Concentrated Housing Code Enforcement in St Louis

This research employs probit analysis to examine the selection criteria governing nonuniform application of concentrated housing code enforce-ment in the city of St. Louis. The study has three specific objectives: (1) to identify the goals and geographic selection criteria characteristic of St. Louis ' concentrated code enforcement program during the twenty years that it was in effect; (2) to establish whether program goals and selection criteria changed over time and, if so, why;and (3) to provide some judgment on the value of code enforcement as a policy tool to either reverse or slow neighborhood decline. Although fundamentally a case study, the conclusions should be of interest to those concerned with conservation of the housing stock in older cities throughout the country