Frank Absher

🧵 Last week @MarkMaxwellTV of @ksdknews aired an in-depth story about the aftermath of the May 2025 tornado that devastated parts of St. Louis City, especially neighborhoods on the city's impoverished north side. The story, reported in a somewhat breathless tone, suggested that the insurance industry and MO state regulators were to blame for the fact that many homeowners had inadequate insurance policies, or often no insurance at all. At the center of the story was a homeowner named Kim Holt, who owns a property a few blocks north of Delmar Blvd in the Academy neighborhood. The story said Kim Holt and her husband, Eli, "had completed a renovation and were preparing to move in" when the tornado struck, causing extensive damage to the home. Their insurance payout was $81,000, according to the story. The implication was that this amount was nowhere near enough to compensate them for all the time and money they had put into renovating the property since they bought it about 15 years ago. The story got a fair bit of attention on X last week and was quickly reposted by @saintlouispres Board of Aldermen President Megan Green and her chief of staff. Green, a Democratic Socialist, accused insurers of "insurance redlining." There's a lot of focus on North STL at the moment: Green is sponsoring a bill at the Board of Aldermen to spend $110 million of the city's Rams settlement money to help fix the north side; $79 million of this is directly linked to tornado recovery. (Some of the left-wing activists who backed Green's rise in STL politics are pressuring the city to spend even more.) There's a problem with KSDK's story, though. Public records, as well as images from Mark Maxwell's own reporting, cast serious doubt on the credibility of Kim Holt, the "victim" in this narrative. For one thing, there are no building permits on the city's website to indicate she and her husband did any kind of renovation at their property before the tornado. ksdk.com/article/news/local/…