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ST. LOUIS — The May 16 tornado battered blocks in north St. Louis where more than 70% of homeowners likely don't have insurance, according to a Post-Dispatch analysis of U.S. Census data.

Not all city streets have such high rates, with the figures varying among blocks where the tornado carved a path of damage. But the sheer number of uninsured properties will complicate recovery in neighborhoods that were already among the poorest in the region, struggling with decades of disinvestment and pocked with thousands of vacant properties.

Lenders require homeowners with mortgages to carry insurance. But many north St. Louis residents inherited homes that are decades old, with mortgages paid off years earlier. Some bought their houses for rock-bottom prices.

St. Louis and ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ officials have called for help from the Federal Emergency Management Administration to tackle the high uninsured rates. But federal funds are not guaranteed and could take months to arrive.

City leaders also have floated the idea of using Rams settlement money and American Rescue Plan Act funds to help with recovery — though they acknowledge that no amount of government assistance can fully address the needs.

“We know we are simultaneously doing a herculean effort and not doing nearly enough,� Mayor Cara Spencer said at a press conference last week. “The need is absolutely astronomical.�

The May 16 tornado grew a mile wide as it careened from Clayton through north St. Louis, with winds topping 150 mph. Five people were killed in the deadliest tornado to hit the city since the 1950s.

City officials estimated that hundreds of structures were damaged.

They say it’s unclear what recovery will look like. Residents say they don't have much, if any, time to wait for financial help, as they scramble to find shelter and assess what their futures look like.

“Residents are going through something that none of us have ever experienced before,� said Alderwoman Laura Keys, whose 11th Ward was hit by the tornado. “The magnitude of this storm and the impact that it has had in the area is just startling.�

If there's a comparison for recovery, it might be the Good Friday tornado 14 years ago that barreled through north St. Louis County and damaged 2,700 properties. No one died, but a quarter of the damaged structures were eventually condemned. It took years to rebuild. Some people never returned home.

A few days after the tornado that hit St. Louis last week, Fatima Myles stumbled through the wreckage that used to be her home. She found a photo of herself and her fiance buried in the rubble.

The couple and their six children moved into the house, in the Greater Ville neighborhood, about two months ago. Her father, a longtime carpenter, bought the building after it was vacant and fixed it up to hand down to his children so they could raise families of their own.

Her youngest kids have asked whether they can put the house back together. But the house wasn't insured. 

“I tell them we’ll try,� said Myles, 32. “We’ll try.�

'A vicious cycle'

The Post-Dispatch analyzed census data on insurance coverage within geographic areas called "block groups," which cover 600 to 3,000 people each. 

According to U.S. Census estimates from 2019 to 2023 — the latest available data — there were nearly 29,000 owner-occupied homes within a half-mile radius of the tornado's 23-mile path. Of those, 4,900, or 17%, were likely uninsured. 

Zooming in to the north St. Louis area where the tornado hit — north of Delmar Boulevard and east of Skinker Boulevard — 28% of the nearly 8,000 homeowners likely don’t have insurance, the figures show. But the rates vary by block, and more than half are higher than 20%. Two of those block groups had uninsured rates around 80%: one north and west of Tandy Park; the other just northwest of Fairground Park.

Part of the issue is that insurance has gotten more expensive in recent years.

From 2021 to 2024, insurance companies increased annual premiums an average of 24% across the country, according to research from the Consumer Federation of America, a nonprofit consortium of consumer advocacy groups.

Missouri saw a 12% increase in that time. The St. Louis region saw a spike of 18%, according to the federation's research.

Nationally, the gulf was particularly pronounced for homes worth less than $150,000; of those, 19% lacked coverage. That figure dropped to just 5% for homes worth more than $150,000.

“It’s a vicious cycle because the people who would benefit the most from homeowners insurance tend to be people who don’t have it and don’t have the resources to help them recover after a disaster,� said Michael DeLong, a research and advocacy associate with the Consumer Federation.

On Cottage Avenue in the Greater Ville neighborhood, Don Thornton's house had been insured until four months ago.

He bought the one-story, two-bedroom house from the city's land bank in 2014 for $800. He grew up in a different house on the block and wanted to live the rest of his life there, next door to his sister and mother. And he wanted to pass the house on to his kids.

"To have something of your own like that, that's being blessed," he said.

A father of 10, his kids and grandkids gathered in the home every Sunday. 

"I put most of my money into this house," said Thornton, 60, a maintenance worker for the St. Louis Housing Authority. 

Now, after the tornado, the attic window sits on top of a pile of wood and brick in the front lawn. The remains of his kitchen and bedroom are out in the open air, the walls in pieces in the backyard. 

He has been sleeping in his damaged pickup truck to ward away people who might try to loot his home. 

Thornton a few months ago was laid off from a second job he held, doing maintenance at a private apartment complex. He was helping some of his family members financially, he said. He struggled to pay his own bills. He stopped paying for insurance.

He still wants to rebuild. But he's left hoping volunteers or charities can help. 

