My Zip Code Has the Lowest Average Credit Scores in the St. Louis Region

A new database uses average credit scores as a measure of a community’s financial wellbeing:

The Financial Wellness Index dashboard and mapping – created in partnership with Experian – provides a unique snapshot of a community’s financial health as measured by the average credit scores of its residents. Credit scores are important because they affect residents’ ability to borrow, the likelihood they can be resilient during difficult times, and their ability to achieve financial goals like purchasing a home or starting a business. — Operation Hope

I checked the zip codes for both sides of the Mississippi River and my zip code (63106) was the lowest of all, hence the worst in terms of financial health. There’s a direct correlation between primarily using currency instead of credit cards and having lower credit scores.

Before going further a brief credit score 101 is necessary:
We don’t have just one credit score, we have numerous. There are 3 major credit bureaus (TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian). Each maintains a file on our loans, credit cards, payments, etc. Each will vary slightly from the others, even without errors.
Credit scores are calculated based on information from one of the three credit bureaus, but there are two major formulas used currently: FICO8 and VantageScore 3.0. Both scoring methods use a range of 300-850.

The credit bureaus collect information voluntarily reported to them. Many payments such as utilities, rent, handshake loans, etc haven’t been reported because it involves extra work to do so. When I was a landlord I don’t think there was a way to report payments/delinquencies by my tenants — but technology is changing to allow more into the files.

Ok, end of credit scores lesson.

The Operation Hope database uses Experian data and the VantageScore 3.0 formula. The national average was 698, Missouri & Illinois averaged 694 & 702, respectively. The City of St. Louis had an average of 681. My zip code (63106), just north of downtown & downtown west was just 589.

Downtown (63101) & downtown west (63103) both averaged 645. This is low, but it’s nearly 60 points higher than the adjacent zip code of 63106.

The 7 city zip codes mostly north of Delmar average 604, the highest is 63112 (646)– which includes the Debaliviere & Debaliviere Place neighborhoods. Credit scores in five of the seven north side zip codes are between 589-601. In the rest of the city the lowest average is 619 (63111), the highest is 714 (63139).

What do these numbers mean?

VantageScore rates them as such:
300-499: Very Poor
500-600: Poor
601-660: Fair
661-780: Good
781+ Excellent

Again the average score (Experian/VantageScore 3.0) for my zip code of 11k people is 589. Individually that’s a Poor score. What about from a community perspective? I think the same classifications apply. If the average is 589, what are the low and high scores? After decades of low scores, mine have all been in the classification for over three years now.

Poor credit scores prevent people from getting loans altogether, or at least without paying through the nose interest rates. This might look like buying an overpriced well-use car at a ”we finance anyone” place to get wheels to get to work. The high rate of interest means the payments are steep. The dealer doesn’t care if you pay in full because they can repo and resell to someone else.

While a prospective employer or landlord can’t see your specific score, they can ask your permission to see your credit report. A lack of credit history, or bad history, can mean a person needs to keep looking for a job or apartment.

What does this have to do with cash, printed currency? A lot!

Today, roughly four-in-ten Americans (41%) say none of their purchases in a typical week are paid for using cash, up from 29% in 2018 and 24% in 2015, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Pew Research

I’m in that ”none” group. I use cash only for the occasional lottery ticket or very rare medical cannabis purchase. But many are the opposite, using cash for everything. Back to Pew Research:

Americans with lower incomes continue to be more reliant on cash than those who are more affluent. Three-in-ten Americans whose household income falls below $30,000 a year say they use cash for all or almost all of their purchases in a typical week. That share drops to 20% among those in households earning $30,000 to $49,999 and 6% among those living in households earning $50,000 or more a year.

Even so, growing shares of Americans across income groups are relying less on cash than in previous years. This is especially the case among the highest earners: Roughly six-in-ten adults whose annual household income is $100,000 or more (59%) say they make none of their typical weekly purchases using cash, up from 43% in 2018 and 36% in 2015.

There are also differences by race and ethnicity in cash usage. Roughly a quarter of Black adults (26%) and 21% of Hispanic adults say that all or almost all of their purchases in a typical week are paid for using cash, compared with 12% of White adults who say the same.

Pew Research

The areas with the lowest credit scores are the same as those that use cash almost exclusively. Can’t expect a good credit score if you never/rarely use credit!

The part that stumps me is how to change the current paradigm. It’s necessary as the population increasingly goes cashless, otherwise those on the economic fringe will be even more isolated financially they are currently. Future posts on credit scores will look at how the scoring models have improved since their inception, what still needs to be done, how can the region lift scores — and how this will indirectly reduce crime.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and/or X (Twitter).

Preliminary Look at the Newest MLS Stadium: CITYPARK, Home of ST LOUIS CITY SC

Tomorrow, Saturday March 4, 2023 is the first league match at CITYPARK, in the Downtown West neighborhood of St. Louis — home to the 29th team in Major League Soccer (MLS). On August 20, 2019 MLS announced a St. Louis-based ownership group selected to become the 29th team in their league. Nearly three and a half years later here we are. I’ll leave the sports coverage to others, this has meant big changes to infrastructure, connectivity, etc.

