Beyond Housing CEO Chris Krehmeyer writes how Pagedale’s revitalization provides a path forward for the greater region

Beyond Housing president and CEO Chris Krehmeyer writes about the St. Louis region’s homicide crisis and our need to commit to long-term change while also addressing our immediate challenges.

No one can say that great things aren’t happening in St. Louis, yet despite all of this investment, our core challenges remain as formidable as ever.

In recent months, Beyond Housing’s Once and for All effort has led to a string of recent wins that help further the effort’s goal of addressing the source of St. Louis’ longstanding challenges to strengthen our entire region.

We’re thrilled to announce that Ameren is pledging $1 million to support Beyond Housing’s Once and for All, an effort to invest in the St. Louis region’s most under-resourced communities to move all of St. Louis forward.

Among all of the challenges identified by readers of the St. Louis Business Journal in its AdvanceSTL series, our region’s poor national reputation, largely fueled by our high violent crime rates, was voted number one.

When the Save A Lot in Pagedale closed in November of 2021, it was a major blow to a community that had worked hard to bring the kinds of things to Pagedale and the surrounding communities that are commonplace most anywhere

A special holiday message from Once and for All and Beyond Housing.

Beyond Housing is proud to announce that UMB Bank is now an official partner of the organization’s Once and for All effort.

Despite all the challenges highlighted by St. Louis Business Journal readers in the AdvanceSTL series, there are a lot of great things happening in St. Louis. In many ways, it feels like we are on the verge of a potential grand slam.

Dear Lou,

I know you have grown weary of the problems before you. I know that at times it all becomes overwhelming and that it’s easier to look the other way.

Do not look away.

When the Pagedale Town Center Homes project wraps up in late 2023, it will be the 20th low-income housing tax credit project Beyond Housing has completed since 1988. It also marks the first partnership with BJC HealthCare, which is providing below-market, permanent financing for the development of thirty-six new affordable homes.

In a recent article I wrote for the St. Louis Business Journal called How St. Louis Became America’s Comeback City, I started with the premise of, what if this became a reality? And if so, what would a solution or effort to help create such a reality look like?

Without going into details of this solution, I wrote how, to be that effective, it would have to look and feel very different than anything we’ve done before.

St. Louis is not America’s comeback city in 2022. But if we can get enough of the right heads together on the same page, it’s not out of the realm of possibility in the not-too-distant future.

On Tuesday, June 7, the St. Louis Business Journal held its first quarterly AdvanceSTL event examining the top issues preventing the region from achieving greater success. This first event focused on the challenges of