There is a long history of systemic racism in St. Louis, with historic racial deed covenants and redlining making it sometimes still incredibly difficult for people of color to buy homes in parts of St. Louis. The 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed racially motivated redlining. A 1948 Supreme Court ruling made racial deed covenants unenforceable. Still, racial division in housing is seen throughout the country and especially in St. Louis.
A recent American Bar Association article highlights the difficulty of finding affordable housing in St. Louis’s suburbs. The article states, “In its conception, its development, and its impact, the American suburb has been an engine of inequality and exclusion.”
The article focuses on Creve Coeur, a sprawling suburb built next to a historically Black neighborhood, Malcolm Terrace. According to the article, the city engaged in practices such as doubling or tripling the minimum sizes of single–family lots, denying Malcolm Terrace its own water main or even a fire hydrant, and refusing to repair its streets. By 1969, the city revealed its plan to turn Malcolm Terrace into a public park. The city slowly bought up lots in the neighborhood and, over the course of a decade, wielded its power to build two large public parks, taking up 40 single-family lots in Malcolm Terrace and completely dismantling the historically Black neighborhood.
According to the article, “Today, Malcolm Terrace subdivision is a strange jumble of single-family homes scattered around trailheads and picnic benches at the entrance to a public park.”
The article continues, “This haphazard park development and the scattering of about forty residential lots are a marker of both Creve Coeur’s determination (since its incorporation in 1949) to erase or contain this accident of small-lot affordable housing, and the determination of Malcolm Terrace residents to resist the City’s plans.”
As authors Kennedy Moehrs Gardner and Colin Gordon detail, local regulation of land use can still be applied to discriminate, even without explicitly mentioning race.The attorneys at Kennedy Hunt P.C. are experts in housing law. If you or someone you know has had their housing and/or disability rights violated, the skilled attorneys at Kennedy Hunt, P.C. may be able to help you. Fill out a questionnaire so we can understand your claim.