clear here that the Mayor of St. Louis does not have a lot of direct control over the education system, but they do have some things that they have to do, and they have the bully pulpit. One of the things that became very evident after Ferguson is our schools, especially in St. Louis and parts of St. Louis County, are still heavily segregated. And I want to know what each of you would do using the bully pulpit to convince more middle- and upper-class white residents—like myself—to send their children to St. Louis Public Schools.

• Lewis Reed: Well, the first thing you have to do as the mayor is you have to believe in the product that you’re selling. So I think it’s important, as the mayor, that we position our school system appropriately. We talk about the great things that are happening within our system, we talk about the advantages of people sending their kids to our St. Louis Public School System. We continue to work to provide more funding for them by working with the state and trying to get more funding through DESE (Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education). I know that’s a tough thing, but we have to approach it and try to get that done. I think we also need to understand what’s happening within the classrooms. You know, across the last ten years, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved with the rebirth of the St. Louis City Public Schools. And I’ve had an opportunity to really, truly understand what’s happening with the teachers and administrators. We have great staffing. And we have great kids going to our schools. And there are a lot of great success stories that we need to tell.

• Lyda Krewson: As I said earlier, congratulations to St. Louis Public Schools. I think it is absolutely critical that the public schools continue to get better, because while we have the best high school in Missouri at Metro High School, the schools are also uneven. And not all of the schools are good enough. Every single decision that we make about education ought to be driven by what is best for the kids. I also happen to support charter schools because I think they are educating 10,000 kids in the City of St. Louis today, and many of them are doing a good job. And of course, our parochial schools. Our city would have much fewer people here today had it not been for the role the parochial schools have played over many years in our city, educating our kids. Every parent wants the best for their kid. And every educational decision ought to be about not what’s best for the administrators, not what’s best for the teachers’ union, not what’s best for any individual, but rather what’s best for the kids.

• Tishaura Jones: As Treasurer, I started the College Kids Savings Account Program, which gives a college savings account to every kindergartner in a public school that’s district or charter. And we have a great partnership with district and charter schools. What I would do as mayor is continue that same partnership. Even though the mayor has no direct authority, that doesn’t mean that she can’t be a better partner. And then working with our school administrators to see what we can do to remove barriers to education for our children. For example, also in the Treasurer’s office, every year, we pick a school and do a community service project. We clean that school from top to bottom, work with the principal to see what he or she needs, and think about what our school system would look like if more of us developed those partnerships with our schools, no matter where our children are sent to school. So I think that we as a community need to develop better partnerships with our schools, no matter where we send our children.

• Andrew Jones: Well, I think the problem can be fixed relatively simply by offering opportunities for choice. The biggest asset that most people have, their most sacred asset, are their children. And people hold onto and they cling to and they want the best opportunity for the enrichment and development of their child. If you have an opportunity to put your child in a school that fits them perfectly, whatever their needs may be, I think you should have an opportunity to enroll your child in that particular school. It’s very simple to me. School choice, market opportunities, and I think you will see that your children will flourish.

I have to follow up there. How will that make the St. Louis Public Schools better if lots of people are using school choice options not to go to the St. Louis Public Schools?

• Andrew Jones: Well, school choice is what it is: a market opportunity. And again, when you’re talking about the City of St. Louis and its school systems, what you will find traditionally is that will force them to do a better job in training and educating their own children.

• Jeffrey Boyd: Our school system suffers from the same perception that our city as a whole suffers from. Now, everyone who lives in the City of St. Louis doesn’t live in a bad neighborhood. All City of St. Louis schools are not bad schools. My wife and I made the conscious decision and choice to send our children to St. Louis Public Schools. I’m a proud product of St. Louis Public Schools. My son, my oldest daughter graduated from St. Louis Public Schools; my youngest daughter is a junior at Metro, one of the top-performing schools in the State of Missouri. My grandbaby attends Washington Montessori. If you want to change a system, you need to be part of the system. And as mayor, I want to be out in the schools, inspiring these young children, attending the rallies at school to motivate them to achieve academic excellence. We can change our schools around if we all, as adults, are willing to partner with our school system in a meaningful and impactful way that changes lives of our children. And as mayor, I will set the standard.

