Photo by Matthew Hathaway

Since last September, St. Louis Alderman Kacie Starr Triplett, D-6th ward, has been championing a “vacant building initiative.” Last Wednesday, her proposal finally got a hearing from an aldermanic committee.

The proposal had a lot of support, at least in theory. But it failed for lack of a main ingredient for successfully dealing with abandoned properties: money — and plenty of it.

Still, Ms. Triplett is on to something. Her proposal would have required owners of the city’s approximately 4,800 vacant buildings to register with the city, enabling officials to keep an accurate handle on number and location of vacant houses and to stay ahead of any troubling trends.

Owners — many of them out-of-town banks or investors — would have had to have designated agents, either in Missouri or Illinois, to accept service of code-violation notices and other legal papers.

They also would have been required to board up broken windows — a requirement that would have applied not just to private property owners but also to the city’s Land Reutilization Authority, which owns about 1,300 vacant properties.

Laws already on the books require registration of buildings that have been vacant for six months or more. Existing law focuses on properties with code violations and allows owners to escape fines and fees if they correct problems.

Another existing ordinance requires absentee owners of properties to inform the city assessor of their home address — and, in the case of a business entity, to provide the name and address of at least one shareholder or partner.

The city has a variety of nuisance laws on the books that are costly to enforce but that can make things uncomfortable for derelict property owners.

But a great many of the most derelict properties in St. Louis are orphans — abandoned by defunct enterprises or owned by people, many of them elderly, who are simply incapable of paying a fine or making basic repairs. The owners are impervious to vacant property registries, code enforcement, stiff fines and nuisance lawsuits. There’s simply no one or nothing to fight against.

The building division can board up these vacant structures and impose a lien on the property if the board-up fee isn’t paid when the building is sold. But the properties often fetch so little that the city’s rate of recovery has been about 20 percent.

LRA is St. Louis’ property owner of last resort. LRA officials claim that boarding up all 1,300 vacant structures on its books would cost taxpayers $5.2 million. That comes to $4,000 per building, which suggests there might be some economies to be explored.

Given its struggle with resource, the city has done a fairly good job dealing with problem properties. But the concentration of abandoned buildings remains a threat to public safety and neighborhood stability.

Ms. Triplett’s proposal would have cost millions the city doesn’t have, but she has raised an important issue. The “there’s not much more we can do” attitude is not good enough.

There are federal stimulus funds available. Gov. Jay Nixon is looking for ideas for a statewide bond issue. Boarding and securing buildings — for something less than $4,000 apiece — would be a sound investment in public safety, preservation and the city’s future.