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Historical February–March 2024 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood has a total of 1247 properties and 349 off-site residential property owners, according to a new study underway by the Housing & Zoning Committee (HZC) of the Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Council.
The property distribution consists of 768 single families, 172 condominium or townhouse units, 223 multi-families, 48 businesses or non-residential, and 40 vacant lots, parks, or parking.
The off-site owner properties represent 30% of all residential properties.
This surprised the committee. Informal estimates of a few years ago suggested far fewer.
The focus of the HZC study is the St. Louis City record of the properties within the SDCC boundaries.
The HZC obtained an electronic copy thanks to the efforts of committee member Linda Cross.The records are in an electronic spreadsheet format, called a “flat file” database.
As received, the data contained many inconsistencies, errors, and omissions that had to be reconciled.
This is not unusual for databases requiring manual data entry and lax enforcement of standards for names, abbreviations, spelling etc. Corrections were identified by the committee of the whole. For example, the original database contained none of the properties within the city limits in Parkview.
We still must obtain the needed information for the new Expo apartment buildings on DeBaliviere. Note that this study defines a property per the city’s records. For example, a building of six rental units is one property, while a building of six condominium units contains six properties.
To no surprise, Washington University is the largest residential landlord with 43.
The next largest landlords that can be identified own 15, 7, 6, and 5. Two landlords own four, eight own three, and 16 own two.
Finally, 217 owners have only 1 property.
However, it is likely that some of the ownership numbers are understated. Many properties are recorded as being owned by a Limited Liability Company (LLC).
The database contains some 60 LLCtype entities.
It is common for a particular person to own several LLCs, one for each individual property.
To date, the committee has identified some but certainly not all the multi-LLC owners. Our own Skinker-DeBaliviere Community Housing Corporation has 12 properties, of which nine are listed as vacant residential lots.
The database does not provide the number of units for each rental property.
However, a boots-on-the-ground survey was conducted to add this information to the database.
The result: there are at least 916 rental units within the SDCC boundaries.
These are spread across all residential types, from single family houses to 24 unit apartment buildings. Washington University has about 303 units. Using the number of rental units and an estimate of the number of occupants per unit, the current SD population is estimated to be about 4808.
This result, of course, depends heavily on the occupancy of each unit, information not provided in the original database. For our purposes, a single family property was assumed to have four occupants.
All other units were assumed to have two occupants.
This approximation seemed reasonable, given that, by city ordinance, the number of unrelated persons in a unit is limited to three. Alternately, the 2020 Neighborhood Population and Demographics Census lists the Total Population of SD as 3899, which is 20% lower than the committee estimate.
This difference, though approximate, supports the committee’s long-held opinion that the 2020 census implied a reduction in population at odds with the experience of permanent residents and real estate professionals alike.
As part of its activities, the SDCC monitors and evaluates community housing issues and participates in multi-party discussions about the future of the neighborhood. For the HZC, the database is a tool to monitor housing occupancy violations in rental properties. Of necessity, the database represents but a snapshot of the neighborhood properties.
The data change constantly due to sales, new construction, and re-purposing. Our corrections and updates are ongoing but incomplete.
However, the committee feels this process is slow enough that the overall findings are representative enough to help guide decision-making.
The HZC anticipates publishing a formal report of its findings.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, February–March 2024.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Archival transcription note: Stated total twelve hundred forty seven conflicts component sum twelve hundred fifty one. Preserve figures and flag arithmetic. Population forty eight hundred eight is modeled occupancy estimate versus twenty twenty census thirty eight hundred ninety nine, not census revision or Hamilton enrollment.
Original source: SD_Times2024_02.pdf, printed page(s) 6; PDF page(s) 6.
