One day after St. Louis closed a program to repair fatted and vacant buildings, a lawsuit was filed that sought the operation of the program, selected contractors and registration controls and managed quality controls, as well as to discover any presumed money trail that the plaintiffs believe that they will show receipts paid for the approval of repairs that were never made or bad.
The lawsuit was filed on April 30 on behalf of two owners of real estate and three small liability companies named after the former Tishuara Jones, two old building commissioners, four buildings inspectors and two construction companies that are supposed to have close links with an inspector, “banjo” Adebanjo Popoola, who resigned in November.
The demand that seeks unspecified damage, filed in the North -American District Court of St. Louis, claims that the preservation and rehabilitation program of the city that allows it to make repairs to the buildings and file the tax guarantees against the owners to cover the expenses, violate the civil rights of the plaintiffs and the right to due process.
“The city unilaterally hires construction crew to make alleged repairs of a property, invoice the owners by cost, and then put a tax guarantee on the property for these invoices,” says the lawsuit. “Many parts of the invoices [sent to property owners] They are not sensitive, for example, in a building and a repair of the stairs without brick in a single -storey building. “”
Demand claims that some work was over -priced and “is”, for example, roof joints are not plumes [and] Tax guarantees are a title slander. “”
In one case, the lawsuit claims that a property owner received a bill of $ 109,000 for stabilization work ordered by the city that were done while the previous owner had the building and that some works listed were “absurd”, such as repairs to a living room, basement and stairs when the building is a single -floor commercial structure.
The aim of the St. Louis-Run, funded by $ 13 million from the Federal Law of the American Rescue Plan of 2021, was to repair dilapidated buildings, most of which are on the north side of the city, a low revenue area up to 40% of its vacant properties. The program still has about $ 5 million in funding to be spent for 2026.
Explaining why the program was closed, the newly elected mayor, Fara Spencer, said in a statement that the “ stabilization program of the building was well -intentioned, but unfortunately very poorly executed. Given the generalized and well -documented problems, we had no choice but to end this program and re -evaluate more effective ways to make very necessary investments in North St. Louis. ”
Laura Ginn, vacant strategist in the city of St. Louis Development Corp, who helped coordinate the program’s interest group, but did not play a role in execution, saying that problems arose by 2024 with complaints from real estate owners.
“The problem was that we had someone who allegedly abused the authority to grant subcontracts for construction,” he says.
St. Magazine Louis has reported that Popoola had connections with two demanded companies, Farst Construction and Maxify Contractors, which together received $ 2.3 million from the city through the program. Farrst, which provided the city for a million dollars of work associated with the program, included the management of the former Popoola of Popoola as a business location, found the magazine.
Ginn says Popoola “awarded contracts, oversaw the job and approved it.” W. Bevis Schock, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, says: “I want to deepen the discovery and find out the money path.”
Although the city has not yet announced if it will restart the program in a revised version, Ginn assures that this program is an important tool for revitalizing an area that has suffered decades of depopulation and divestment. “The main tool [previously] It was an emergency demolition, “he says.” To move forward, we need some tools to intervene. ”
If the city reintroduces the program, Ginn says it would recommend that contractors submit to a qualifications application. “We recommend hiring in a very different way,” he says. “Not all general contractors know that they are against repairing a building that has been vacant for ten or more years.”
Ginn says the program was stopped in November, with 22 projects canceled. About 59 repair contracts were executed between March 2023 and November 2024.
Bevis says she is happy that the program has been closed. It was “terrible. He was wrong,” he says.