• Antonio French: I think the first thing I would do is lead by example. I send my little boy to a St. Louis Public School, and I will continue to do that as mayor. I think it’s important to highlight that St. Louis Public Schools has many very high-performing schools. Now, you mentioned segregation in SLPS. One of the tragedies, though, is that the white students that go to St. Louis Public Schools are more likely to go to a high-performing school, and the African-American students that go to SLPS are more likely to go to an under-performing school. Now, that is something we have to fix. And as mayor, I will partner with SLPS to make sure we are raising up those schools that are struggling and that are low-performing in the city. We can also do that through support services through our Recreation Department to make sure that we have mentoring and after-school programs, including tutoring, in City facilities after school to make sure education can continue even after school hours.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Let’s Get Rid of the Words “Property” and “Manager”

By Frankie Blackburn, co-founder of Trusted Space Partners

This column was originally published in the National Housing Institute’s Rooflines blog.

One of my first jobs as a young housing professional in the 1980s at a local public housing authority was to support site staff, both property managers and social workers, in improving their performance and increasing positive outcomes for residents. I quickly learned that property managers were the levers for change. As the people responsible for daily operations of their complex, they knew residents on a more intimate level than anyone else in the agency. They also typically had life experiences more similar to residents and could generate new ideas more authentically and accurately.

As I continued my career as a nonprofit housing developer and community builder, I sought to work closely with property managers of all types. I have encountered amazing people working hard to straddle all the tensions built into the role. I have met others who fell into the work with little intention, operating from a place of fear or inertia, and leaving behind unintended negative consequences.

Most agree that people like teachers, nurses, librarians, policemen, social workers, and small business owners are vital to a healthy community. However, residential property managers never make this list. These hardworking people are often underresourced, underpaid, underappreciated, over-stressed, and not supported or trained to perform well in our diverse and culturally isolated society. We could be more connected, mutually supportive, and successful if we invested greater resources into the role of property managers, especially in affordable housing complexes.

This need not be costly, and could likely bring a bigger return than many elaborate, expensive social programs. However, it would require a shift in thinking by both leaders of affordable housing development and owners of property management companies. It would also require a different approach to recruiting, educating, and retaining people who can succeed in these crucial frontline roles.

There is often little careful and/or creative attention given to recruiting, hiring, training, supporting, and managing property managers, especially compared to other aspects of affordable housing development. Most innovation in our industry focuses on advocating for programs and funding or securing sites, design, public approval, permitting, and financing.

My business partner, Bill Traynor, and I have worked with three property management companies over the last year that are developing a new, more human-centered approach and set of practices. We are also partnering with the National Initiative on Mixed Income Communities to offer our shared philosophy and approach in settings where mixed-income housing will replace older public housing units.

We hypothesize that if the affordable housing industry repositions property management to be as important as property design and financing, we can shift the typical affordable housing operating culture of fear and division, where residents are afraid of losing benefits and staff struggle to be creative within a highly regulated framework.

These are our recommended steps:

Step One: Honest Acknowledgement of their Challenging Role

Affordable housing property managers are “on the job” 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Their residents are often constantly present. They must manage complex structural (physical and regulatory) and social systems. The social system is extra complex because so much is a stake, the positional power differential is so extreme, and those who live and work in these settings face social stigmas. Property managers should be reminded that we recognize these challenges.

Step Two: Honest Appreciation of their Important Role in the Quality of Community Life

The many thousands of property managers in low- and mixed-income communities across the country are intimately involved in the lives of millions of people and hundreds of communities. Institutional actors with the most personal connection to the lives of low-income families might be housing development maintenance staff. These hardworking people are not often asked to contribute their insight, even though their actions and day-to-day decisions help determine whether our communities work or fall apart. We must elevate this role and resource it as well as we resource affordable housing production.

Step Three: Use Participatory Research Methods to Reimagine and Redesign the Role

The industry must invest in redesigning this role and look broadly for opinions on new models. My top four characteristics of an excellent property manager are (1) deep experience living in or holding other positions within similar housing contexts; (2) excellent communication and relationship building skills across lines of difference; (3) maturity to hold two competing paradigms (one human-centered and the other, highly rigid and regulatory) in a healthy, honest tension; and (4) love of hosting and connecting others in shared physical space.