For those unfamiliar we should go back and take a look at the before and during views.

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I have more pictures from driving by, as well as some six months or so before my power wheelchair began having issues. Once my chair is fixed I’ll return and take an up close look. I’ll be watching this match on Apple TV+ both for action but also for how CITYPARK and St. Louis are presented to the world.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and/or X (Twitter).

Four Recent Books From Island Press

Trying to get caught up on posts, so rather than four individual posts these four books from 2022 are grouped together. — Steve

‘City Forward: How Innovation Districts Can Embrace Risk and Strengthen Community’ by Matt Enstice with Mike Gluck

To me it seems like nearly every new development project is part of a growing list of innovation districts. This book delves into the topic.

Innovation districts and anchor institutions—like hospitals, universities, and technology hubs—are celebrated for their ability to drive economic growth and employment opportunities. But the benefits often fail to reach the very neighborhoods they are built in. As CEO of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, Matt Enstice took a different approach. Under Matt’s leadership, BNMC has supported entrepreneurship training programs and mentorship for community members, creation of a community garden, bringing together diverse groups to explore transportation solutions, and more. Fostering participation and collaboration among neighborhood leaders, foundations, and other organizations ensures that the interests of Buffalo residents are represented. Together, these groups are creating a new model for re-energizing Buffalo—a model that has applications across the United States and around the world.

City Forward explains how BNMC works to promote a shared goal of equity among companies and institutions with often opposing motivations and intentions. When money or time is scarce, how can equitable community building remain a common priority? When interests conflict, and an institution’s expansion depends upon parking or development that would infringe upon public space, how can the decision-making process maintain trust and collaboration? Offering a candid look at BNMC’s setbacks and successes, along with efforts from other institutions nationwide, Enstice shares twelve strategies that innovation districts can harness to weave equity into their core work. From actively creating opportunities to listen to the community, to navigating compromise, to recruiting new partners, the book reveals unique opportunities available to create decisive, large-scale change. Critically, Enstice also offers insight about how innovation districts can speak about equity in an inclusive manner and keep underrepresented and historically excluded voices at the decision-making table.

Accessible, engaging, and packed with fresh ideas applicable to any city, this book is an invaluable resource. Institutional leadership, business owners, and professionals hoping to make equitable change within their companies and organizations will find experienced direction here. City Forward is a refreshing look at the brighter, more equitable futures that we can create through thoughtful and strategic collaboration—moving forward, together

(Island Press)

‘Making Healthy Places, Second Edition: Designing and Building for Well-Being, Equity, and Sustainability’ edited by Nisha D. Botchwey, Andrew Dannenberg, and Howard Frumkin

Priorities of well-being, equity, and sustainability are exactly what we need at this time. This book is larger than the other three, see the link below for contents & preview.

The first edition of Making Healthy Places offered a visionary and thoroughly researched treatment of the connections between constructed environments and human health. Since its publication over 10 years ago, the field of healthy community design has evolved significantly to address major societal problems, including health disparities, obesity, and climate change. Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has upended how we live, work, learn, play, and travel.
 
In Making Healthy Places, Second Edition: Designing and Building for Well-Being, Equity, and Sustainability, planning and public health experts Nisha D. Botchwey, Andrew L. Dannenberg, and Howard Frumkin bring together scholars and practitioners from across the globe in fields ranging from public health, planning, and urban design, to sustainability, social work, and public policy. This updated and expanded edition explains how to design and build places that are beneficial to the physical, mental, and emotional health of humans, while also considering the health of the planet.
 
This edition expands the treatment of some topics that received less attention a decade ago, such as the relationship of the built environment to equity and health disparities, climate change, resilience, new technology developments, and the evolving impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Drawing on the latest research, Making Healthy Places, Second Edition imparts a wealth of practical information on the role of the built environment in advancing major societal goals, such as health and well-being, equity, sustainability, and resilience. 
 
This update of a classic is a must-read for students and practicing professionals in public health, planning, architecture, civil engineering, transportation, and related fields.

(Island Press)

‘Managing the Climate Crisis: Designing and Building for Floods, Heat, Drought, and Wildfire’ by Jonathan Barnett and Matthijs Bouw

We definitely need to build differently in preparation for our changing climate.

The climate, which had been relatively stable for centuries, is well into a new and dangerous phase. In 2020 there were 22 weather and climate disasters in the United States, which resulted in 262 deaths.  Each disaster cost more than a billion dollars to repair. This dangerous trend is continuing with unprecedented heat waves, extended drought, extraordinary wildfire seasons, torrential downpours, and increased coastal and river flooding. Reducing the causes of the changing climate is the urgent global priority, but the country will be living with worsening climate disasters at least until midcentury because of greenhouse emissions already in the atmosphere. How to deal with the changing climate is an urgent national security problem affecting almost everyone.  

In Managing the Climate Crisis, design and planning experts Jonathan Barnett and Matthijs Bouw take a practical approach to addressing the inevitable and growing threats from the climate crisis using constructed and nature-based design and engineering and ordinary government programs. They discuss adaptation and preventive measures and illustrate their implementation for seven climate-related threats: flooding along coastlines, river flooding, flash floods from extreme rain events, drought, wildfire, long periods of high heat, and food shortages.

