In this 5k, runners experience the history and resilience of North St. Louis

ST. LOUIS – When runners take off from the start of the Trap Run 5k, which winds through the city's north side, they begin to notice certain things, co-race director Kameel Stanley said.

Abandoned homes stand alongside new homes and community gardens. A patchwork of churches, schools and businesses, some old and some new, are in a wide range of conditions.

Runners may notice "oh, okay, the city hasn't cut the grass over here or there's potholes over here, but not over here," Stanley said. It's these moments she hopes will plant the seed that will get people asking: Why?

The race, which began in 2018, was designed to showcase the resilience and beauty of this growing neighborhood, and the movement to provide equitable and affordable housing to a community that has long gone without it.

"You don't see races or even a lot of events happening in this part of town," race co-director Stanley said. "The people who come to this race, you are up close and personal" with the neighborhood's rich history, growth and the challenges that remain.

North St. Louis has endured decades of disinvestment and systemic racism. On maps from the 1930s, federal agencies designated much of the area "hazardous" or "definitely declining." The practice of redlining, or systemically denying a person mortgages, insurance loans or other financial services based on their race or ethnicity, would go on to affect more than 8 million people nationwide — creating barriers to housing but also a range of negative health effects, research has shown.

However, people who have lived in the area for years say the neighborhood is growing and residents are working to broaden the scope of what it could be. "The North Side has dreams as well, and … they do come true," Janet Roberson, a long-term resident of the area and a NCHI board member said.

Local nonprofits like Northside Community Housing, Inc, (NCHI), which launched the hip-hop-themed Trap Run 5K in 2018, agree. The group has worked to provide and stabilize housing in the neighborhood since 1977, and the race is one effort to engage other parts of the city in the neighborhood's history and future.

"It's very difficult to find affordable housing and especially safe and affordable housing," said Michael Burns, president of NCHI. "You can find a place and move into it …. but the conditions of that housing may not be safe for families."

It's a predicament St. Louis shares with many cities nationwide – exacerbated by the effects of redlining, restrictive covenants and unequal housing practices that have plagued the system for decades and the challenges that remain today.

Missouri is in need of more than 100,000 affordable and available rentals for "extremely low-income renters," data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition shows. Nationally, the number is much higher with a shortage of 7.3 million – a larger population than that of 36 states.

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According to the 2021 St. Louis Affordable Housing Report Card, which measures housing needs in St. Louis and St. Louis County based on income and housing data from the American Community Survey and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, St. Louis received an "F" for affordable housing for several groups, including Black households, renters and people with the lowest incomes.

Through the event, "we're helping [runners] become part of the story, but also understanding the story better and why Northside Community housing exists in this neighborhood," Aaron Williams, another one of the race's co-directors, said.

Each year the race draws more people: families, running teams, couples and their children who tag along, on foot or by stroller, through the city.

One year, they may see a vacant lot. "The next year, they'll come back [and] it'll be five houses there … we continue to do the work along that route so that people can actually notice the progress," Williams added.

For some of the empty lots runners see on the route, NICHI has made arrangements to buy or agreements with the landowners that allow them to build more housing. So far the organization has developed more than 300 new and rehabbed homes on the city's north side – particularly the Greater Ville, a historically Black neighborhood rich in its history of education, culture and business.

Bringing awareness to that neighborhood's history has been a challenge. Williams said the organization has, previously been asked to change the location of the race. Some funders who felt the name carried a negative connotation have also asked for a change, or have backed out.

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The message they received, according to Williams, was "we love what you're doing, it's a transformational event for the community, but we don't like the name."

As he worked through the frustration of that feedback, Williams told the NewsHour he remembers flipping through a book of poetry by rapper Tupac Shakur when he settled on one: "The Rose That Grew from Concrete." From that year on, the Trap Run's brand bloomed into something people wouldn't be able to easily forget.

"The theme behind that was 'Give us our flowers,'" the co-director said. "Year one, Year two, you were doubting us … five years later, we're still here, we were still planting flowers and people still love this event and they loved the name."

