SPANISH LAKE • Phillip Andrew Morton has made two trips since 2007 to the house at 1238 Maple Street where he grew up.

On both occasions, he was shocked at the profound changes the little frame house had undergone in a matter of a few years.

Morton, 32, is now an independent filmmaker based in Los Angeles. The rapid transformation of the north St. Louis County community he calls his hometown, though it has never been incorporated, forms the basis of his documentary, "Spanish Lake."

The movie combines the warm feelings that Morton has for the area with a case-study of what many feel was governmental action — or inaction — that changed its bucolic nature into one that, in some sections, is more befitting of an urban ghetto.

"I really wanted to research all the dynamics that went into the phenomenon of white flight in Spanish Lake," Morton said in a recent telephone interview from Los Angeles. "I came away convinced that this is not an issue of race but of class and opportunities."

Morton said he hoped the movie will start discussions nationwide on white flight and the effects of government-subsidized housing on neighborhoods.

The movie combines interviews with former and current residents with archival government documents and news reports to chronologically trace Spanish Lake's history.

The movie opens at a reunion of former white residents — they call themselves "Lakers" — at Spanish Lake Park.

They share memories, some teary, of neighborhoods where many did not lock their doors and children could safely play all day, exploring the beauty of the place where the Mississippi and Missouri rivers converge.

The area was sparsely populated before World War II but quickly grew with an influx of whites from north St. Louis.

As recently as 1970, Spanish Lake was 99 percent white and 1 percent black.

But the 1970s also marked the beginning of a mass migration of African-Americans from the city of St. Louis. Many left failed housing complexes such as Pruitt-Igoe to settle in government-subsidized Section 8 housing in North County.

The city of Black Jack, which abuts Spanish Lake, feared that the poverty and crime that plagued the St. Louis complexes could recur in apartment complexes planned for their city. To thwart that possibility, Black Jack officials enacted zoning ordinances that prohibited multi-family housing.

In 1975, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Black Jack's zoning ordinance, ruling that it violated the Civil Rights Act of 1968, commonly known as the Fair Housing Act.

The construction of apartment complexes in North County proliferated during that period. Many were upscale, designed to attract well-heeled singles.

But as they lost their luster, they were transformed into Section 8 housing.

RISE IN BLACK POPULATION

By 1990, 17 percent of Spanish Lake's residents were African-American. By 2010, with the population at 19,650, the percentage of blacks had soared to 77 percent, with many living in Section 8 apartments.

Among the biggest of these Section 8 complexes is the Countryside Townhomes in Spanish Lake, built in 1971. In recent years, it has become a hotbed of crime.

The movie notes that, in an 18-month period in 2009 and 2010, Countryside generated more than 3,600 calls for help to county police.

One of the movie's interview subjects, County Police Sgt. Ray Rice, said multiple factors contributed to the problems.

"You had younger people (of a) lower economic status and a lower level of opportunity in terms of their educational base and a lack of parental involvement creating a dynamic that contributed to the crime," Rice said in the movie. "And then you have irresponsible (apartment complex) ownership in terms of not addressing issues as they come up."

The ownership of Countryside changed a year ago. One of the movie's most compelling documents is a 1975 report on Section 8 housing done by the Citizens Advisory Committee of St. Louis County.

It stated, in part: "It becomes quite apparent that the most affluent areas are being considered off bounds for any housing-assistance activities. A total of only 20 units of rehabilitated housing is projected for the first year for the west-central and southern areas of the county, compared to 1,577 units of assisted housing in the inner-suburban planning areas."

The latter area includes Spanish Lake.

The movie also documents the demise of businesses in the area, from office complexes to fast-food restaurants.

One of the movie's strongest voices is David Naumann, an lawyer from Spanish Lake. Naumann blames the high concentration of Section 8 housing for his community's decline.

"Whenever you concentrate that many apartments with potentially so many poor people in the area, (trouble) consumes those areas," Naumann says in the movie. "What really upsets me is we have liberals from Clayton and Ladue and those places who will say, 'How can you say that? That is racist!' ... and you look down on us and you say mean things about us and you dare to call us racist when we are concerned about our property values, our safety, our children."

Naumann suggested spreading Section 8 housing equally around the county.

"Till then, do not dare to call us names, because we will not tolerate it," he says in the movie.

State Sen. Tim Green, D-Spanish Lake, is also interviewed in the movie.

Green, 48, is a lifelong resident of the area.

He said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch that he believed Section 8 housing and an influx of poor minorities was only one cause of white flight.

"We are oversaturated with Section 8," Green said. "But a lot of people who left here for St. Charles County did so because they wanted something more than a 600-square-foot house with one bathroom. They wanted four-bedroom, four-bath homes with big yards and two- or three-car garages."

Morton, the movie's director, lived in Spanish Lake from 1980 to 1997. The only child of a machinist father and a mother who worked as a systems analyst for McDonnell Douglas Corp., Morton moved from the area after his parents divorced.

He studied film at Webster University and moved to Los Angeles, where he honed his skills by editing trailers for such movies as "Ocean's Thirteen," "The Prestige" and "The New World."

In working on the trailer for "The New World," Morton was influenced by the careful shooting of nature scenes by the movie's director, Terrence Malick.

"I went through all of Malick's raw footage," Morton said. "I saw every inch of film he shot in that movie, and got to see his film making process up close."

NEXT: MOVIE FESTIVALS

Morton and a friend, Matt Jordan, who is producer of "Spanish Lake," have so far spent $35,000 on the project.

They intend to finish it in time to show at festivals this year, where they hope to get a distributor for the movie.

He also holds out hope for the future of Spanish Lake, partly based on what has happened in recent years to his boyhood home on Maple Street.

A visit there in 2007 sparked the idea for the movie.

"The house was in foreclosure, along with several nearby houses, and had not been taken care of," he said. "The grass was 3 feet high and the whole street was eerily quiet. It was shocking to see the decline in just 10 years."

When he began making the movie, he placed an ad on the Internet site Craigslist seeking input from Spanish Lake residents.

He got only one response, from a local author named Paris Drake.

Drake, an African-American, invited Morton to her home — at 1238 Maple Street.

The movie closes with Drake giving Morton a tour of his old house, which she has spent thousands of dollars completely rehabbing.

"The sheer coincidence of that moment was very telling for me," Morton said. "It's hard to explain how small of a world it is, to have someone reach out to you and pull you back to your roots."