Step Four: Invest in New Property Management Company Prototypes

The traditional philosophy, form, and practice of property management does not support the role envisioned above. The industry should experiment with (and fund research and development to support) a business model that can spark and sustain a new approach to staffing a site, beginning with the property manager, but including other positions like leasing agents, maintenance staff, and resident services coordinators. Two basic shifts are needed: a shift to shared versus separate goals and a shift to “co-investment practices” that produce shared aspiration, efficiency, and accountability among staff and residents.

Step Five: Rename the Position

The property manager role should be renamed to convey the position’s broad scope and an inspirational invitation for those who might feel called to take on the challenges. My vote is to get rid of the words “property” and “manager.”

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Frankie Blackburn is co-founder of Trusted Space Partners and has been a partner there since 2011. Prior to this, she was the founder and executive director of Impact Silver Spring from 1999 to 2010, sparking a new network of over 1,000 people of all different racial, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds working for social change in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Frankie has over 30 years in public interest law, affordable housing, community development and public and nonprofit management. Previously, she helped found Silver Spring Community Vision, a comprehensive service center for the homeless, and served as Vice President for Montgomery Housing Partnerships, where she developed a new model for partnering with low- and moderate-income families living in MHP housing. While working for the Housing Opportunities Commission, she spearheaded a new county-wide approach to service-linked housing and the long-term needs of the growing homeless population. In the early years of her career, she served as a legal services attorney for the National Housing Law Project.

​In 2010, Frankie was named the Outstanding Diversity Leader by the Washington, D.C. Chapter of Fundraising Professionals. In 2005, she was honored as one of Montgomery County’s 25 Outstanding Women in Business, and in 2000, she received the Linowes Leadership Award and the Comcast Cool Woman Award. Check out Frankie’s blog summarizing her work with Impact Silver Spring here.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Protecting the Missouri Historic Preservation Tax Credit Means Protecting Community Revitalization

By Bill Hart, Executive Director of the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation (Missouri Preservation)

Through my work with the non-profit Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation, I am asked almost daily about funding possibilities for historic buildings. A few grants are available to non-profits through government agencies and private foundations. Options for the individual property owner, however, are much more limited. The Historic Preservation Tax Credit is typically the one financial incentive I can offer someone interested in preserving or repurposing a historic building in Missouri. This tax credit is the only program that makes historic preservation and economic development one and the same.

Historic Preservation Tax Credits have been used to renovate and reuse historic buildings, promote neighborhood stabilization efforts, and support local economies for 50 years. The Federal Credit, established in 1976, has helped communities nationwide transform the appearance and economic health of urban cores and small towns. It has allowed our country to see historic preservation not only for its intrinsic value, but for its capacity to spur economic development and vitality. The Federal Credit has been limited to income-producing properties since 1984, but continues to encourage smart development and has stimulated over $78 billion in private investment, representing the renovation and reuse of over 41,250 historic buildings. Today, the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Incentive Program allows a 20 percent credit on qualified rehabilitation expenses (QREs).

Missouri is one of over 30 states to offer a tax credit for historic building rehabilitation. Missouri’s Historic Preservation Tax Credit (HPTC), installed in 1997, is administered by the state’s Department of Economic Development and offers a 25 percent credit for QREs. Missouri’s credit is for commercial and residential buildings, and is available not only to developers with income-producing properties, but also to individual home owners and small developers looking to rehabilitate historic buildings for return to the market.

Since its inception, the State Tax Credit has been used in nearly 3,000 projects statewide and has incited over $8 billion in private investment—dollars that are spent on historic building stock before any tax relief is issued. Unlike some grant programs, use of HPTCs is neither prioritized or politicized. If an application is granted and the applicant follows accounting and design guidelines, the home owner or developer is guaranteed to receive the credits. Many states have crafted their own historic tax credit programs using Missouri’s as a model.

The Missouri HPTC is an excellent economic development and neighborhood stabilization tool. David Listokin and his group of researchers at the Center for Urban Policy Research at Rutgers University report that historic preservation surpasses both new construction and highway building in creating jobs, increasing household income, and raising revenue from both state and local taxes. Additionally, investment in rehabilitation keeps on giving. New construction generally requires about 50 percent building materials and 50 percent labor, while rehab uses 60 or 70 percent labor. This labor intensity affects a community’s economy on two levels. We buy materials from all over the nation, but to purchase the labor of a plumber or electrician, we go across the street. Once purchased, materials don’t spend any more money. But the plumber gets a haircut on the way home, buys groceries, and joins the YMCA—so his or her paycheck recirculates within the community.

