City housing task force says tornado affected roughly 14,000 households; estimates minimum $500 million for recovery

St. Louis City officials told the Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee that the May 16 tornado affected an estimated 14,000 households and that the city's housing recovery needs likely start at a minimum of $500 million.

Noel Pfeffer, executive director of the city's Community Development Administration (CDA) and co-lead of the housing recovery task force, told the committee the most complete dataset available—FEMA individual assistance applications—shows 11,420 households applied for FEMA help. "Most experts recommend assuming that FEMA misses between 15 and 20 percent of folks," Pfeffer said, and when adjusted the task force estimates roughly 14,000 impacted households, about 30,000 people.

Pfeffer and Dylan Hollingham, co-lead of the city's restoration and disaster recovery office, said the task force has identified urgent needs that fall into six buckets: rapid rehousing, shelter, home repair, rapid housing production (including vacant-unit turns), resettlement support, and long-term housing production and neighborhood transformation. They presented a range of immediate and longer-term cost estimates and stressed that the $500 million figure is a conservative minimum: "This is honestly a minimum number. It may well be over a billion," Pfeffer told the committee.

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