We are performing a sustainable rehab on a historic home in St. Louis, where we will live in retirement after the work is complete. Pictured, above, are equally historic homes in the same neighborhood, as they appeared just two years ago, vacant, abandoned, ravaged and gutted by the firm and relentless pressure of time and neglect.
But then, a counter-force arose, the force and energy of neighborhood and community, clearing the eyesore that would have once blighted the view from my soon-to-be home and many others. Come out into the tall grass for the story of what happened, what's happening and what will happen with the city lots once occupied by the fallen down rat traps pictured above.
Our new community is a mix of about 40% single family homes with 60% multi-family, mostly 2 family flats with some fourplexes and a handful of larger buildings. Almost all of the homes are over 100 years old and most are in good condition, many are in excellent condition and some others are as pictured, but there are ever fewer and fewer of those. The kind of dilapidation pictured happens when a landlord gives up and walks away because spending money on the maintenance required to keep the property habitable for tenants becomes too inconvenient.
Eventually, the landlord who privatized the profits, as usual, gets to socialize the risks and consequences, because the city must sooner or later take a hand in clearing away the debris and ruins. Which is just what happened. We have a strong neighborhood association and, squeaky wheels getting the most grease, the heavy equipment showed up and took on the dirty work.
After that, the neighborhood, working with our Alderwoman at City Hall, kept up pressure on the City to get title to those lots. The objective was to obtain a community garden lease for the property. Neighborhood volunteers also kept the pressure up on the land itself, obtaining truck loads of fallen leaves to spread as mulch.
The effort organized itself as a subcommittee of the neighborhood association and focused upon establishing a fruit orchard (plus a few garden plots) on the land. The plan is now well along to establish sixteen fruit bearing trees on the property. The lease is complete.
Last weekend, with the weather a bit warmer, volunteers staked out a plan for the plantings and worked on mulching and weed control.
There is still a lot of work before this will really happen, but it appears that an orchard will be planted next October, taking the place of the dilapidated horrors pictured at the top of the post.
When we purchased our home we knew the vacant land was there and had heard talk of putting in a community orchard. It's an unlikely but altogether welcome serendipity that the story we heard is not only true, but about to fully become true. Dumb, luck, that.
For those following our progress, we closed the sale on February 19 and are currently negotiating with three builders to implement our architect's excellent plan for converting the 2 family flat to our home. I hope to, by May, have hired the builder, submitted the historic tax credit application and closed construction financing. Here is a tease:
BEFORE
AFTER, FRONT
AFTER, SIDE
Sat Mar 28, 2015 at 1:33 PM PT: A neighbor has updated details of the demise of the structures formerly occupying the orchard lots. Predatory, absentee landlord abandonment had nothing to do with it. Regrettably, the story is even sadder, as a hard pressed working class neighbor struggled to keep roofs over the head of an extended family and became overwhelmed. It seems that the social safety net has many holes large enough to swallow entire buildings.