Washington, D.C.-based PlaceEconomics recounts surprising findings on the economics of building rehabilitation versus manufacturing. They report that one million dollars of manufacturing output in Missouri will add on average about $470,000 to household incomes. But one million dollars in rehabilitation will add nearly $704,000.

Some might argue that job creation is over once building renovation is complete, but PlaceEconomics Principal Donovan Rypkema has two responses to that: “First, real estate is a capital asset—like a drill press or a box car. It has an economic impact during construction, but a subsequent economic impact when it is in productive use. Additionally, since most building components have a life of between 25 and 40 years, a community could rehabilitate 2 to 3 percent of its building stock per year and have perpetual employment in the building trades.” And these are jobs that can’t be shipped overseas.

Missouri’s HPTC was instituted without a yearly dollar amount limit on credit-supported rehabilitation, but has since been capped twice, with today’s cap at $140 million. That limit has not been reached in the years since the 2008 economic crisis. But during the first half of fiscal year 2016-2017, we have already reached over $100 million, with over half a year left to go. Simultaneously, there is movement within the legislature to impair or eliminate the HPTC program. Senate Bill 6, sponsored by President Pro Tempore of the Senate Ron Richard, proposes an additional cap of $20 million. Senate Bill 226, sponsored by Senator Andrew Koenig, suggests eliminating tax credits altogether. State Representative Kathy Swan is almost certain to reintroduce a perennial bill requiring all tax credits be awarded based on a yearly budget allocation. Whatever happens, we face a tough battle in the state legislature to keep our HPTC intact.

I encourage you to lend your voice physically and economically to saving our Historic Preservation Tax Credit. Contribute to the lobbying effort at historicmo.org or support Preservation Day at the Capitol on February 1st.

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Bill Hart joined the staff of the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation (Missouri Preservation) in 2008 as its first full-time Field Representative. Since then he has logged thousands of miles visiting every one of Missouri’s 114 counties and bringing boots-on-the-ground preservation services to Missouri communities. He has conducted workshops on historic building materials and conservation, historic recognition programs, heritage tourism, tax credits, and the economic benefits of historic preservation. He has worked to enlarge and strengthen Missouri Preservation’s Local Liaisons Program, seeking to identify a preservation point person in every county. Through his work in identifying emerging issues and providing advocacy for endangered resources, he has been instrumental in forming Missouri’s first historic barn alliance.

Bill was named Executive Director of Missouri Preservation in 2014. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Historic Preservation from Southeast Missouri State University, where he was inducted into the Sigma Pi Kappa honor society for history. He did his graduate work in Architectural History at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia, where he received the Tau Sigma Delta Bronze Medal for Excellence in Architectural History. He has a special interest in commercial archaeology and roadside architecture and recently wrote Historic Missouri Roadsides, a travel guide to historic Missouri towns on two lane highways, published by Reedy Press.

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Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Aldermen Should Protect Current Language Of Board Bill 227

By Sal Martinez, CBN Board President (representing CBN’s Board of Directors) and Executive Director of North Newstead Association

The Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis (CBN) recognizes that the City of St. Louis is facing a sizeable opportunity to invest in the economic development of our region through a proposed ballot initiative for a 1/2 cent sales tax increase. The current proposal dedicates funding to the varied aspects of economic development, including neighborhood revitalization, expansion of MetroLink, safety, workforce development, and infrastructure improvements. CBN must emphasize the importance of retaining this comprehensive use of funds for economic development in Board Bill 227 (BB227).

CBN has members carrying out neighborhood revitalization in over 50 neighborhoods throughout north, central, and south St. Louis. These practitioners have commended the neighborhood revitalization aspect of BB227 for employing best practices for improving our communities. This source of funding and approach toward neighborhood revitalization is critically important as federal funding for housing and community development has been cut over the past ten years and state support and distribution of tax credits continues to be uncertain. Between 2003-2014 alone, the city lost 49 percent of its Community Development Block Grant funding and 61 percent of its HOME funds when adjusting for inflation.

