Beyond Housing has a new home. The community development organization, with an $18 million annual budget and $110 million in assets, has moved from its cramped quarters in the Grove in South St. Louis to a roomy former school building at 6506 Wright Way in Pine Lawn. This places Beyond Housing in the footprint of its 24:1 initiative to collaboratively connect the 24 North County municipalities that send students to Normandy public schools.
In fact, Beyond Housing is now headquartered in the former Normandy School District’s former Garfield Elementary School. Normandy elementary students moved to the newly built Barack Obama Elementary School down the road in 2011, leaving the school building vacant. Beyond Housing bought it and six other Normandy school buildings, said the agency’s CEO and President Chris Krehmeyer, after the state dissolved the district to form the Normandy Schools Collaborative.
The new Beyond Housing campus consists of the school’s original two-story building, the gymnasium, annex and a one-story pre-engineered metal building. The total area of the buildings is 38,996 square feet, and it took $7.5 million to make it over into office and meeting spaces, with J.P. Morgan as the lead sponsor.
“It’s an indicator of hope,” Krehmeyer said of opening the new headquarters during an open house on Thursday, April 6. “It shows good stuff is happening.”
Rich Ryffel, a former Beyond Housing board chair and current board president of Normandy Schools Collaborative (NSC), pointed out that good stuff also is happening with NSC, which enrolls more than 3,500 students in preschool through grade 12. Voters approved a $23 million bond issue for school funding on the April 4 ballot.
“These are long battles we are fighting, and we can’t know whether or not we will win,” Ryffel said at the open house, “but if we quit we are giving up on kids.”
Jacqueline Buck-Horton, an assistant vice president in the Legal Department at Citi Mortgage, is an alumna of Garfield Elementary who also became a parent in the district. She remembered learning to play kickball on the playground that is now the walk-up to Beyond Housing. On the stage where she and others made remarks at the open house, she once performed in a Christmas program. She embodied the “hope” described by Krehmeyer that a building where community children once were educated will not be left abandoned, but rather become a base for community development.
Krehmeyer – and a staff of 140 people, all eager to have an off-street parking spot and ample private places to meet with clients – celebrated the new space and showed it off in tours. But Krehmeyer reminded everyone that it was a celebration of their work “and, really, of the community.”
The building tour provided a good snapshot of Beyond Housing’s wide scope of work.
Benetta Ward, who works with Normandy schools as a wellness coordinator, was set up in a desk just down from “Doug the forester,” as Doug Seely was introduced. Ward works on problems like childhood obesity, and Seely makes the community more beautiful and engages citizens with nature. The Missouri Department of Conservation recently recognized Beyond Housing for its work planting trees. “I pinch myself when I help out here to make sure this is real,” said Daniel Moncheski, an amazed community forester with the state. (Beyond Housing also has removed 53,800 square feet of asphalt from Pine Lawn to build new parkland and add streetscaping.)
There are, as one would expect of an agency called “Beyond Housing,” many specialists engaged in helping people to find housing and stay in their homes. Beyond Housing has 458 rental houses and apartments available for low-income families and seniors in the 24:1 footprint and across St. Louis County. It also sells homes through its unique 24:1 Community Land Trust (CLT), which retains the title to the land and guarantees a home buyer that it will buy back the home if the owner decides to sell. Brian Krueger, a project manager with CLT, said they have 41 new units of fresh construction in Pine Lawn, 31 for rent and 10 for sale. In August, he said, they will break ground on 41 new homes to rent.
Gloria Brainsby, a financial empowerment specialist with Beyond Housing, said they have taught more than 1,000 people about buying homes, counseled more than 5,000 people and help more than 200 people achieve ownership annually.
“We help people not only achieve homeownership, but maintain it,” Brainsby said. “We are trying to stabilize communities, not only in the 24:1 footprint but in the broader area.” She then added of Krehmeyer: “Of course, Chris always wants us to do lots here,” in the 24:1 footprint.
The 24:1 initiative, nurturing partnership between 24 of St. Louis County’s 90 municipalities, is a striking collaboration in a woefully fragmented region, and Krehmeyer orchestrated it before regional fragmentation came under intense scrutiny following the Ferguson unrest. Krehmeyer said that Beyond Housing has raised and invested more than $100 million in the 24:1 Community. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation awarded the initiative its 2016 Culture of Health Prize.
Beyond Housing also was ahead of the regional curve on the importance of child college savings accounts, which was one of the Ferguson Commission’s recommendations for racial equity. At the open house, Krehmeyer proudly noted that 1,400 children in Normandy schools have college savings accounts through their program. In total, $1 million has been invested in college savings.
Going to work in the heart of the community where much of Beyond Housing’s mission is targeted is sure to have intangible impacts on staff and community. Bob Cox, a retired Emerson executive, serves on the Beyond Housing board and chairs its development committee. As such, the much more tangible bottom line is his primary responsibility. Having all Beyond Housing employees under one roof, he said, will be “a great improvement in efficiency and in our ability to serve clients.”
But a development committee chair’s work is never done. Cox reminded open house visitors, “There are still funds to raise.”
For more information, visit http://www.beyondhousing.org.