The policies and investments needed to protect lives and property are affordable if they begin now, and are planned and budgeted over the next 30 years. Preventive actions can also be a tremendous opportunity, not only to create jobs, but also to remake cities and landscapes to be better for everyone. Flood defenses can be incorporated into new waterfront parks. The green designs needed to control flash floods can also help shield communities from excessive heat. Combating wildfires can produce healthier forests and generate creative designs for low-ignition landscapes and more fire-resistant buildings. Capturing rainwater can make cities respond to severe weather more naturally, while conserving farmland from erosion and encouraging roof-top greenhouses can safeguard food supplies.

Managing the Climate Crisis is a practical guide to managing the immediate threats from a changing climate while improving the way we live.

(Island Press)

‘Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate’ by William Fulton

Actual ”places” aren’t just a GPS location. A collection of big boxes, strip malls, fast food buildings doesn’t create a place.

There are few more powerful questions than, “Where are you from” or “Where do you live?” People feel intensely connected to cities as places and to other people who feel that same connection. In order to understand place – and understand human settlements generally – it is important to understand that places are not created by accident. They are created in order to further a political or economic agenda. Better cities emerge when the people who shape them think more broadly and consciously about the places they are creating. In Place and Prosperity: How Cities Help Us to Connect and Innovate, urban planning expert William Fulton takes an engaging look at the process by which these decisions about places are made, how cities are engines of prosperity, and how place and prosperity are deeply intertwined. Fulton has been writing about cities over his forty-year career that includes working as a journalist, professor, mayor, planning director, and the director of an urban think tank in one of America’s great cities. Place and Prosperity is a curated collection of his writings with new and updated selections and framing material.

Though the essays in Place and Prosperity are in some ways personal, drawing on Fulton’s experience in learning and writing about cities, their primary purpose is to show how these two ideas – place and prosperity – lie at the heart of what a city is and, by extension, what our society is all about. Fulton shows how, over time, a successful place creates enduring economic assets that don’t go away and lay the groundwork for prosperity in the future. But for urbanism to succeed, all of us have to participate in making cities great places for everybody. Because cities, imposing though they may be as physical environments, don’t work without us.

Cities are resilient. They’ve been buffeted over the decades by White flight, decay, urban renewal, unequal investment, increasingly extreme weather events, and now the worst pandemic in a century, and they’re still going strong. Fulton shows that at their best, cities not only inspire and uplift us, but they make our daily life more convenient, more fulfilling – and more prosperous.

(Island Press)

From Dated to State of the Art: 100 North Broadway

Buildings are expensive to construct, so frequently renovation makes more sense than razing & replacing. If the structure is sound changing the finishes, fenestration (windows & doors), technology, etc is cost-effective and green. The office tower at 100 North Broadway is a good example. Most was good, very little was bad — but the bad was so prominent it overshadowed the positives. I posted about this building in 2015, suggesting the 2-story section get reimagined. The building’s owner thanked me for my interest.

The owner hired longtime tenant Trivers Architects to sketch up some ideas. Not for them, but to help sell the building. In February 2020 a new local owner took possession of the building. Then the pandemic hit, office employees worked from home. Ouch! What was initially going to be a simple interior update turned into a major project — kudos to the owner & investors for seeing the big picture, playing the long game.

Granted, the former branch bank inside was even more horrendous.

The timing at the beginning was actually a good thing. The owner & architects from Trivers were able to rethink amenities for attracting tenants. The former bank offices on the 2nd floor became a common areas and high-tech conference rooms. Let’s take a look.

The only criticism I have is one that’s easily corrected. The only bicycle parking is for tenants, in the garage — none for a guest. bike rack on each side would solve this.

As a person who saw the before and envisioned how it could be I’m so glad the new owner, investors, architects, consultants, and contractors made something happen. As a former designer I loved seeing tired buildings rethought around current requirements, materials, technology, esthetics. For additional building information see Loopnet, for project info see Trivers Architects.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and/or X (Twitter).

19th Annual Look at the State of St. Louis’ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive Pt 2: Kingshighway to City Limits

This post continues looking at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive in St. Louis, west of Kingshighsway. For east of Kingshighway see Part 1.

From east to west MLK Dr passes through the following wards: 14, 11, and 12. It’s a boundary for the 10th ward.

North St. Louis is the least populated part of the city, so each ward is physically larger than other wards. The bad news is this means lots of problems, poverty, etc. On the plus side the solutions that should be implemented are largely big picture, not micro neighborhood by neighborhood. The latter is how we end up with nice urban infill around a renovated historic building…across the street from a gas station/convenience store (see Arlington Grove vs Mobile in Street View.

Hopefully new aldermen will be more open to urbanist planning rather than continuing the failed suburbanization of the city. I’m not optimistic.

— Steve
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St. Louis urban planning, policy, and politics @ UrbanReviewSTL since October 31, 2004. For additional content please consider following on Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, and/or X (Twitter).