The current details of the sales tax proposal include language for a percentage allocation dedicated to neighborhood revitalization that is supported by the many organizations and businesses within CBN. Earmarking expenditures to percentages is crucial to ensure that investment in all the core issues of economic development in the City are maintained for years to come. Furthermore, changes in language that do not specifically identify a percentage allocation of funds could result in CBN not supporting the bill.

Increased investment in community development and neighborhood-based planning allows more dollars to be leveraged by the private sector into helping families and communities thrive. Without the support and leveraging power of protected revenue streams, St. Louis will continue to face tough decisions on how to support economic and community development with shrinking federal and state resources. CBN urges the Board of Aldermen and the Ways and Means Committee to protect the current language of BB227 with regard to the percentage allocation of funds and the ongoing support for neighborhood revitalization in comprehensive economic development.

As a regional association of nonprofit community building organizations, banks, foundations, government agencies, and businesses that support building strong neighborhoods in our region, we at CBN believe that strong neighborhoods help to build a stronger and more competitive regional economy. We appreciate the Board of Aldermen considering ways to increase support for our City’s neighborhoods and community-based economic development.

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Sal Martinez has established himself as a force in the comprehensive revitalization of the St. Louis region. Martinez, who received his Bachelor of Science degree in Urban Education in 1994 from Harris-Stowe State College, was employed by the college as Neighborhood Services Coordinator from 1996-1998. During his tenure at College, Martinez served as a liaison to many local social service and non-profit agencies. These experiences had a profound effect on Martinez, as he developed a keen interest in assisting in the rebuilding of St. Louis’s many disinvested neighborhoods.

Since then, Martinez has spent years working with St. Louis-area efforts to develop and promote mixed income and affordable housing, innovative economic development, historic revitalization, and safety, security, and health programming for residents. He has served as Executive Director of the Grand Rock Community Economic Development Corporation, the Vashon/Jeff-Vander-Lou Initiative, and Community Renewal and Redevelopment, Inc. In January of 2017, Martinez was appointed as the Executive Director of the North Newstead Association (NNA). The NNA (which recently merged with CRD) is recognized as a community development corporation and has developed over 180 units of affordable housing in addition to promoting a number of human development initiatives for families residing in North St. Louis City.

Martinez has served two terms with the St. Louis Housing Authority Board of Commissioners; during his first, he was elected as the Board’s youngest-ever chairman. He serves on several advisory boards and committees designed to increase minority (MBE), women-owned (WBE), and Section 3 business and workforce participation on both publicly and privately funded construction projects, and is the co-founder of the Minority Contractor Initiative (MCI), which provides training, capacity building and technical assistance to St. Louis-region MBE/WBE/Section 3 construction firms. Martinez is also a long-time member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Martinez has received numerous community service awards from regional and national organizations, including the Human Development Corporation; Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.; Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.; Better Family Life; Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc.; Metro Sentinel Journal; Senior and Disabled Services Committee; St. Louis Argus Newspaper; Employment Connection; St. Louis Housing Authority; Community Asset Management Company; Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday Committee; and the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council. He also has received the Harris-Stowe State University Distinguished Alumni Award. Martinez serves on the boards of several civic organizations, including the Community Builders Network, Central Patrol Business/Police Association, Civil Rights Enforcement Agency, North Grand Neighborhood Services, Inc., the City of St. Louis Community Jobs Board, and the City of St. Louis MBE/WBE Advisory Board.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Measuring the Benefits of the City’s Tax Incentives

By Otis Williams, Executive Director of the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC)

This column was originally published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The City of St. Louis, under Mayor Francis Slay’s direction, commissioned an independent study of all incentives offered throughout the city as a checkup to our progress and to monitor the results of incentivized projects.

It was done in an effort to reinforce our chief goal as the city’s economic development agency, which is to support and cultivate sustainable economic and financial growth—both of which need to be equitable and sufficient to provide enough jobs and opportunities for our residents, while also supporting the fiscal health of our government bodies.

The incentives study was conducted to show us what we’re doing well and where we can improve. Together with the Board of Aldermen, we are focusing on those improvements and dedicated to implementing the study’s recommendations, which include: a more quantitative decision-making process for awarding incentives; a more solid connection between incentive use and a citywide development plan; and better data collection and tracking afterward to help better inform future decision making.

