Kevin Kast, Former President and CEO of SSM Healthcare

“The median income for St. Charles County is $62,000, while 53 percent of employees at SSM St. Joseph earn less than $40,000 per year.”

This was Kevin Kast’s reality when he was the president and CEO of SSM St. Joseph Health Center in St. Charles, Mo., until his retirement earlier this year. It is why he would wake up at night with concerns as to whether or not his maintenance crews were able to handle, for instance, emergency bathroom repairs. He knew that these low-wage hospital employees were critical to the health and safety of his institution. Yet he also knew they lived far from work and were not always able to easily make the commute.

Housekeepers, nurse’s aides, secretaries, maintenance workers, technicians, social workers, supervisors, and managers, along with other staff members at SSM St. Joseph, have a difficult time finding housing in an area where a home costs more than four times their yearly salary.

“The average new home price is $200,000; that’s a $60,000 increase in less than eight years. With the population growing by 10,000 new residents annually since 2000, the price of housing continues to go up.”

As he points out, people tend to shop where they live, so St. Charles County is losing sales tax income by not making affordable housing available to its workers. Kast is also concerned about how invested a worker is in a community that he or she cannot live in.

“How invested can a teacher be in teaching your children in a school where his or her own child is excluded because of income level?”

Kast says it is time for everyone in the St. Louis region to realize the critical importance of becoming a place where all front-line workers have the opportunity to live with us as neighbors as they serve in our communities. He points out that it is time for everyone to become passionate about this issue and to get involved in solutions.

Based on comments made to the task force on January 19, 2005, and on his letter to the editor in the Suburban Journals, “Workforce Needs Affordable Housing,” January 23, 2005.