Photograph by Josh Monken
In the fall of 1993, the first Bosnian refugees arrived in St. Louis. “I think we sponsored 32 that year,” says Anna Crosslin, president and CEO of the International Institute of St. Louis. “Then the program started growing.” The institute sponsored another 7,000 refugees, and Catholic Charities Refugee Services sponsored another several thousand. Then the secondary migration began: Bosnians who’d resettled in other cities moved here, encouraged by relatives who boasted that St. Louis had better housing and more jobs.
Today, the institute estimates St. Louis’ Bosnian population to be almost 70,000.
The Bosnian refugees worked, saved, and bought their own homes in the blocks between South Kingshighway and South Grand boulevards, south of Chippewa Street. They opened restaurants and coffeehouses in the city, injected cash into local banks and shops, and helped property values shoot up.
They raised those South City property values so high, in fact, that the Bosnians who moved here from other cities had to go straight to more affordable homes in Affton, Lemay, and Bayless.
Many of the Bosnians who bought in the city eventually moved, too, wanting bigger houses and yards in better school districts. Bosnian names started showing up on the high-school soccer rosters in Crestwood, Fenton, Oakville—and most recently, deep Jefferson County.
But instead of abandoning the city neighborhoods they’d transformed, many Bosnians kept those homes and became landlords. “I sign rental checks frequently for new refugees, from Nepal or Iraq or wherever, and recognize the names,” Crosslin says.