"I worked three jobs to get it to the point where it was," he said. "I have to hope on a prayer."

'I would have been in trouble'

Pearl Bowen didn’t have insurance when a 2011 tornado struck her home on Helen Avenue in Berkeley. Her husband had earned good money at McDonnell Douglas, enough to pay off the mortgage. But after he died, money was tight. She let the insurance policy lapse.

The Good Friday twister tore through a swath of North County, hitting Berkeley — where the median household income is roughly half that of the metro area — particularly hard.

FEMA aid helped Bowen pay for repairs to her roof and gutters after a tree fell on the back of her house.

She recalls a relatively quick turnaround from FEMA — maybe a month before she got an initial check to begin repairs. She hopes the government acts quickly now to help St. Louis residents because she doesn’t know what she would have done without federal help.

“I would have been in trouble,� she said.

Bowen carries homeowners insurance now.

"I'll never do that again," she said.

It took nearly a decade before developers bought some of the vacant lots left behind by the Good Friday tornado and built new homes. Other lots remain vacant today.

After the storm, Berkeley’s then-building commissioner, Debra Irvin, estimated about 50 severely damaged homes were uninsured and wouldn’t be rebuilt. She guessed that each home had four to five residents, worrying that dozens of people could move away.

Berkeley’s population, about 9,500 in 2011, stands at roughly 8,100 today.

In St. Louis, officials are already feeling the pressure.

“A third of the city is in ruins. You can’t have a city that exists that way. It wasn’t OK before and it’s worse now,� said Megan Green, president of the Board of Aldermen. “This is going to be years of painstaking work to recover.�

'I put it in God's hands'

Federal officials last week began touring the damage in St. Louis. A FEMA spokesman said the agency doesn’t operate on a timeline and couldn't say when it would make a decision on aid.

FEMA announced on Friday that it finally approved assistance for storms and tornadoes in mid-March that struck Missouri, killing 13 people and damaging homes, businesses and public property.

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has called on the federal government to act quickly — he questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem last week about sending help sooner — and he’s called on insurance companies to deliver on claims.

Spencer has raised the possibility of using unspent COVID recovery money from the federal government to help, though the legality of such a plan would have to reviewed. Other aldermen have suggested using money from the Rams lawsuit settlement.

“Communities in north St Louis, they don't even have bootstraps, let alone shoestrings,� said Alderman Rasheen Aldridge of the 14th Ward. “We have to be strategic about what we use these funds for.�

Norbert Thompson, whose home of 30 years was flattened in the tornado, said he hopes the city taps the Rams money. 

"They've been holding on to that money for so long, and all they're concentrating on is, 'Downtown, downtown,'" he said. "People near downtown are hardly making it."

At Thompson's home on Leduc Street, in the Kingsway East neighborhood, saws buzzed and dust clouds swirled on a recent day. Workers trimmed damaged trees and scooped debris piles from the roadway. 

Thompson's house — a brick, two-story structure — was passed down from his grandfather to his mother and then, in 1995, to Thompson. He and his wife raised their five sons there. As their family grew and added grandchildren, they gathered to celebrate Christmas each year. 

Thompson mortgaged the home in 2007 to pay for renovations, and his lender required him to have insurance. But he hasn't been able to afford insurance in more recent years.

He's been on a limited income since 2020, when he suffered a stroke, lost vision in his right eye and had to leave his longtime job as a driver for a dry cleaning service. He's one of several senior residents on the block living in homes they inherited from older generations. Half the block was already vacant before the tornado. 

"This is a poor community," he said. "You have a lot of elders on a fixed income, and they're not getting much."

He has started a GoFundMe asking for donations. He hopes to combine any donated money with federal aid to build a new home, even if it's smaller and made of cheaper material than brick.

"I put it in God's hands," he said. 

In the Greater Ville, Fatima Myles' home was gutted. In her area — St. Ferdinand Avenue just west of Taylor Avenue — just three houses on the half-vacant block were left standing after the tornado. A few walls remained of Myles' home.

Her father bought the house in 2018 from the city's land bank for $200 and began renovating it. He hoped to pass it down to his children, in addition to the nearby family home on Vine Grove Avenue. He gave another house on St. Ferdinand to Myles' sister. 

“He wanted all of us to have a house to come back to,� Myles said.

Myles and her family — her fiance and their six kids, ages 2 to 13 — moved into the home in March from the Spanish Lake area of unincorporated St. Louis County, where they rented an apartment. It took more than a year to get the title transferred to her name, she said. She planned to shop for insurance but wasn't in a rush.

“I would never have thought a tornado would come,� she said.

Now she's worried she'll also lose the land if she can't rebuild. A certified nursing assistant, Myles says she's determined to rebuild, even if she has to save money for years.

“We, as a Black community, a lot of us don’t have this," she said about her property. "If you have a house, you try to hold on to it and pass it down as best you can."

Jacob Barker, Austin Huguelet and Kelsey Landis of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this story.