Property tax relief
An excellent article by Peter Hoffman. Property tax assistance is affordable and would do a lot of good
The St Louis Contrarian
Providing Independent and Intelligent Insight on St. Louis Public Policy Issues
Archive for the category “homeownership”
Increasingly Whites are moving to Historically Black Neighborhoods
www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/27/upshot/diversity-housing-maps-raleigh-gentrification.html
An interesting article from the New York Times. Sort of a form of gentrification. Values will increase which is good for residents but historic nature of neighborhoods will change. We are seeing some of this in north Webster Groves. Written by Paul Dribin
Crime and Vacancies
I have attended various task forces of the Vacancy Collaborative in St. Louis. What I find fascinating is that no one in the group has defined why there are a large amount of vacancies in St. Louis. The answer is really quite simple; crime, crime, crime. There are several facts which back my assertion:
1. The parts of St. Louis that have a reasonable crime rate do not have significant vacancies and tax foreclosed properties sell quickly
2. The areas that have high crime rates have a high number of vacancies.
What is troubling to me is that no one seems to want to talk about this. It would be as if a discussion about lung cancer deaths did not include the problem of smoking.
Written by Paul Dribin
New St. Louis urban homesteading program
this is a great idea and needs to be expanded. Why wait for property to be in LRA inventory for five years?
Garbage Research
I continue to be appalled by some of the garbage research that gets published in the name of social science and urban development. A recent one was published by The Brookings Institution titled The Devaluation of Assets in the Black Community. This is certainly a provocative title.
The research presumed to show that single family homes in the black communities are worth less than comparable houses in white communities. This is something that is hardly a surprise. These differences can be explained by lots of reasons, most prominently crime and schools. The authors made elaborate adjustments to properties and concluded there must be other reasons than the usual real estate ones for the difference in price. That difference of course was race.
If they could have shown comparable neighborhoods where everything was the same except race they could have made a point. Of course, they didn’t do any such thing.
My real problem is the concept of devaluation which assumes there is a proper value for any piece of real estate, or anything else. I could argue my house in St. Louis is devalued compared to San Francisco. These comparisons are meaningless. In St. Louis, black families moved out of historically black neighborhoods in huge numbers for reasons I stated, safety and good schools. Hardly surprising. Written by Paul Dribin
Vacancies in St. Louis
As you may know, there has been a collaborative formed to address the huge vacancy problem in St. Louis. Various task forces are meeting and I participate in two of them. Most of the people at the meetings appear to be community activists with a smattering of developers.
The discussions have generally been good but rather general in nature. We do not seem to want to address the key problems which I see as:
1. Outmoded methods of management and sales by LRA.
2. The higher cost of doing business in St. Louis.
3. Historical preservation
4. Crime
5. The overall oversupply of housing and undersupply of population in the region.
6. The unwillingness of the group to accept demolition.
Written by Paul Dribin
Green lining in St. Louis
I heard a talk today at one of the many marginally useful meetings on vacancies in St.Louis. The discussion was about green lining, an effort to artificially prop up property sales by financing the gap between appraised value and total development costs on single family houses.
The issue as presented seems dubious; that tons of people are waiting to do major rehab to houses on the north side who can’t get the appraisal they would need. The green lining program would put together a pool of institutional funding that would provide second mortgages to fund the appraisal gap.
There are several problems with this approach. The first problem is that the homebuyers would immediately be under water. What if they want to sell the property and cannot pay off the mortgage. Second, the proposal does not address credit issues which I think are a bigger problem than appraisals. The program should go all the way and guarantee the purchaser’s equity. But the real issue is creating demand in an area with high crime and poor schools. Written by Paul Dribin
McKee Again
The Paul McKee effort on the north side of St. Louis appears to be going nowhere. I have been a fan of Mr. McKee and was impressed with his work at Winghaven in St. Charles County. I still believe him to be a sincere person.
The project he tried to undertake in St. Louis may have been too big for anyone to handle and he faced obstacles of community and political resistance. He certainly made his share of mistakes, especially in not engaging the community in a better manner. Nevertheless, he has not lived up to his commitment, has rehabbed almost no houses, and has needed the Geospatial Project buying out his properties to save him. Too bad. Written by Paul Dribin
The Real Cause of Vacancies in St. Louis
At the suggestion of Todd Swanstrom, I read a book by his colleague titled Housing Dynamics in Northeast Ohio by Thomas E. Bier. The book written about the Cleveland area is also applicable to St. Louis and many other cities.
The argument in the book backed by data is that vacancies occur when there is an oversupply of housing in the region. This oversupply of housing occurs because developers are looking to profit by building more housing, and land is cheaper in the suburbs. The author points out that when there is an oversupply the oldest, most worn out housing loses all market desirability and becomes vacant. The problem is made worse because developers can more economically build in the suburbs and the infrastructure in the suburbs is stronger.
This plays out when we look at the north side of St. Louis. There will only be a turnaround if the city figures out how to streamline its development requirements, crime is controlled, and schools turn around. In addition a marketing campaign to young people around the company would help. We could offer free housing and lots of land. Written by Paul Dribin
Container Houses
The Post recently wrote of a couple in Old North St. Louis who are building a house consisting of storage containers. As long as the housing meets code, why not? The sad part of the story is that lenders are not willing to make mortgage loans on the north side. Isn’t that redlining? Written by Paul Dribin
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