Code Enforcement Process Improvements for the City of St. Louis

Over the last two years, the St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative—a coalition of community members, private and nonprofit organizations, and City agencies focused on reducing vacant properties in St. Louis—has worked to better understand the City’s housing and building code enforcement ecosystem. This work has included collaborating with a consultant to map the City’s internal code enforcement process for addressing vacant properties. Building on this work, the Collaborative asked the Center for Community Progress to facilitate conversations among City staff and Collaborative members to build consensus around ways the City could improve its code enforcement process to more equitably, efficiently, and effectively address vacant properties.

To do this, Community Progress worked with the Collaborative to organize a workshop on May 16, 2023. The workshop brought together approximately 45 individuals from across City agencies whose work responsibilities focus on code enforcement and vacant properties. The workshop participants had an average of 15 years’ experience in their roles, bringing an impressive 502 years of combined expertise to bear on these issues.

The morning session included an overview of a systemic approach to addressing vacant properties and strategic code enforcement as well as a grounding in racial equity, to establish a common framework and language. During the afternoon session, Community Progress facilitated small-group conversations with Building Division inspectors and supervisors to brainstorm, identify, and prioritize recommendations for vacant property code enforcement process improvements. The workshop was well received and generated concrete, thoughtful recommendations to improve both the Building Division’s and larger code enforcement ecosystem’s approach to vacant properties.

This memorandum (1) distills and summarizes these recommendations, and (2) helps guide the City and the Collaborative as they continue to work to address vacant properties equitably, efficiently, and effectively. The first section includes a broad overview and preliminary observations of St. Louis’ vacant property code enforcement process, with a focus on the Building Division’s role. The second section summarizes and organizes the recommendations generated during the afternoon workshop and morning conversation into actionable, short- and medium-term recommendations for improvement.