Images of flowers are now printed on official race t-shirts and graphics bearing the event's name and Shakur's poem now lives on their website. And the group has yet to waver on the name or the location.

"The people here absolutely appreciate their community and they see the beauty of it. Even though we don't have new windows, a new paint job, our streets are not freshly paved, this is still a beautiful place where magic is happening," Williams said. "We are producing notable people out of this community and the story parallels hip-hop in so many ways."

A look at the history of housing inequities

While the difference in the city's upkeep of certain neighborhoods is an important piece of the puzzle, there are several ways that inequities in housing exist, Washington University assistant professor of sociology Elizabeth Korver-Glenn said.

"In our society homeownership is supposed to be the engine of wealth and it specifically was designed that way for white families and has never functioned that way for families of color. Those inequities persist, and it's very visible in St Louis," she said.

Korver-Glenn has spent many years studying racial disparities in housing. Most recently, she, along with University of Illinois Chicago professor Junia Howell, dove into barriers communities of color face in becoming homeowners.

They found while the mean appraisal for homes communities of color received an average appraisal of $230,733, it was more than $80,000 lower— $311,213 — than the average in white neighborhoods.

Nationally, homes in white neighborhoods in 2022 were on average valued three times higher than homes in communities of color, their research shows. These barriers to homeownership"ripple out to affect" several aspects of people's lives.

"We know that home values influence property tax assessment … how much homes are valued affects how much property tax is collected, which then in many places, most places across the United States, affects how much money goes into local public schools," Korver-Glenn said.

Though redlining was outlawed under the 1968 Fair Housing Act, its effects still exist in school funding and other public systems.

According to data from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which looks at the unequal distribution of wealth, the average life expectancy dips by 3.6 years in redlined communities when juxtaposed with neighborhoods that the Home Owners' Loan Corporation assigned a higher grade.

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation, or HOLC, was a federal agency established in 1933 that created "residential security" maps that allowed real estate officials and loan officers to label the "lending risk" for certain communities as "hazardous". Neighborhoods, often primarily Black, that were given this title were often redlined.

"There are many middle-class neighborhoods, working class neighborhoods or upper middle class or upper class communities of color that don't have nearly the economic investment that white communities do, regardless of socioeconomic status, precisely because they are viewed as and treated as less worthy, less promising, and more risky," Korver-Glenn said.

Back in the Greater Ville, the NCHI said not only are people staying in north St. Louis but they are invested in building more, which is why despite some pushback to move their Trap Run 5k out of the neighborhood, they said no.

The power of running

Alison Mariella Désir, an author runner and self-described disruptor , told the NewsHour that Black people have a history of using movement for social justice "whether it's … the Civil Rights movement, whether you think about Harriet Tubman, like this idea of movement as protest and movement for justice is something that's, you know, in us already."

Désir was always active growing up, but didn't start running marathons until she experienced a period of depression.

"We've been told that story, right, that if you get good grades, if you do the right thing, you'll be set," she said. But after attending Columbia University twice and unable to find a job while caring for a sick parent, Désir "spent a lot of time at home and just looking at people living their lives on social media."

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When a fellow Black runner introduced her to long-distance running, she said she found the freedom she'd been looking for, but also realized the disparities that existed within the sport.

"There were not a lot of Black people, not a lot of people of color when I was showing up to these spaces, and I got curious about why that is, " she said.

Désir, who's also the co-founder and former chair of the Running Industry Diversity Coalition, was prompted to write her first book, "Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn't Built for Us."

She said the fact that the Trap Run 5k is not only put on by a Black led organization but is located in a primarily Black neighborhood speaks to the power of running and how it can intersect with so many causes — not just in St. Louis, but nationwide.

"The very nature of Black people moving freely in a state (Missouri) that once kept them bound, that was reluctant to give them rights that this housing crisis is, they are a product of all of the structural inequities historically leading to this problem today," she said. "The idea that we can reclaim space through movement and in doing so, draw attention to these inequities is just a powerful way of making a statement and raising awareness."