CLAYTON — St. Louis County Executive Sam Page may put the brakes on a plan to demolish 201 units of public housing in Wellston, aiming instead for a new plan that could allow residents who want to stay to continue living there.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development “is pushing for me to sign the letter that allows them to immediately demolish all of the housing units,” Page said last week in an interview with the Post-Dispatch. “We need to first see if any of those structures are salvageable, because building housing stock is a lot more expensive than rehabbing what we have.... They can’t move forward with the demolition until I sign off on it, and I’m not ready to do that.”

The demolition plan has been in the works since last year, and it’s one that Page said is in line with federal policy under President Donald Trump’s administration to “get out of the public housing business and just give people a voucher.” Many landlords refuse to accept federal housing vouchers, commonly referred to as Section 8.

“If you give somebody a voucher, I guess the question is what do you do with it?” Page said. “And if it doesn’t get them a place to stay, it’s like a Medicaid card but you can’t find anybody to take it.”