St. Louis is on a path to bankruptcy. Should it be allowed to sell vacant condemned buildings to make ends meet?

Photo above – Interco Plaza, St. Louis. Formerly a newspaper publisher, and before that a railroad junction. The site is currently fenced to keep squatters. vandals, drug dealers and homeless encampments at some remove.

There are a LOT of details about the St. Louis city budget. I won’t go into all of them. 2025 spending will be $1.4 billion. It gives 7% raises to firefighters, and 3% to everyone else. The city spends $5,000 per resident – including infants and children. Their population is shrinking 2% a year, as residents die off or flee.

To help balance the St Louis budget, someone on city council wants to sell an empty building surrounded by a chain link fence. There is debris all over concrete apron inside the fence. The city is now being sued by ANOTHER council member for selling “an undeclared park”.

The vacant eyesore has no grass, no trees, and no public amenities. Obviously, whoever is suing to stop the sale isn’t using this debris field as a park. Someone simply believes a vacant firetrap is a more appropriate use city property than selling it provide affordable housing and/or the parking spaces that go with it.

NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) has reached the apogee of insanity.

If that vacant city office building remains unused/unsold, the city will be unable to collect property taxes on from a future owner. Those uncollected taxes would have helped improve schools, fix potholes, and cover the wage increases for firefighters, teachers, and police. Somebody is saying no to all that, and has their fingers crossed that this firetrap could become a legitimate park someday far in the future and increase the property values of someone's nearby homes.

This is why we can’t have nice things in America. Some jerk always wants to corral every vacant lot and turn it into green space for the benefit of their own home's value.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

Auditor: St. Louis Public Schools could be bankrupt in 6 years | STLPR

City Throws Away Millions of Dollars Previously Invested in Interco Plaza

U.S. Cities Where People Pay the Most in Taxes - Chamber Of Commerce

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Avectoijesuismoi · 36-40

With a bit of a revamp by counting windows you could probably put 7 apartments in it. And revamp the outside to make it a nice garden with some parking for the cars as well. You could most likely even get some communal areas like a pool, gym, sauna

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@Avectoijesuismoi upvoted. i'm all for rehabbing commercial property (especially vacant shopping malls) into affordable housing. the bonus factor with malls - there's plenty of onsite parking already for the new tenants.

if "unnamed councilperson" doesn't want this "green space" (actually, broken concrete) sold to a developer and demolished, they're probably also going to wig out if it's sold to some landlord and rehabbed. "It destroys the character of our neighbor hood. plus our kids like to jump the fence and throw rocks at the windows."

Avectoijesuismoi · 36-40

@SusanInFlorida everyone keeps banding this affordable housing thing around. I am not sure it actually exists as a whole.
What level makes it affordable??

It is almost impossible to achieve taking a structure and converting into affordable housing. There are no matter where you look always costs that can very easily take an apartment from for Example $ 100 000 to $ 200 000 per unit and beyond that even.
The bottom line is to make it worthwhile you have got to make a profit.
For instance that building I can see a penthouse occupying the top floor. A two apartments for three floors below plus some upscale amenities.
7 apartments to sell to people that have or can get the finance.
Convert it to for instance 20 low cost units and your difficulties of selling increase you are now targeting a group that may or may not be able to get the finance to buy it.
My argument always is if you want to rejuvenate and boost an area you need to bring wealth back into it.
I am not talking Musk etc type wealth but I am talking people that have disposable income that will use the local shops etc and generally boost the economy in the area.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@Avectoijesuismoi when housing costs (rent or mortgage payments) are increasing twice as fast, as general inflation, that meets my definition of an affordability problem.

over the past 5 years america has only built half as many housing units as required to accomodate population grown. We're getting like Europe. Everyone demands to live in a picturesque city, where most of the land is already owned by someone else.

Avectoijesuismoi · 36-40

@SusanInFlorida you also can't keep building everywhere either
We actually need to start to allocate more space back to nature. The more people we need the more oxygen we need.
What is actually needed is to slow down population growth as a whole.
Forget about just money at the moment.
The other resources food, water, etc are also no longer matching the number of people, and capacity to produce more and more food is going to be reached very soon and there are going to be horrible consequences.

Add to that that at least 30% of the oceans need to be protected and that means no fishing or any other exploitation of those areas
The treaty to do it has been ratified.
There is an "unofficial funding budget" available to buy up companies and literally shut them down. None of the people involved need to be popular or require votes. There is no political sensitivity so it can just do it.
But it can apply pressure on the politicians to stop bad practices.

One company that was logging and owned the land in the Amazon rainforest has already been acquired and closed down.
Good bye jobs that were there.

SusanInFlorida · 31-35, F

@Avectoijesuismoi the biggest reason natural spaces are "lost" - they are clear cut or burned for agriculture. to feed the world's relentless overpopulation growth.

Avectoijesuismoi · 36-40

@SusanInFlorida it has got to be halted now there is funding to do just that.