According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the city of St. Louis recently launched a new program that seeks to put prospective homeowners into vacant houses for $1. The Dollar House program was created by 21st Ward Alderman John Collins-Muhammad and it’s focused on troubled neighborhoods. “People are eager to move back to the city of St. Louis,” Collins-Muhammad told the Post-Dispatch. “We have to market our city and market our communities, and make it attractive for people to move back.”
Collins-Muhammad’s resolution, passed last summer by the Board of Aldermen, directed the St. Louis Development Corp., which oversees the Land Reutilization Authority, to set up the program.
LRA, the city’s land bank, currently maintains an inventory of roughly 12,000 vacant properties — lots and buildings. Of that number, 522 houses — or 4 percent of the total — are included in the new Dollar House program. To be eligible, the buildings must be single-family residential structures, less than 1,500 square feet in size, and in the LRA inventory for at least five years.
Most of the properties are located in north St. Louis, with more than half of the 522 concentrated in four neighborhoods: Walnut Park East, the Greater Ville, Wells-Goodfellow and Walnut Park West. There are a smattering of eligible properties in the south side neighborhoods of Marine Villa, Dutchtown and Gravois Park.
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