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Compton Hill Apartments

For Sale Properties

History

Mutual Housing Association

Staff and Board of Directors

The History of DeSales Community Housing Corporation

DeSales Community Housing Corporation is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) corporation formed in 1976 by residents of Tower Grove East and Fox Park neighborhoods in South St. Louis. The mission of DeSales is to promote the ongoing development of Fox Park and Tower Grove East as healthy, diverse urban neighborhoods with quality housing. It is governed by a 15- member board of directors made up of neighborhood residents, property owners and business owners. DeSales employs a full-time staff.

In fulfillment of its mission, DeSales has throughout its history adapted its strategies to meet changing circumstances. Initially, DeSales focused on neighborhood marketing to promote lending, homebuying, and rehabilitation at a time when the City of St. Louis faced massive disinvestment and loss of population. Later, DeSales was a champion of the use of the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit and played a support role to private developers in rehabilitating large numbers of properties within the housing corporation's service area.

Then, in the aftermath of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, DeSales undertook a reassessment of its role. During this period, most of the private developers who had operated in the city went out of business. In Fox Park and Tower Grove East, there was an increasing feeling that the momentum of progress experienced in prior years had been lost and could not be regained. In an effort to counteract this perception and restart investment on a significant scale, DeSales resolved, for the first time in its history, to become a producer of housing.

In 1991, DeSales began planning an innovative program for multi-family development known as DeSales Mutual Housing Association (MHA). The purpose of a mutual housing association is to produce and operate quality, affordable housing, and to do so in the interest of both the residents of that housing and the community in which it is located. In 1993, DeSales MHA developed its first housing, 22 units in the Iowa Avenue Townhomes and California Avenue Townhomes in Fox Park. In January of 1996, DeSales MHA completed its third project, 12 units in California Townhomes Phase II. These projects generated an investment of $3.2 million and rehabilitated 34 units in 13 previously vacant buildings. Since 1996, DeSales has rehabilitated an additional 47 units of affordable rental housing.

In 1998, DeSales completed its biggest undertaking yet, the acquisition of 130 apartment units in 37 buildings in Tower Grove East and Fox Park. DeSales took this action to ensure long-term, community-based control of these properties. A new marketing identity under the name Compton Hill Apartments was adopted and a neighborhood-based leasing and management office was opened. DeSales also invested nearly $400,000 in capital improvements at these properties.