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Can $10M of Stan Kroenke and the NFL’s money help St. Louis tackle its vacant building issues? 16%
By Kavahn Mansouri59%
6/25/2026, 3:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 28 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 21.7% saturation with 252 hits. Analysis detected 1,826 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,163 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 32.1% and a BS Rank of 16% (18,377 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 84.00% of the article peer group.
St.
Louis officials are set to make one of the largest one-time investments ever to tackle the city’s sprawling vacancy issues next month.
A $10 million portion of Rams settlement funds aims to reenergize efforts to tackle the city’s estimated 9,000 vacant buildings and 24,000 vacant properties.
A solution has evaded city officials for decades.
Abandoned properties become vacant, fall into disrepair — sometimes becoming dangerous — and cost the city millions a year while lowering property values.
The Board of Aldermen is set to vote on Board Bill 22 next month, allocating the $255 million pot of settlement funds awarded to the city four years ago from a lawsuit against Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke and the National Football League.
Mayor Cara Spencer had proposed a similar bill.
Along with addressing vacant properties, the settlement fund puts millions toward tornado recovery in north St.
Louis, revitalization projects in north St.
Louis and downtown and repairs to the city’s ailing infrastructure — particularly its water system.
If the bill passes, the city would create a Vacancy Reduction Fund overseen by the Public Safety Department.
The fund would aid efforts to address vacancy issues by adding staffing, improving enforcement and implementing data collection and analysis, vacant property stabilization and abatement and redevelopment initiatives.
“This is not enough money for any of these problems that we're trying to tackle,” said Dana Malkus, a lawyer and board member of the St.
Louis Vacancy Collaborative, of the settlement funds.
“But having some allocation of the funds dedicated explicitly to the vacancy issue is a really positive and encouraging sign. ...
It shows me that this is on the radar of our aldermen and of our city government."
The Vacancy Collaborative tracks vacant properties and parcels in the city and works to address vacancy.
Late last year, the collaborative published a 10-year plan, urging city officials to better track and address vacancies and analyze the city’s problems through data.
The report pointed to a fractured system in which roughly a dozen city government agencies and departments are working to address vacant properties, resulting in service gaps and duplication of efforts.
The $10 million in funds will help with some of those issues.
It will fund new positions, such as deviation collections attorneys and paralegals, to cover vacancy-related costs.
The city will also invest in developing and maintaining data and analytics on vacant properties and parcels throughout the city, a task currently performed by the Vacancy Collaborative.
A portion of the funds will go toward vacancy and nuisance property enforcement, supporting personnel, legal operations and enforcement activities to identify, cite, stabilize and remediate vacant and nuisance properties.
The fund will also see to the acquisition, rehabilitation, redevelopment and, when necessary, demolition of vacation properties or nuisance properties.
Half of the $10 million will go into a trust fund dedicated to supporting vacancy-related litigation efforts undertaken by nonprofit organizations and neighborhood groups.
St.
Louis has long had a vacancy problem — but the tornado made it much worse
Vacant parcels and buildings have been a thorn in the city’s side for decades, especially north of Delmar Boulevard, where the group estimates at least 84% of the vacant parcels are located — 60% of which are owned by private entities.
It’s due to the city’s faltering population, a trend that started roughly 75 years ago.
U.S.
Census data estimates St.
Louis has lost roughly 60% of its population since 1950.
“Vacancy is an issue that affects the entire city.
No matter whether you live in a neighborhood where your block is mostly intact or whether you live in a neighborhood where you are one of three people living on your block,” Malkus said.
“As a resident of the city, you're being impacted either way, because of the fiscal impacts for us as a city."
St.
Louis Vacancy Collaboration data shows that half or more of all parcels in the Wells-Goodfellow, Greater Ville, Jeff-Vander-Lou, Walnut Park East, Hyde Park, Hamilton Heights, the Ville and Fairgrounds neighborhoods are vacant.
The vacant parcels and buildings cost the city, too.
It is estimated that each year the city spends roughly $20 million for public safety and emergency services, board-ups, demolitions, mowing and repairs to dangerous homes.
On top of that, the collaborative report points to at least $25 million of lost potential real estate tax revenue each year due to the effects of vacant properties on nearby properties.
“It’s really expensive to not do anything,” said Peter Hoffman, who leads legal aid group Legal Services of Eastern Missouri's neighborhood advocacy program and heads the Vacancy Collaboration’s board.
“It’s $50 million a year that it’s costing us to not take some action here.”
Hoffman describes the city’s vacancy problem as a slow disaster that has developed over the past seven decades in the city.
He said that while the majority of vacant properties and parcels are located in north St.
Louis, there are few neighborhoods in the city without at least some vacant properties.
“There’s vacancies downtown, there’s vacancies in the north side, there’s vacancies on the south side,” he said.
According to the group’s report, the total acreage of vacant properties in St.
Louis is equal to three Forest Parks.
The city’s urban park spans more than 1,300 acres.
Investment is key
Hoffman and Malkus agree that the biggest roadblocks toward taking a bite out of the city’s vacancies are coordination and manpower.
The city’s possible $10 million investment could be the energy it needs to follow in the footsteps of cities like Detroit and Baltimore that have organized and tackled similar vacancy levels.
“It’s not like we have a legal barrier or a legal bottleneck at this point; it really is about capacity and getting these systems to work,” Hoffman said.
“You’ve got to invest in these systems, you’ve got to invest in people who are doing the work to try to reduce vacancy and put them back to productive use.”
Board Bill 22 doesn’t break down how the Rams money will be allocated within the Vacancy Reduction Fund.
It isn’t yet clear how many positions will be created to focus on the problems.
A vote on the bill won’t come this month, as originally expected, due to clerical errors.
Board of Aldermen President Megan Green’s communications director, Yusuf Daneshyar, said a vote on the bill could happen as soon as July 3.
In the meantime, Hoffman and Malkus said vacant properties remain one of the city’s biggest challenges.
Malkus said the $10 million, while not enough to solve the problem, is a step in the right direction.
"Vacancy has just really detrimental impacts on neighborhoods and the people living there,” Malkus said.
“The more that we can be strategic in how we're using our resources and how we're not devoting resources in places we don't need to, the better off all of our residents are."
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