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ST. LOUIS — This city has a lot of empty houses. More per person than any other big city in the country, by one count. And, with foreclosures on the rise, there are more all the time.

Now city officials are considering a new tool to better keep track of them.

Earlier this month, a bill was proposed to the Board of Aldermen that would require owners of vacant buildings to register their properties with the city and pay an annual fee. It’s a bid to get a handle on a problem that has vexed St. Louis for decades, said sponsor Kacie Starr Triplett, 6th Ward: empty, decaying houses that can breed crime and vandalism and drag down whole blocks around them.

"Right now, the city of St. Louis makes it easy to own vacant properties," she said. "This bill allows the city to finally play offense."

Under the bill, owners of a home that’s vacant for more than 60 days and not under construction or actively for sale would have to give the city the name and phone number of an area representative — someone to contact in case there’s a problem — and pay a fee: $50 the first year, $150 the second and $250 each year after that. The registry would be made public. And it would cover both private and city-owned buildings.

The fee is relatively low, but comes on top of a $200 fine every six months for buildings with outstanding code violations.

"The purpose is not to fine the death out of someone," Triplett said. "It’s simply a push to get you to think twice about letting it sit."

Just as important is the contact info, she said. Many of the city’s vacant buildings are owned by the banks or investment groups. The city has ownership information, but it may be just a post office box or the address of the empty house itself. Notices and bills are mailed out and receive no response.

Better information would make it easier to get property owners to fix problems, said Antionette Cousins, executive director of the Riverview West Florissant Development Corp., a north St. Louis housing nonprofit.

"It’s definitely something that’s needed," she said high quality business cards. "We need to be holding them more accountable."

Dozens of other cities, including Chicago and Cincinnati, have similar measures, said Jennifer Leonard, director of the National Vacant Properties Campaign in Washington. They’ve become much more popular in the past two years, as the mortgage crisis has spread.

"It seems like we hear about tens of them every week," she said.

And although vacancy is nothing new in St. Louis, the booming foreclosure trade has made it harder to know just how many empty buildings there are in the city, and who owns them.

There are about 4,000 privately owned buildings that are empty and on a Building Department watch list because of code violations. Roughly an additional 1,500 buildings are owned by the city’s Land Reutilization Authority. In 2000, the census counted more than 11,000 "long-term" vacant buildings in St. Louis — a figure that would give this city the highest vacancy rate in the country, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The bank estimates that the number has grown since. And there’s no way to know how many buildings owned by investors or banks just sit dark.

In recent years, the city has beefed up efforts against the worst of these vacant buildings, those 4,000 so-called "problem properties." The $200 fines for code violations generate more than $250,000 a year, said associate city counselor Matt Moak, and the attention helps keep the ranks of troubled buildings from growing, despite the wave of foreclosures.

But more can be done, Triplett said.

She first proposed the bill last year, but withdrew it "for more work," she said. It has raised some concern from real estate agents and developers, but there’s been little vocal opposition. This time around it has eight co-sponsors on the 29-member board, and it has been referred to the Public Safety Committee. No hearing has yet been scheduled.

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