KC put millions to an affordable housing fund. Here’s who will help decide how to spend it

Last week, Mayor Quinton Lucas appointed nine people to serve on the city’s Housing Trust Fund board.

Board members are tasked with helping the city figure out which affordable housing projects it should invest in, prioritizing projects that will stay affordable over longer periods of time and are accessible to lower income residents.

The need is pressing with the cost of housing rising in Kansas City: Some estimates say median rent has gone up by more than 25% over the past year.

Mayor Lucas said that his goal with the Housing Trust Fund and this board is to avoid just throwing money into housing, but to instead make sure decisions are being made more thoughtfully, through a more rigorous process.

“Too often in government we just say more money is a solution to an issue,” he said.

The Housing Trust Fund board will review applications twice a year and give recommendations to the City Council, which will give each project a final review.

For background, here’s a guide on what the Housing Trust Fund is and how it will work.

Pushing the city to address the housing crisis

John Fierro, president of the Mattie Rhodes Center and a Kansas City native who grew up in public housing on the Westside, is one of the people appointed to the board. He said his goal is to make sure Kansas City adds affordable housing units.

“This is a very important citywide issue that needs to be addressed,” Fierro said.

Melissa Ferrer-Civil was nominated by her peers at KC Tenants to serve on the board alongside Tracie Russell, another KC Tenants representative.

Ferrer-Civil said they have both dealt with homelessness in the past and will bring that perspective to the board as people who are directly impacted by the success and failures of affordable housing options. She was concerned that there weren’t more everyday tenants on the board who could also bring their experiences to the table.

As a poet and wordsmith by trade, Ferrer-Civil said she understands that language is often used as a barrier to accessibility when it comes to affordable housing.

Using jargon in city policy allows “people to get a lot of things under the radar because they’ve never been forced to define these things,” she said. She hopes the board can push the city to be more straightforward with its plans to make housing more accessible to the people who need it.

Who else is on this new affordable housing board?

The Housing Trust Fund board will include nine community leaders. Lucas said that the board members are a “very talented, very diverse” group of people who represent a number of sectors.

The members will include:

• Erik Dickinson is the president of The Urban Ranger Corps, which offers young men financial education and academic and career enrichment. Dickinson also serves as the president of the Kansas City Plaza Rotary Club and previously ran for 5th district at-large city council seat.

• Melissa Ferrer-Civil is an organizer with the city-wide tenant union KC Tenants. At KC Tenants, Ferrer-Civil serves on a team dedicated to social housing. Ferrer-Civil is also a poet and educator and has lived in Kansas City for four years.

• John Fierro is the president and CEO of the Mattie Rhodes Center, where he has served for over 20 years. The center is a nonprofit organization offering an array of bilingual social services to Kansas City residents.

• A.J. Herrmann is the regional policy director of Accelerator for America, a public policy advocacy organization. Herrmann is also Lucas’ former policy director.

• Shalaunda Holmes is the community real estate director of Urban Neighborhood Initiative. UNI is a local organization working to disrupt cycles of poverty and help build healthier communities. Holmes specializes in urban planning and housing development and leads UNI’s real estate initiatives.

• Geoff Jolley is the executive director of Greater Kansas City Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). LISC supports local housing by coordinating and investing in projects that help create healthier neighborhoods. Jolley is a Kansas City native.

• Tracie Russell is another organizer with KC Tenants. Russell will join Ferrer-Civil representing KC Tenants’ “North Star” mission of making sure all Kansas City residents have a “safe, accessible, truly affordable home.”

• Rosemary Salerno is the owner of Vintage Market Days of Kansas City, which is an indoor market near interstate 29 and 72nd Street. Salerno is also a licensed realtor and previously served as the general manager of City Market.

• Kavya Shankar is the co-founder and COO of Trust Neighborhoods, which is a local organization that creates mixed-income neighborhood trusts to help develop more inclusive and affordable housing units.

What else is there to know?

The city’s goal is to eventually allocate a total of $75 million towards the fund, but at the moment there is no consistent stream of funds dedicated to it.

Right now, the fund has $8.3 million from federal COVID relief dollars and supports two projects in the Beacon Hill and Ivanhoe neighborhoods. The city council also redirected $10.5 million local dollars to the fund in January that will be distributed over the next 25 years, and the mayor has proposed adding $12.5 million to the fund in the next city budget.

Housing Trust Fund applications will be accepted until April 28, 2022.

Do you have other questions about housing, city government and services or something else? Ask us at kcq@kcstar.com or with the form below.