Can community nonprofit Invest STL help Black residents in St. Louis’s West End and Visitation Park neighborhoods build enough wealth to stave off the forces of gentrification? One census tract in the neighborhoods shows a 396% increase in white residents since 2010. Meanwhile, in two other census tracts, the population of Black residents has decreased by 30%. A spike in investor-owned properties is also underway.
Invest STL was established as an independent organization in 2022 with the goal of being out of operation by 2042. The nonprofit organization invests in St. Louis neighborhoods like the West End and Visitation Park to help build community longevity and combat displacement.
This first episode of New Neighbors introduces Rooted, an Invest STL project that grants 50 Black West End and Visitation Park neighborhood residents $22,000 and access to a financial planner, funding for immediate needs such as debt relief, and funding to purchase or invest in property, a small business or investment accounts within their St. Louis neighborhoods.
This project is a collaboration between KBIA and DETOUR Magazine. Music for New Neighbors is by Luvxrei.
Ron Stodghill: Hey, I’m Ron Stodghill, founder of DETOUR, a travel magazine that tells stories at the intersection of race and place.
In this new podcast series, called New Neighbors, we’ll be learning about Rooted, a project in St. Louis to combat displacement. This week, New Neighbors producer Kiana Fernandes will introduce the initiative with the help of Michael Pagano, a narrative and communications partner with Invest STL. Let’s listen in.
Kiana Fernandes: Gentrification is the process of community development that brings economic and demographic changes to historically disinvested neighborhoods. Often, it leads to the displacement of folks of color to make room for wealthier white newcomers.
Michael Pagano is part of the Invest STL team that works on Rooted, a project that grants 50 Black residents – in the West End and Visitation Park neighborhoods – access to a dedicated financial planner and $22,000. This money can then be put into property needs (to purchase or invest), small businesses or investment accounts.
Michael Pagano: The goal is to produce a story that can push for policy change by saying, ‘This is something that we tried, and we saw how it worked over three years.’ And we want to inspire others to take this kind of tack or take this approach. What we’re betting on is that we’ll find that, hopefully, this pushes back on gentrification a little bit and gives residents who have been in that neighborhood a long time the opportunity to stay and grow with that growing economic future.
Kiana Fernanes: Many of the Rooted participants have lived in the same neighborhood for more than 20 years.
Rooted began through conversations with these residents. The project has been in development over the last few years, with the help of the city of St. Louis. Derek Laney is a neighborhood and solidarity partner with Invest STL.
Derek Laney: We look and kind of see what in the system doesn't work and we work to have conversations with the city officials about what can be done better and what could be more crafted. That is going to be helpful to residents. So we want to alter the system while also using a system to build up over time.
Kiana Fernandes: The next development in the project will be the release of the Rooted Powerbook. This document will lead readers through the program’s anti-displacement journey. It will also offer guidelines to replicate the project in communities around the country and beyond.
Michael Pagano: What could we potentially do to not only invest in building Black wealth in this neighborhood but also, how would we go about doing that? We’re developing a case for a policy change overall, so that it’s not just affecting and helping these individual households, but that it’s building a larger incentive or understanding of what this type of wealth building could do for an entire neighborhood, or for different neighborhoods, or for different regions.
Kiana Fernandes: The four key areas of Invest STL projects – including Rooted – are narrative reframing, policy innovation, direct neighborhood investment and systems-level support. Rooted encompasses all four of these areas.
Invest STL considers itself a solidarity partner instead of a traditional investment organization.
Michael Pagano: To be a neighborhood solidarity partner is to change the narrative, shift the language of these relationships, and make the institution – us, InvestSTL – more accountable to the residents, instead of the residents being accountable to the money that we’re putting into the neighborhood.
Ron Stodghill: That was Michael Pagano - a narrative and communications partner with InvestSTL – explaining the wealth-investment project Rooted. Next week, New Neighbors will explore the direct effect of the project on West End resident, Scott Shelton.
New Neighbors interviews were conducted by me, Ron Stodghill, and Alicia Haywood, and recorded by Invest STL’s Michael Pagano. You can find more New Neighbors episodes at KBIA.org. This episode was produced by Kiana Fernandes. See you next week.
Reporters Sarah Parisien, Wendell Shepherd, Adam Ryerson, Sophie Carite, Emmaline Luetkemeyer, Kyli Williams, and Emily Boyett contributed to this project.
