The small yellow house on Gustine Avenue that once belonged to Kaitlynn Picker’s family went up in flames in the early hours of Jan. 12, leaving neighbors stunned and the block smelling like smoke. Fire crews arrived to find heavy flames pouring from the second floor of the vacant home and confirmed no one was inside. For residents who had watched the property slide into years of neglect, the blaze did more than destroy an old building; it erased a place packed with family history and underscored a familiar safety problem across St. Louis: empty houses that attract trespassers and turn into neighborhood hazards. The loss has renewed calls for clearer accountability and faster action on dangerous vacant properties.
City records and neighbor accounts reviewed by First Alert 4 show the Gustine Avenue house was built in 1892 and was owned by Daniel Baumhoff LLC after a 2018 private sale for roughly $8,000. The station reports that forestry fines and code violations piled up while property taxes for 2024 and 2025 remained unpaid (about $1,889), and neighbors say surveillance footage shows someone entering the house hours before the Jan. 12 fire. Taken together, those public records and eyewitness details trace a now-familiar arc that city leaders and residents say keeps turning individual vacant houses into public dangers.
Daniel Baumhoff told the station the property was intended as a fix-and-flip but that he had “a lot of squatting issues” and that other projects took priority. Neighbors pushed back, saying they repeatedly messaged and called the owner to mow, board windows or otherwise secure the place. “To own a building and not seriously board it up to make it impossible for somebody to get in is negligence,” one neighbor said, voicing a complaint heard on blocks across the city that are dotted with similar vacant homes.
Why vacant houses become fire hazards
Vacant buildings often lose utilities, fall into disrepair and become easy shelter for people trying to stay warm, conditions that increase the risk of improvised heating and accidental blazes. Insurance and fire-safety experts warn that makeshift heaters, open flames and overcrowded spaces inside uninspected structures can spark fires that spread quickly in tightly packed neighborhoods. In response to deadly incidents, the fire department has moved to catalog and rate vacant properties so crews know which buildings are too unsafe to enter…