Preserving Homes to Strengthen Communities

St. Louis, like many other communities and like households across the country, struggles with aging and poor-quality homes, as the St. Louis Affordable Housing Report Card shows.

Such homes further add to the financial burden of low- and moderate-income (LMI) households. According to estimates in a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, the total costs of needed home repairs nationally was $126.9 billion for occupied units in 2018 (PDF), with units occupied by low-income households making up about 40% of that amount. Most importantly, researchers have highlighted physical and mental health implications for households living in poorly maintained homes that further impact key social determinants of health.

Collaborating on Home Repair Help and Research

Todd Swanstrom

Todd Swanstrom, the Des Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Policy Administration at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL), has been researching and facilitating community dialogues on improving the home repair ecosystem in the St. Louis region for the past several years. Those conversations led to the establishment of the St. Louis Home Repair Network (HRN), which is a coalition of nonprofit organizations that works to provide free and low-cost home repairs throughout the St. Louis region. Additionally, Swanstrom has been collaborating with national researchers to increase and broaden the scope of data collection around the home repair system.

He will be meeting March 12 with other national researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for a peer review session to discuss their research. The session will be followed by a public event March 13 that will focus on best practices for addressing housing deterioration and research on the impact of those measures.

I sat down with Swanstrom for an interview on why this issue is important for creating economic mobility in St. Louis. (Responses were edited for clarity and length.)

What inspired you to conduct research on the home repair system in St. Louis?

About three years ago, the St. Louis Vacancy CollaborativeThe St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative is a coalition working to reduce vacant property in the city of St. Louis. reached out to researchers at UMSL with two questions: What is the extent of housing deterioration in St. Louis? Does this contribute to housing vacancy and abandonment? We soon found out that there is no public data source that documents/measures housing deterioration in St. Louis. A study by the Philadelphia Fed used answers from the American Housing Survey to measure housing deterioration. However, they could not provide St. Louis-specific data because the sample size was not large enough to drill down to the city or neighborhood level.

As a result, we constructed our own questionnaire with funding from the Retirement Research FoundationThe Retirement Research Foundation does business as the RRF Foundation for Aging. in Chicago to conduct a study of the need for home repairs among older homeowners in St. Louis. We found that the average homeowner had over $13,000 in home repair needs. We shared our findings with home repair providers and helped jump-start the formation of the Home Repair Network in St. Louis.

Want to Attend the Event?

• What: Preserving Homes, Strengthening Communities: A Home Repair Symposium
• Who: Researchers, funders, community development practitioners and other experts
• When: Starting at 9:30 a.m. CT, Thursday, March 13
• Why: To hear about insights and the exploration of challenges and solutions for improving residents’ quality of life through housing preservation
• Where: The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
• How: By signing up by Friday, March 7

What does housing deterioration and the repair system look like nationally?

About two years ago, we [the UMSL Community Innovation and Action Center] put out a call for original research on the issue of housing deterioration and housing repair. We received 42 proposals and selected 13 to be a part of an edited book. The goal of the book is to increase public and policy attention on the issue of housing deterioration. We [the authors] all agree that this issue has not received enough attention, one reason being that there is no national data that accurately measure the extent of housing deterioration.

The tentative title for the book is “The Silent Housing Crisis,” because we believe the serious problems caused by housing deterioration are not visible to the public. You may see a collapsing porch, but you do not see the child suffering from asthma caused by dampness and black mold.

What are some key trends emerging around housing repair that could create opportunities for economic mobility and resiliency in low- and moderate-income communities?

There are programs around the country that have begun to address the issue in a more comprehensive fashion. For example, the city of Philadelphia has floated general obligation bonds with the proceeds used to fund home repair. The research has shown that home repairs significantly reduce medical costs for problems like asthma, lead poisoning and falls by seniors. The economic case for home repairs is strong. Too many people live in homes that damage their health and their ability to be fully participating members of the economy and the society.

How does St. Louis stand in comparison to other cities when it comes to the home repair ecosystem and its impact?

Almost every home repair ecosystem in the United States is highly fragmented and burdened by excessive and conflicting administrative procedures. The HRN in St. Louis is working to coordinate the home repair system and make it more efficient and effective. For example, a top goal is to create a common application process for all home repair providers. This will make the system more understandable to the public and [make it] easier to direct people to the best resources to meet their needs. We also need to implement workforce training and business development to expand the capacity of the home repair system because we simply do not have enough qualified contractors to meet the demand.

Strengthening the Home Repair Ecosystem in St. Louis

Swanstrom had several recommendations for improving the local home repair system, including public, private and nonprofit collaboration on financing repairs, from offering grants for those who cannot afford to self-fund repairs, to forgivable loans, to conventional home repair loans.

He also said more needs to be done to give people the knowledge and the resources to maintain their homes on their own, including by offering workshops on home maintenance and a tool lending library. And researchers could document the problem and evaluate the effectiveness of programmatic interventions, he said.

A Crisis of Housing Quality

Swanstrom and his team of national researchers are attempting to change the conversation about the U.S. housing crisis. They believe it is not just a crisis of affordability but also a crisis of quality that inhibits LMI communities from deriving the full benefits of the economy.

Join Swanstrom, our Community Development team, and expert speakers and panelists at the St. Louis Fed March 13 for more insights at the Preserving Homes, Strengthening Communities housing symposium.

Notes

1. The St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative is a coalition working to reduce vacant property in the city of St. Louis.
2. The Retirement Research Foundation does business as the RRF Foundation for Aging.