Habitat for Humanity of St. Louis is building a major project in the Vandeventer neighborhood, adding 40 homes to North City through a $17 million investment.
The houses are being built affordably for diverse lifestyles: seniors, single people, and families, with plans ranging from two to four bedrooms that are intended to be affordable for first-time buyers.
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Prices will range from roughly $185,000 to $260,000, says Habitat for Humanity of St. Louis CEO Kimberly McKinney.
“This is currently vacant property that is in no way contributing to the future success of the city or its residents,” McKinney says. “The outcome when everything is finished is 40 home buyers who are invested in the community and are shopping, all of the economic contributions that we make when we live in a community.”
The land will come from the city’s land bank, the Land Reutilization Authority, a subsidiary of the St. Louis Development Corporation. All 40 parcels should transfer to Habitat by October, an SLDC spokesman told SLM.
SLDC was also a key player in the deal that secured the funding for the Habitat project through New Market Tax Credits, and a new-to-St. Louis mechanism that could help facilitate complex deals for subsidized affordable housing projects, which in this case includes three separate banks: Enterprise Bank and Trust, U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance, and Midwest BankCentre.
The project used a total of $17 million in New Market Tax Credits with $7 million from SLDC, $6.7 million from Enterprise Bank and Trust, and $3.3 million from U.S. Bank’s community development subsidiary, U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance. In a dual role, U.S. Bank also acquired those tax credits from the federal government. Those tax credits, of which a portion can be invested, led to $5.1 million for the project.
At a press conference announcing the development Tuesday, which was held on one of the sites where a Habitat home will be built, people could also view draft renderings. McKinney joked that the collaboration on display was “something you don’t see often.”
“It’s three different banks who played nicely together because they believed in this project and they wanted to see it happen, so we couldn’t have done it without each and every one of them,” she said.
On top of the tax credits, the SLDC made a $3.45 million ARPA loan and Midwest BankCentre made a loan of $8.8 million. For the latter, SLDC for the first time tapped into the Community Investment Guarantee Pool. That mechanism ensures a portion of a loan is covered (through a percentage fee) in case of default. That brought down the loan’s interest rate.
The fee for the guarantee pool was mostly covered by a grant to the St. Louis Community Foundation from the Kresge Foundation, which funds projects through grants and social investments. The Community Foundation is expected to pay for the rest, an SLDC spokesman says. The Kresge Foundation has been credited for helping shift narratives by spurring economic growth in Detroit, as its CEO discussed on a panel in St. Louis last month. This is one of the first times it’s put money down in St. Louis.
The idea is that this constellation of private investment, public funding, and measures that help reduce risk will make it easier to invest in historically disinvested areas, like North St. Louis.
“This is a tool that we think has a lot of potency to to grow, and one of many that the leadership there in St. Louis is working on,” says Mary Ellen Wiederwohl, president and CEO of Accelerator for America, a national firm that consulted on the deal with SLDC and helps cities convene investors, officials, and developers for community projects.
“I’ve had a lot of meals in St. Louis,” she says of her work consulting on deals like this one. “Sometimes my … coming to town and to break bread with people at meetings has allowed people to sit together in a room and think differently, or think outside the box … so it’s been a pleasure to help be a catalyst to that.”
The corridor on Evans Avenue where these homes will be built is between Page Boulevard to the south and Dr. Martin Luther King Drive to the north. Not too far north of the planned project is the area where Pastor Andre Alexander’s Tabernacle Community Development Corporation is in the midst of developing 60 homes near Fairground Park.
While the deal was in the works well before May 16, 2025, the area is directly adjacent to some parts of the city hit hardest by last year’s tornado and just a block south of where the now-demolished Harlem Tap Room was at Dr. Martin Luther King Drive and Whittier Street.
The houses could also be a crucial leg up for people who’ve never owned a home before, says Howard Smith, a principal at tax credit consultancy Smith NMTC. He’s been involved with Habitat locally since the 1990s and has done nine New Market Tax Credit deals with the nonprofit locally. “It’s really an opportunity for people to not only accumulate wealth, but for families then to have a legacy of wealth to pass on to their kids.”
“It’s not a hand out, it’s a hand up,” he says, describing the emotional experience of watching someone get the keys to a new home. “It’s the first time ever in their family anyone’s ever owned real estate, typically, and so they’re they’re very emotional and moving because these people climbed a mountain, put in their own sweat equity, accumulated all the funds, and was able to persevere to build their own house, with help, and and they’ve they’ve achieved something no one else in their family’s achieved before.”