To that end, we are moving forward with three interrelated goals. First, we will refine and build upon the quantitative decision-making process, which will help ensure that we are investing in projects that strengthen the city and wouldn’t happen otherwise.

Second, we are committed to using incentives to advance equity. Although incentive allocation ultimately follows the market (we can’t incentivize projects that don’t exist), we are raising the bar for projects in stronger, more stable neighborhoods, while making it easier to get more help out to distressed parts of the city.

Third, St. Louis Development Corp. will continue to recommend the appropriate incentive package to the Board of Aldermen to depoliticize the incentive process, which is designed for—and has resulted in—strengthened neighborhoods and the attraction and retention of city residents, who shop and eat in the city and pay sales and earnings taxes.

We already have developed and implemented a sophisticated system that measures the direct financial costs and benefits to the city, schools and other taxing bodies. However, we are measuring more than just the financial aspects of projects. We also are assessing projects by their contribution to quality, walkable urban design and opportunities provided to our minority and lower-income residents.

Beginning in early 2017, we will implement the first part of our online database and incentive tracking system. And, by the end of this year we will commence a community-driven, citywide economic development plan, which will take about a year to complete and will then drive future use of development resources, including incentives.

Similar to the report, I also want to clarify some misunderstandings of how incentives work.

Value-capture incentives like tax increment financing and tax abatement do not reduce the city’s existing revenue. These redevelopment tools freeze property tax revenues at their pre-development levels—which owners must continue to pay—while helping to fill the capital gap needed to successfully invest in our city. These property owners must also pay for permits and hire contractors—all of which generate additional revenue.

The city then captures the subsequent growth in tax revenue when the abatement expires. These subsidized projects would not happen without financial assistance and thus the city would be in identical fiscal positions with or without the incentive, for the duration of the incentive period. In fact, once the abatement expires, the city is in a stronger position by reaping a larger contribution to our tax rolls, because of that incentive.

While growth in the city is both measurable and strong, I caution that we still have work to do to retain and grow our population. Incentives have played a large part in resuscitating neighborhoods and slowing the population slide, especially in neighborhoods that were in poorer condition a decade ago, such as The Grove, Tower Grove South, Fox Park, Shaw, McKinley Heights and now north of Delmar with the North Sarah development project. Old North, Hyde Park and Arlington Grove also are seeing greater growth.

All of these neighborhoods have been supported by tax-abated homes and projects that would not have been completed otherwise. As a result of the stabilization and growth that we have seen, the city has been able to reduce the length of the abatement period necessary to ensure that a project happens. The use of both TIFs and abatements has declined. And now on the heels of a major construction boom and sustained growth among many of the city’s neighborhoods, we are at a juncture where we can become more surgical in our approach to allocate them.

We are encouraged by the renewed interest in the use of public incentives, and we are committed to being good stewards of these vital tools to use them for the betterment of our city.

Otis Williams is the Executive Director of the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC). Williams leads the agency’s economic development activities City-wide, aimed at bringing people, jobs, and investment to the City. Prior to joining SLDC, Williams served over 28 years in the U.S. Army and retired at the rank of Colonel. Since coming to St. Louis in 1998, Williams has served as a Senior Project manager, Director of Major Projects, and Deputy Executive Director for the St. Louis Development Corporation. In those positions, Williams had a leadership role in several multimillion-dollar development projects that are revitalizing the City’s downtown and neighborhoods.

Williams previously served three years on the National Board of Directors of the Society of American Military Engineers. He was the 1997 recipient of the National Black Engineer of the Year Award for Government Service; received the Better Family Life in Excellence Community Service Award (2014); was selected by the Community Development Administration (CDA), City of St. Louis as the 2015 Executive Director of the Year; was honored with the Joe Rinke Owner Award by the St. Louis Construction Cooperative at the Eighth Annual Construction Awards Luncheon (August 2015); received the 2016 J.H. Poelker Levee Stone Award from Downtown STL, Inc.; and received the 2016 Governor’s Award for Career Service in Economic Development. He is a registered professional engineer in the District of Columbia, and is a member of the International Council of Shopping Centers, the Urban Land Institute, and other professional and social organizations.

Williams is a native of Covington, Georgia and is married to the former Gwen Smith of St. Louis. They have two adult daughters.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.