Poll Results on Food Insecurity

Circumstances can change quickly. One moment you’re doing great, then you find yourself struggling a few years later. I know, I’ve been there.

I left a comfortable full-time job in May 2004, going from part to full-time in real estate. My income took an immediate drop from a nice steady salary. I started grad school but also began getting urban planning consulting projects and one client had me on a monthly retainer. I’d weathered the worst of it, or so I thought. I had a stroke and the recession hit.

I struggled for two+ years before filing a disability claim. In the meantime I applied for help with the Missouri Food Stamp program. Thankfully my disability claim was approved within 30 days and I received my first direct deposit months later. I received food stamps for less than 9 months. It wasn’t much, but boy did it help me when I needed it.

Due to the very healthy income I had while working for others, my disability income is above the national average. Still, it is just 20% of what I was bringing in a decade ago. I’ve reduced my expenses and added a boyfriend, so I’m back to feeling comfortable.

Here are the unscientific results from last week’s poll:

Have you, a family member, or friends, experienced at least a month of “Food Insecurity” in the last 5 years?
No 39 [78%]
Yes 10 [20%]
Unsure [1] 2%

Twenty percent is about what I expected, but I can’t draw any conclusions from these results.

“There are still too many people in Missouri who have to decide, ‘Do I pay the rent or buy food?”’ said Scott Baker, the director of the Missouri Food Bank Association. “The hunger problem is real and significant. The safety net is strained already, and I don’t know how the state’s food pantries would be able to meet additional demand.”
Missouri had about 915,000 people receiving food stamps in August. That’s down from a peak of nearly 962,000 in December 2011 but still well above the 724,000 recipients in August 2008. The federal government pays the full cost of the benefits while states administer the program. (KMOV)

You may not see it, but many face food insecurity. In some cases it may be there own fault, but others may have bad timing of circumstances beyond their control. If they had savings to last at least 8 months they may have burned through it by now.

— Steve Patterson

Carrollton: A Walkable Suburban Subdivision In 1956

Today cul-de-sac subdivisions are designed exclusively for the automobile. For example, my brother’s gated subdivision in Oklahoma City has internal sidewalks that don’t lead you outside the gates. A major grocery store occupies one corner on the outside, but you need a car to get there.

My parents built a new custom home in 1965-66, moving in just months before I was born. I was told the streets of the new subdivision in the former farm field were still getting paved as our house was being built. Unlike where my brother lives now, we could at least reach a convenience store from a street connected to our subdivision. Had more commercial been built on land set aside by the developers we would’ve had many more options.

However, many in the St. Louis region grew up in a 1950s subdivision that planned for walking, with sidewalks and a shopping center connected to the housing. I posted yesterday about the Carrollton subdivision decimated for runway expansion at Lambert International Airport, today is a look at the thought and planning that went into it.

The following is from page 547 of the 1970 book This is Our Saint Louis by Harry M. Hagen:

When “Johnny Came Marching Home” at the close of World War II, he found one thing to his advantage, prosperity and jobs,  and one disadvantage, a tremendous shortage of housing. For many returning GI’s and their prides, their first home was a rented room or shared quarters with their in-laws.

The building industry, stopped by the priorities of war, was turned loose, and developers looked to the suburbs for the land they needed to build homes. There was land, lots of land, and many home builders built square little box-like homes marching in soldierly fashion down square little streets. These houses sold as fast as they could be completed since young marrieds and young families were desperate for adequate housing.

With the convenience of the automobile, no location in St. Louis County was too distant. Sub-division after sub-division sprung up and was quickly populated.

Out of this building frenzy, one team emerged with a visionary approach to suburbia. Ed and John Fischer, along with brother-in-law Lawrence Frichtel added a dimension to home building that won national acclaim for their firm, Fischer and Frichtel. Instead of building several blocks of homes in in regimented manner, they built a community.

The firm amassed a large tract of land in northwest St. Louis County and in 1956 opened Carrolton, a planned community with gently curving streets, cup-de-sacs and open space. Instead of one or two home models, they offered a variety so that every other home would not look the same. They did not utilize every square foot for homes –they planned areas for churches, schools and parks that were built and used as the population grew. To make the community as self-sufficient as possible, they constructed a small shopping center so that necessities of living could be purchased within walking distance. And to complete their community, they built a swimming pool and a large recreation building, bringing free-time activities practically to the front door of residents.

Carrollton had a mixture of award-winning homes–and it was a community that offered residents more than any other single housing development in the area at that time. It was planned to make living in the suburbs enjoyable for the entire family — and its departure from the conventional set the standards followed by other developers.

Fisher and Frichtel was probably the number one home-building firm of the post-war era — and the reason for its success was simply that it gave the grass-cutting, snow-shoveling, house-painting, leaf-burning, tree-pruning public a product that was both excellent in quality and different in setting. The firm has been recognized and published in every major magazine and newspaper relating to homes, neighborhoods and conventional living throughout the country. Unquestionably, these men and their organization represent and give tribute to the great spirit of St. Louis.

Self-sustaining? Walking distance to necessities? Yes, single-family homes on cul-de-sacs can be walkable. Well, at least they tried in 1956.

However, decade after decade since Carrollton was platted, subdivisions have gotten progressively more hostile to pedestrians. I’m not sure how this happened, my guess is each subsequent generation got used to their environment and eventually only grandpa remembered walking to the store for milk.

Thanks for the book Sheila!

