Paul Lambi, Mayor of Wentzville, MO

“Without starter homes, the beginning, it’s like taking out the spark plug from the engine. It won’t run.”

This issue of having enough housing for working families has faced Paul Lambi since he was elected to public office in Wentzville, first as an alderman and now as mayor. He has been trying to raise awareness about the need for homes for low and moderate-income workers – the clerks, police officers, retail workers – that keep the local economy running. For several years, he’s noticed that housing prices in St. Charles County seem to start at a little above average and go up from there. If housing in St. Charles is unaffordable, eventually workers will move farther and farther out, as they are already doing. Eventually, Mayor Lambi says, the jobs will follow them.

This, along with other economic factors, such as the rising cost of gas, has started to make it harder for local employers to find workers. Members of the business community have started to approach him, describing how the double shocks of the high cost of housing and ever-rising gas prices are making it increasingly difficult to retain workers – the ones who provide the services that local residents need.

“We’re not building all of the types of housing, like starter and downsize (retirement) homes, that we need to make a sustainable community. This means that children who go off to college might not be to come back and buy a home in St. Charles or Wentzville.”

Sustainability is another issue brought up by Mayor Lambi. He points out that many of the homes that have been built over the last 20 years were larger, more expensive homes, which was possible because many buyers possessed substantial equity from their previous homes. In the next 20 years, he said, many of those homeowners are going to be retiring, and will want smaller homes as they age. But if these houses are too expensive for middle-income families, he wonders, who will buy them? For him, workforce housing is really an “equity problem,” that in the long term, could threaten the property values of homeowners living in St. Charles County.

In the end, Mayor Lambi believes that having a variety of homes – from “starter” homes for younger workers to larger homes for those with higher incomes to “downsize” homes for retirees – is key to having a sustainable housing cycle, and a healthy and diverse community.

“Property and ownership – and developing and building equity in the land – have always been the American Dream… Now we have to convince people that it’s a good thing all over again.”