Anyone who has ever had a labor of love turn into a major headache should be able to relate to Lindsay Dausman.
In 2015, she and her husband bought a century-old, three-story home on Westminster Place in the Central West End. Dausman's hope was to fix it up, restore its original beauty and add a few modern elements before selling it to someone who wanted to live in the city.
Eight years later, the house — its roof and gutters, specifically, which the city says she needs to spend a quarter-million dollars to replace — is an albatross around her and her family.
"I couldn't afford to own this home, and I couldn't afford to sell it," she said at the June 2023 hearing of the St. Louis Preservation Board, a hearing that did not go in her favor.
The Dausmans initially bought the house in 2015 for $492,000 and the couple spent half a million dollars rehabbing the property for the next two years.
But the housing market proved unfavorable. In 2018 and again in 2020, Dausman put the house on the market and both times it failed to sell, even as at one point she was willing to take a six figure loss to get it off their books.
Needing to staunch the financial bleeding from the property, Dausman, who works as a nurse, formed an LLC, Elevi Holdings, and in March 2020 began renting out the house as an Airbnb.
Despite being a reluctant short-term rental host, she says she's been heartened by all the people who have stayed there, in particular families whose children are receiving treatment at St. Louis Children's Hospital and a group of people who'd come at the end of every month to receive treatments from Siteman Cancer Center. She says that she recently hosted travelers from Denmark and a group of people working for a bioethanol start up.
Though her goal remains to sell the house, in the meantime, she says, "I have to do the best I can."
But the process of selling the home is being weighed down by its roof.
In March of last year, Dausman arrived at the house to find a chunk of plaster had fallen from the ceiling and water was coming into the master bedroom. It was an emergency situation.
The Westminster house sports a slate roof, and in order to have a roof made of the exact same material installed, it was going to cost around $175,000, plus another $100,000 for copper gutters.
She ended up going with a cheaper option, a faux-slate material that in some ways is superior to the real deal (it's more weather-resistant and makes the house more energy efficient, for instance). It cost $48,000, for which she obtained a loan. It could also be put up quickly, before more severe weather rolled in. (One quote she got for a slate roof indicated it would take 10 months to install.)
As the new roof was being installed, a city building inspector noticed the repair taking place and told Dausman she needed to get a permit. Because Dausman was in a historical district, she needed to apply for a variance to the district’s requirements.
"They put on a high-quality product. An inspector came by and said, 'Look, it's not in compliance but all you have to do is file for a variance,'" says Pete Woods, the attorney Dausman has since retained.
She did just that, but the city's Cultural Resources Office denied the variance request. So she appealed to the city's Preservation Board, asking for a variance on the basis of a financial hardship.
Dausman came to the June 2023 Preservation Board meeting prepared, bringing with her photos and exhibits and even state Representative Peter Merideth (D-St. Louis) to vouch for her character. Meredith and Dausman live near each other in Tower Grove East. Merideth told the Preservation Board that she is one of the most diligent homeowners on the block.
"I'm a policy maker, so I look at policy. I think it's really important to look at why the exception for economic hardship exists," Merideth said. "And it's for a situation like this. We're not trying to use the code to bankrupt someone who's done everything they can to restore and maintain a home."
He added, "I don't want to punish someone for investing a great deal of time and money into restoring a home that was falling into disrepair when she bought it."
However, much of the conversation at the hearing got bogged down in the specifics of the Airbnb being run out of the house. That was in the middle of the summer when out-of-control parties at short-term rentals were wreaking havoc across the city. Dausman did her best to distinguish her operation from those, saying that she talks directly with everyone who rents from her, has installed security cameras on the property and generally doesn't even rent to locals.
Two months later, Dausman appeared in front of the Preservation Board again. Leaning on her 9 to 5 nursing job, she compared her business to that of a patient slowly bleeding out.
Despite some dissent — Aldermen Bret Naryan, for instance, indicated in June he was inclined to vote in favor of Dausman — in August, the Preservation Board decided to uphold the denial of Dausman's appeal for a variance.
"Even if it's your first project you got to do your due diligence and research," one board member said. "I feel like everyone just watches HGTV and then gets into this business."
Given that she was appealing for a variance on financial hardship grounds, Dausman didn’t gain any favors by one of the Board members pointing out that, according to the financials she submitted, she netted a profit from the AirBnB business in 2021. Also counted against her was the fact that she’d had the work done before seeking a permit — and the fact that she didn’t actually live in the home.
In October, Elevi Holdings filed a lawsuit in St. Louis City Circuit Court asking for an administrative review of the Preservation Board's decision.
Woods, who filed the lawsuit, calls the Preservation Board's decision "arbitrary and capricious."
Less than a third of the houses on the Westminster home’s block and the adjacent one are made of actual slate, he says in the lawsuit. Many have patchwork repair. Many others have asphalt shingles.
"The requirement of a slate roof is a relic of older guidelines," Woods tells the RFT. "Materials now available are actually an improvement over the original slate roofs."
Also, for what it's worth, the Westminsterhouse abuts what appears to be a vacant lot and is caddy-corner to an automotive shop.
Woods says he thinks that "basically the city is shooting itself in the foot" by chilling potential investment with this sort of enforcement.
Dausman puts it this way: "Is the chemical composite of the roofing material what makes it historic? It looks identical."
(“Before” photos are included below for you to decide that for yourself.)
Woods tells the RFT that the property, which has already proven difficult to sell, is even more so because who would want to buy a property only to have to rip off a functional and good-looking roof and replace it with a roof and gutters that together will cost $250,000.
Dausman says that she acknowledges many of the neighbors on Westminster Place don't like the house being used as a short-term rental. She stresses that ideally she wouldn't be using it as such. The original plan was to sell it to a family.
"When someone has already put in, as my client has, $50,000, and in the big picture they've put in a half a million dollars improving this property and basically you're going to dump on them? It makes no sense," Woods says.
That suit filed by Woods most recently had a hearing on April 9. There was some question as to whether the suit could proceed in circuit court or if they needed to take the matter to the city's Planning Commission first. That matter resolved, the suit is now proceeding in circuit court.
Woods says he's optimistic.
"There's nothing to complain about here, other than these people are sort of stuck in the past."
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