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Your church or community group can help provide and maintain decent, low income housing in St. Louis. How? By redecorating an apartment and helping us to keep the rent for that apartment affordable. Apartments wear out like everything else. Periodically, they have to be completely redecorated. Building owners usually put money aside over time in a reserve fund to take care of these improvements. Because the income of low-income tenants is less predictable than others, there is often no cash left at the end of the year to put in the reserve fund. Then who pays for the extensive makeovers that have to take place from time to time? The answer is, the tenants pay for the renovations in the form of higher rents. Yet during the last five years, while the incomes of upper and middle income persons have gone up, the incomes of low- income persons have actually gone down. They are the people among us who are least able to afford rent increases--or increases of any kind for that matter. At any given time we have 10-20 apartments that are empty waiting for extensive repair and redecoration or minor repairs. What we are really saying is that we are waiting to find the money to fix up these apartments.
community group can help us to get apartments fixed up for a new needy family. One of our representatives will meet with your group and do a presentation on low-income housing and related issues and why they are important to all of us. We will then assess your group's level of skill and help to develop a work project suited to your group. |
Some apartments need only a basic cleanup and repainting to be put into service again. In most cases, our own crews perform these functions efficiently and quickly. However, a simple painting and cleaning project can be a good way for your church or community group to learn about low-income housing and so we offer the 'Paint and Clean' program as a service option. Most of the 'Paint and Clean' projects can be finished in the course of a full Saturday or a weekend. We provide the paint, brushes, and cleaning equipment. |
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