— Steve Patterson

No Trespassing Property of City of St. Louis

Last month I went down street after street, passing vacant lots where homes once stood, all owned by the City of St. Louis. It was depressing to think a once lively neighborhood has been erased, except for roads & sidewalks.  You’re probably thinking I was somewhere in north St. Louis, but I was actually in St. Louis County. At one point I even crossed over I-270! Yes, because of the Lambert runway expansion the City of St. Louis owns hundreds of acres in the City of Bridgeton: the former Carrollton subdivision.

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St. Louis is responsible for maintaing the properties, cutting acres of grass basically. Not only does St. Louis have too much property in St. Louis, they also have too much in Bridgeton!

The land can’t be used for residential purposes, but office/retail/industrial is apparently fine. The problem is St. Louis must repay the FAA if it sells the property, making it very costly to develop based on the amount the FAA paid.

And that runway? From a 2007 MIT-student analysis:

The need for runway 11-29 was actually delay-driven, not demand-driven. Although the levels of demand from the forecast never materialized, the new runway did provide the capability to perform dual independent IFR approaches at Lambert. Again, although the delay cost savings are less than initially projected, there are nonetheless savings that can be directly attributed to the new runway. Thus despite the over-optimistic demand forecast, the construction new runway does seem to have been justified.

With regard to flexible planning, the Lambert officials were indeed responsive to the lower actual passenger traffic than was originally projected. The terminal expansion plans were abandoned after the traffic collapse. Although it is still possible to implement the terminal expansion plans in the future, it would have been wasteful to do so once demand levels dropped. Thus, the part of the Lambert expansion project that was demand-driven was indeed responsive to the drop in demand.

The new runway was probably cheaper to build when it was than it would have been in the future. It is likely that property acquisition costs as well as construction costs would have increased, and so delaying the runway construction would probably have cost more than proceeding as scheduled. Once traffic returns to St. Louis, runway 11-29 will be an invaluable asset. In fact, it may even provide the competitive advantage needed to draw traffic to Lambert. Thus, it seems that despite the strong-armed actions and swift construction in the face of the dramatic downturn in passenger traffic, the new runway at Lambert- St. Louis International Airport was in fact beneficial.

The runway is built and not going anywhere. Now we just need to figure out what to do to remove hundreds of acres from St. Louis ownership, so that it can again produce tax revenue for St. Louis County & the City of Bridgeton.

— Steve Patterson

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Poll: Should schools be forced to take students from unaccredited districts?

The poll this week is an exact duplicate of a poll run by the St. Louis Business Journal in June:

Should schools be forced to take students from unaccredited districts?

• Yes, education is that important
• No, it isn’t fair to taxpayers and students

I couldn’t come up with any better phrasing, so it’ll have to do.

Unaccredited schools are now paying overcrowded schools to accept transfer students. The transfer process was chaotic. Is this really the best we can do as a region?

The poll is in the right sidebar for a week.

— Steve Patterson

Please Help Me Raise $75 For A Bus Ticket For A Homeless Young Man (Goal Reached!)

Early Wednesday morning, on the way to/from the grocery store, I saw a young man sitting at a cafe table at a Washington Ave business that wasn’t open yet. As I passed by both times he looked out of place, you just don’t see young men wearing football shorts & jersey at 7am with a couple of bags in tow. He looked out of it.

After I put away my groceries I decided to return to the spot, I brought a banana for him and I wrote the address of The Bridge on a post-it attached to my business card.  I nervously approached him, asking if he was ok. He wasn’t, he was dropped off in St. Louis a day or two earlier by Rolla, Missouri police.  He’d spent the previous night a Larry Rice’s New Life Evangelistic Center. They put everyone back on the street at 6:30am.  He was in shock at his predicament: a 22 year old from an upper middle-class family in Washington state now homeless in downtown St. Louis.

I took him to The Bridge at 16th & Olive so he could get something for breakfast and hopefully some assistance. I looked him up on Facebook and friended him, he’d accept later when he got to the library to use a computer for the 2 hour maximum.

He came to Missouri for a year-long drug & alcohol rehab program located in Cabool MO (south of Ft. Leonard Wood), but got kicked out after 10 months for failing once to comply with their rigorous schedule.  He’s clean & sober, trying to rebuild his life. He’s trying to get to Milwaukee WI where another young guy he met at the rehab center lives with his parents, they’ll take him in and help him get work.

You’re right to be skeptical about his story, but everything he’s told me checks out. His family on Facebook want nothing to do with him.

Thursday I bought him travel-size toiletries, let him shower, shave, made him lunch, let him do laundry, and use a computer. He stayed through dinner when he returned to NLEC for the night. He tried Travelers Aid on Tucker, they’ll only pay 25% less a $10 fee.

So I’m trying to get this young man on a bus, and off our streets. I’m afraid to much time in his current situation and he’ll return to alcohol & drugs.  My goal is $75 total, $65.50 for the ticket and $10 in pocket cash/pre-paid card.
Here’s how I got to $75:

Donation Total:

I’ll update the donation total below and delete the donation buttons once the $75 goal is reached. If 15-16 people would give $5 each this morning I can have him on a bus this afternoon!  In the event something happens and he doesn’t need a ticket I’ll donate the funds to The Bridge. Thank you for your help!

— Steve Patterson

Donation Total after PayPal fees:

• $0.00 (5:45am)
• $72.52 (6:01am)
• $81.93 (7:35am)

Now I just have to track him down! – SP