UPDATE, April 20, 2016, 3:44 p.m.: Natalie Vowell reports that Jerreld Fisher has signed the paperwork to get the deed to his home transfered from the LRA into his name. He must still obtain title insurance (an additional $250) before the closing is final. “We now have 18 months to get Mr. Fisher’s home to code to make sure he’s allowed to keep it,” Vowell says. “Ms. Nickson-Harris of the LRA insists she will work with PRTR if we require an extension on this critical deadline.”
UPDATE, March 30, 2016, 10:54 a.m.: Chris Naffziger reports that LRA has accepted an offer to buy back Jerreld Fisher’s home; Project Raise the Roof says they are cautiously optimistic.
Contrary to popular opinion, the St. Louis Place neighborhood as depicted in the mainstream media is not a complete “wasteland.” Generations of residents, whose families have lived in the area for over one hundred years, still occupy houses their ancestors purchased decades ago. Meanwhile, as suburban flight decimated the population of the city, some people chose to stay and invest in areas such as St. Louis Place, while most chose to forget their past. For African Americans, the chance at the middle-class dream of owning a home proved possible along beautiful stretches of streets such as St. Louis Avenue. As shown in the walking tour article I wrote last year, the rows of sturdy Second Empire, Italianate and Romanesque Revival houses still hold their own to anything in South St. Louis. But trouble looms. The neighborhood sits smack within Paul McKee’s Northside development, and half a block from the City’s proposed location for the NGA.
For residents such as senior citizen, widower and navy veteran Jerreld Fisher, whom I interviewed in early March, the twin problems of economic disinvestment and city regulations have coalesced into the perfect storm. Fisher served on the Casimir Pulaski, one of the first nuclear submarines, before embarking on his own career as an electrician. Times have been tough for his business, and Fisher admits to making mistakes over the years. Unfortunately, those mistakes have now cost him his home, lost not to a bank but the City of St. Louis for unpaid property taxes.
I visited his house, which is now technically owned by the Land Reutilization Authority (LRA), where Fisher has lived for several decades. It’s still in good condition, sitting on the edge of the row of stately houses on St. Louis Avenue, and just a couple of doors down from the Griot Museum of African American History. Between Fisher and the museum is a vacant four-family flat, still in good condition but a sad reminder of how fragile this street remains. I was struck by Fisher’s quiet thoughtfulness; he never broke into winding talk of government conspiracies or other whatnot, as I often encounter in my many conversations around the city. He is just a solid, good man, who fell behind on his taxes, around $1,500, and now has lost his home. His wife, Sherrill, passed away several years ago and is buried in Jefferson Barracks; he’s been attempting to raise his daughter on his own.
“The real problem is you’re asking for money from people who don’t have any. It’s blood from turnips. The North Side is a sea of turnips,” laments Natalie Vowell, director of Project Raise the Roof. She’s currently working to buy back Fisher’s house from the LRA, but as so many St. Louisans know, the LRA does not simply sell property, but rather holds it up in a Byzantine process that’s supposed to protect public assets. The problem is, a property ends up at the LRA because it’s not worth much anyway except to the person who is trying to live there. Vowell, who is self-taught in the ways of the tax seizure and LRA purchasing regulations and has helped by her estimate over 50 families through her nonprofit, recently sat down and tried to explain the process to me.
After two hours, I was still confused. And I asked myself, if I’m not able to understand the process of how to save a house from seizure from the government for back taxes, how is anyone else? How is someone who’s working two jobs, or is a single mother, or is developmentally or physically disabled supposed to win? Unlike the protections offered in the Bill of Rights, owners facing tax seizure of their property do not have the right to a public defender.
“Project Raise the Roof should not exist,” Vowell remarks, but she is the closest to an advocate that any of these people have since the government will not provide one. She and Fisher set up a payment plan to pay down his back property taxes, and while he paid off some of it, he fell behind, leading to the seizure of his house. Vowell remains deeply opposed to the relatively short period—three years—that the City of St. Louis allows to pay back taxes; her research has shown that many municipalities allow much longer grace periods, and give a right of redemption where former owners can buy back their house.
Which raises the question: why is the City doing this? What possible positive outcome will taxpayers see from the seizure of Fisher’s house? St. Louis Place may be a beautiful place, with great residents, but the house is really of no value to anyone other than to its occupant. It is even theoretically going to cost taxpayers money in lawn care and maintenance for the LRA to own the house. No savvy rehabber is going to sweep in and fix it up as if it sits on Park Avenue across from Lafayette Square. So I suppose the seizure of his home merely rests on “principle.”
And the amount of taxes in question is miniscule in the grand scheme of things, particularly in keeping the integrity of a distressed neighborhood from further sliding downward. “There are dozens of Mr. Fishers around the city,” Vowell notes. For once, I have to disagree with her: there are hundreds of Mr. Fishers in the city. Tomorrow, Wednesday, at 8 a.m. at the St. Louis Development Corporation (1520 Market St, Ste 2000), Vowell and Fisher will meet with officials to try and buy back the house.
For historic preservationists, the loss of Fisher’s house to the LRA represents one more house that will be stripped of its copper, then its brick stolen and shipped out of town. For neighborhood leaders, the loss of his house represents one less pair of eyes on the street. Even for fiscal conservatives, the loss of Fisher’s house represents the waste of thousands of dollars in social services taxpayers will have to pay in order to find the veteran a new home. Of course the politicians don’t care. Fisher has tried to remain dignified in the face of this, but even he has his limits, recently lamenting, “the city is like the Scarecrow and the Tin Man—no brains, and no heart.”
Chris Naffziger writes about architecture at St. Louis Patina. Contact him via email at [email protected].
