Welcoming low-income people to the American dream of homeownership

ST. LOUIS — For decades, the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood on the north side, with its boarded-up rowhouses and empty lots, was one of the most distressed areas of this city.

Now the neighborhood — once the only place where Black people could own property in the city — is transforming into a vibrant, working-class community, thanks not to gentrification but to a program that sells homes with mortgages as low as $550 a month.