Some of St. Louis’ largest, proudest, richest institutions are in or near some of the region’s poorest neighborhoods.
That geographic anomaly has existed for decades, created by suburban sprawl and white flight. The institutions didn’t cause it, but they also, for the most part, haven’t done much to address the economic pain all around them.
Until now. This month, 11 major employers formed the St. Louis Anchor Action Network, through which they pledge to hire more people of color from high-poverty areas of St. Louis and St. Louis County. They also pledge to spend more money with minority-owned businesses in the same areas.
Six of the 11 are educational institutions: Harris-Stowe State University, St. Louis Community College, St. Louis University, University of Missouri St. Louis, Washington University and Webster University. The others are the BJC, Mercy and SSM hospital systems, the St. Louis Zoo and brokerage firm Edward Jones.
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The group’s hiring and contracting efforts will focus on 22 ZIP codes covering much of St. Louis and north St. Louis County. All the ZIP codes have high levels of poverty and a high percentage of Black residents.
It’s no accident that those two indicators overlap. “This is rooted in regional development patterns that go back to the Jim Crow era,” said Todd Swanstrom, an UMSL professor who’s working on the initiative. “Structural inequality, rooted in race and class and spatially embedded, is a lot of what’s holding the St. Louis area back.”
The disparities are stark. Median household income in the institutions’ target area is $37,261, compared with a regional median of $63,705. Twenty-four percent of residents in the target neighborhoods live below the poverty line, versus 11% regionwide.
“Eds and meds” institutions have launched similar initiatives in other cities, often aimed at reviving specific neighborhoods near a hospital or university. Chicago’s West Side United says its member hospitals have hired 1,800 neighborhood residents since 2017 and want to spend $60 million a year with neighborhood businesses by 2023.
The St. Louis group hasn’t announced such specific goals. Stefani Weeden-Smith, the former Washington University official who’s leading the network, said it’s still collecting baseline data from member institutions. She promises measurable goals soon, followed by annual progress reports.
New anchor networks have launched in several cities since the racial unrest that followed last year’s killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Alan Berube, deputy director of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, said St. Louis’ “looks like one of the more coordinated of those efforts, and I think that bodes well.”
David Zuckerman, executive director of the national Health Care Anchor Network, said older industrial cities tend to be fertile ground for such coordinated action.
“St. Louis’ story is the exact reason there’s a need for this,” he said. “Over the years, many of the businesses picked up and left; they weren’t rooted in the St. Louis community. The economic engines of the economy now are institutions like BJC and UMSL, and they have broader missions than just serving their shareholders.”
The network won’t fix all the inequality in St. Louis. Its target area doesn’t include Metro East, which has its own areas of concentrated poverty. It only includes one for-profit company, Edward Jones, when there are many others that could make a difference.
It is, though, an important first step.
The region has heard plenty of talk over the years about addressing inequality, and it’s encouraging that 11 major institutions are ready to turn talk into action. We eagerly await their first progress report.