St. Joseph eyes wholesale changes to address critical housing gap, improve population

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (News-Press NOW) -- As the weeks eventually turned to months in his pursuit of a suitable place to rent, Missouri Western State University senior Abakhaye "AB" Anetekhai, a 23-year-old manufacturing/engineering major, thought his luck was finally starting to change.

"I actually found a place," said Anetekhai, a native of Chicago and president of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. "But somebody moved faster than me and put a down payment on the location and I wasn't able to get it."

With no other options but to go back on campus, Anetekhai, who is set to graduate and start his working career this fall, is still anxiously looking nine months after his housing search first began.

"I'm in a position where I have a job out here, but I don't have nowhere to stay because I'm not from St. Joe originally, I want to find a place to stay out here," he said. "It's just really hard."

On a given day, St. Joseph's population peaks at over 82,000 people, a healthy figure, but just 70,382 of those reside in the city fulltime now, a declining number in and of itself and a sign that many are working here, but a growing number are choosing not to live here.

One of the driving causes can be traced to housing according to city officials, business leaders and new findings in a wide-ranging housing needs study released this year.

St. Joseph hasn't seen a new apartment complex developed in nearly 14 years, a telling indication of stagnant housing and challenges attracting developers.

"We've been really successful at creating these jobs, but the rooftops haven't followed," Chamber of Commerce CEO Natalie Hawn said. "We haven't done the work to make sure that we have the housing that we need to accommodate our workforce."

More and more often, moderate-income workers are finding themselves either priced out by high-end housing options or underwhelmed by costs -- and conditions -- for a surplus of aging properties, forcing them to live elsewhere and stunting the city's economic growth.

"What's happening in our community is we have a sector called the missing middle, which is those who are making livable wages but they don't want to pay 80% to 90% of their income towards housing. So we're losing those residents to other communities. We have to fix that," Hawn said.

The in-depth study, which was conducted over several months by planning and development firm Steadfast City, included a large community stakeholder survey with 57 businesses and employers who regularly recruit and interact with new hires and potential residents.

Nearly 80% reported frequently witnessing people with difficulty finding suitable housing within their budget. St. Joseph was given a low rating of 2.4 and 2.6 out of 5 on both the availability and condition of its housing.

A unique challenge facing the city: 57% of its housing stock was built pre-1970, fueling a housing market with historic and appealing architecture but a large quantity of aging properties or others in poor condition. St. Joseph's vacancy rate (14%) is nearly double the national average.

"We know in talking to employers that a lot of their new hires aren't able to live in the market, and that is because of its lack of housing," St. Joseph Planning and Community Development Director Clint Thompson said. "Economic development has changed into housing development as far as what is important and how we attract and retain people."

While St. Joseph's housing needs stretch across multiple sectors, a critical area lies within the city's rental market for moderate to above-moderate income residents. According to the study, the city has just 348 rental units to accommodate nearly 17,000 households in St. Joseph that cite affordable rents as being between $1,100 and $1,700 for middle income, or $1,700 and higher for above-average income.

“Traditionally if there was a need, there would always be a developer or a business that would come in and solve it ... we're going to have to come up with creative ways to solve the problem, because nobody's coming in to save us from that," Hawn said.

With St. Joseph's population on pace to decline even further over the next decade, city leaders are eyeing just that, through a wave of new action and enhanced partnerships to attract and incentivize housing development, through either new construction or redeveloping existing properties.

Thompson, City Manager Mike Schumacher and others have worked closely with area developers to get a stronger understanding of ways to make St. Joseph a more attractive hub for housing construction, given lingering challenges and competition with other markets and municipalities.

"We want to be the most development friendly community in the region," Thompson said. "There's a variety of ways we're looking at trying to assist the private sector, in either reducing the cost or lessening the burden on that initial upfront development cost to help make that a success."

Tax abatements, reimbursements and other incentives will be driving tool to accomplish that, in addition to newly-proposed zoning code changes and programs like a rental rehabilitation and development grant program supported by federal funds.

The program is designed to both encourage rental redevelopment and ensure rents are in line with market-rate costs for tenants, with additional opportunities in the Midtown and Downtown areas where a higher portion of vacant or blighted properties exist.

"I think there will be a good mix of not only existing infill development in our older neighborhoods, but also some development in some of our higher population growth areas right now," Thompson said.

In many cases, those incentives can be the difference-maker in a project occurring here or somewhere else altogether.

Tax abatements have already proven successful in securing industrial development and job creation in the last year alone, evidenced by a $22 million Nortian Foodtech protein manufacturing facility agreement and a planned $60 million dual hotel and conference center on Frederick Avenue.

The city is also working to implement a unified development code and pre-approved building plans, two changes that would modernize and expedite the city's permitting process and create a more efficient process overall, along with reducing or waiving permitting fees associated with certain housing development, all pending City Council approval.

The study highlighted three locations that are considered strong candidates for new rental development, one of the top priorities will be land at Seventh and Faraon Streets in Downtown St. Joseph, the site of the former Heartland Health Hospital campus building.

"There's a vacant piece of property that exists that is ripe for infill development. That'll be a priority. And working with Mosaic, who is the current owner of that property," Thompson said.

Undeveloped land on North Riverside Road is another top candidate for new rental properties to accommodate a variety of industries, particularly students attending the new UMKC School of Medicine, which is set to open this year.

Land at South 15th and Edmond streets has also been identified as having strong potential.

With the housing study also offering strategies for short- and long-term improvements, city officials and economic development partners are hopeful that growing partnerships and heightened efforts will signal that the city is open for business and determined to move swiftly on housing improvements.

“It is exciting to think about, what could some cool infill housing projects look like? What could some awesome townhouses adjacent to the brewery and Frederick look like? Hawn said. "So we have a road map, we have a plan, we've created the buy in. So now we just have to do the work."

Tune in to News-Press NOW Sunday at 5 p.m. to watch this Special Report.