Thousands of vacant buildings take heavy toll on St. Louis police, firefighters

[TexasTowelie]

ST. LOUIS • They don’t contribute much, if anything, to the tax base. They don’t house businesses, at least not legal ones. They’re nobody’s home — except the homeless, who come and go.

But just by standing there, the city’s empty and broken buildings leach untold amounts of money from taxpayers.

Pick virtually any address among the estimated 7,000 to 12,000 vacant structures in St. Louis, and chances are police officers or firefighters have been there — in some cases, multiple times.

Fire and police officials say it’s hard to know exactly how much the buildings where no one lives or works are costing taxpayers. But they can point to some statistics.

Read more: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/tipping-point-thousands-of-vacant-buildings-take-heavy-toll-on/article_aa50237e-f71c-5e25-abed-1492307b6ad3.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1

[SWBTATTReg]

1. A difficult process to undergo, to condemn and remove these empty buildings...part of the ...

solution has been the huge amount of property redevelopment being undertaken in STL MO city (over 8 billions dollars worth). This huge amount of development is also pushing development out into the neighborhoods and causing more and more neighborhoods to be redeveloped.

It just takes time. For example, 800 buildings will be demolished per the article in this year. How many will be redeveloped? I estimate probably 1/2 of them, so perhaps in 5-10 years, this problem will probably abate itself hopefully. At least we're aware of in STLMO city.