The St. Louis Board of Aldermen has momentarily paused a proposal that would give financial assistance to renters impacted by the May 16 tornado.
Members were set to vote Friday on a bill that would make people forced to move from a rental property that is uninhabitable due to storm damage eligible for the city’s Impacted Tenants Fund. Approved applicants will get a month of federal fair market rent for an apartment of the size they are leaving.
But because board members had made changes to the bill on Wednesday, the earliest they could vote under their rules and the charter would be Saturday. They have scheduled a special meeting on Tuesday to send the measure to the mayor.
“During this process, there was a little hiccup,” said 14th Ward Alderman Rasheen Aldridge, the bill’s sponsor. “Typically, a board bill from start to finish takes about a month. But this board is showing how we are moving diligently and we’re moving quick to try to figure out what we can do through the board to try to help people who have been impacted.”
The delay also gives the city time to get the administrative side straightened out. Even though the board created the fund more than a year ago and has selected a vendor to run the program, the application process is not yet open. It’s not even clear if the vendor and city ever signed a contract.
Board President Megan Green said the city “absolutely” should have been ready to accept applications sooner.
“I’m unsure what the delay has been since that vendor was chosen,” she said. “But my understanding is that the administration is currently working to get that contract finalized as soon as possible so that we can be getting these funds out into the community.”
The vendor, Employment Connections, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mayor Cara Spencer said she hoped to have an application available by next week. Green said the board’s Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee was prepared to act immediately to approve those rules as required by law.
The city used $100,000 in American Rescue Plan Act money to seed the fund, and officials have budgeted about $160,000 for the upcoming fiscal year. That would help about 200 people.
Green said she knows that will not be enough.
“We have been banging on [Budget Director] Paul Payne’s door every single day to ask him to shake some trees and find where we can get some more money into that fund in a quick manner,” she said.
Property tax relief
The board on Friday was able to pass legislation giving homeowners who suffered damage in the storm a break on their taxes.
The measure authorizes the assessor to temporarily remove buildings from the tax rolls if they are uninhabitable. That means homeowners would only pay property taxes for the time they were able to live in their properties this year.
“We are in a disaster time, and our city is struggling to protect the residents, especially homeowners,” 13th Ward Alderwoman Pam Boyd, the legislation’s sponsor, said during a committee hearing on the bill on Wednesday. “We do know that a lot of the properties were damaged, and they lost everything.”
Homeowners have to fill out a form with the assessor’s office to be eligible for the relief. Green said that document should also be available shortly.
Future assistance
Green on Friday promised that the legislation currently moving forward is not the only move the city will be making to provide direct help to its residents.
“This was the lowest of the lowest-hanging fruit that we could move quickly to start to get some relief for both homeowners and renters,” she said.
Green said the board and the mayor are discussing all possible options, including Rams settlement funds and moving around some federal COVID relief dollars.
“I think it’s very important in this moment that the Board of Aldermen is working in tandem with the mayor’s office,” she said. “What I don’t want to have happen is a bill get introduced and then it gets mired in politics at the board.”
Spencer said Thursday that the process of looking at options for American Rescue Plan Act funding was going “very well” and “rapidly.”
“We should have some policies and ways in which we're going to be redeploying some of those funds here very, very soon,” she said. “It’s a top priority.”
Alderwoman Shameem Clark Hubbard forcefully rejected a question about whether the board had done enough. All eight of the neighborhoods in her 10th Ward sustained some damage in the storm.
“These alders that weren’t even touched by the storm have shown up,” she said. “And someone like me, who’s been to two funerals for constituents, has been standing up and making sure people have direct resources. Even if we were trying to move Rams money, it wouldn’t have been in two weeks.”
