KC committee hopes to ease parking requirements to spur affordable housing
A City Council committee on Wednesday endorsed a potentially transformative plan to ease parking requirements for developers who build some affordable apartments.
The proposal, which the full City Council could vote on as soon as next week, is the latest in a series of measures it has considered since starting work last year on Kansas City’s first-ever long-range housing plan.
“It’s a first for Kansas City,” said Councilman Quinton Lucas, a candidate for mayor and chair of the Housing Committee, said of the parking ordinance. “We have addressed parking and density requirements near the streetcar line. I think this allows us to do it more thoroughly throughout the entire city.”
The ordinance the committee passed Wednesday would allow developers to provide just one parking spot per two apartments as long as they set aside 20 percent of the units in a new building for those making 70 percent of the area median income or less, which equates to rents under $850 per month.
“We’re trying to create walkability in these neighborhoods, so we’re not going to continue to just build these projects that have to take over an amazing amount of space for parking lots and that sort of thing,” Lucas said.
While Kansas City remains a car-centric city, some developers have started to build projects with less parking.
Peter Cassel, director of community development for Mac Properties, said parking is one of the major cost considerations for builders.
“If we had not received the relief we had on parking, we would not have been able to do any of our most recent Kansas City projects,” Cassel said.
He cited the modular apartments Mac Properties built on Main Street in Midtown and the 450-unit mixed-use project it has planned for Armour Boulevard and Troost Avenue.
Members of the committee voted unanimously in favor of the parking easement proposal with little discussion.
Some of the committee’s most significant and contentious work, however, including finding $75 million to fund its broader plan, still waits to be done. The money would be used preserve and construct housing, loan funds to residents to repair and weatherize their homes and redevelop vacant buildings, among other priorities.
The committee discussed potential funding sources Wednesday but took no votes.
Wednesday marked the first Housing Committee session since February. Some of its remaining major initiatives have appeared to lose momentum in the run-up to last week’s mayoral primary.
Lucas said in early December that he hoped to move all the proposed housing ordinances out of committee and to the full council by the end of January. That did not happen. And it appears that members are far from consensus on key provisions.
Mayor Pro Tem Scott Wagner, 1st District at-large, has recommended a property tax increase to fund affordability propgrams. Some council members would prefer raising sales taxes, an option they now have because the 3/8-cent sales tax Mayor Sly James proposed to fund pre-K failed last week.
Lucas said he would prefer to talk to the Central City Economic Development Sales Tax Board about using funds generated by an existing 1/8-cent sales tax before adding increasing property or sales taxes.
“So right now, I would not be in favor of either one,” Lucas said. “That being said, I think the sales tax is slightly better.”
Canady, too, said she would prefer a sales tax, but she said she didn’t hear enough Wednesday about how the fund would fill the shortage of homes for those with incomes below 70 percent of area median income.
“We weren’t specific in this conversation about what level of housing and what range of rents were we looking at for affordability — because those need to be conditions on these dollars,” Canady said.
The council has also been considering an ordinance that would require developers who get tax incentives to set aside 15 percent of a project’s units to be affordable to those making 70 percent of the area median income or less. Developers who can’t or don’t want to set aside units would have to pay a fee to the city to be used for affordable housing.
The committee passed that proposal in February, but it has yet to be brought to the council for a vote.
Lucas said the committee’s goal was always to drive the housing conversation, and since it began, more stakeholders have joined.
“We certainly have all had elections, I think, to address and think about. That being said, I do think we’ve actually passed some important and impactful ordinances,” Lucas said, adding the delay showed the council wanted to get it right.
Lucas said he expected to amend the ordinance to exempt small projects and hoped to bring it up for a vote by May.
Since last year, council members have established fair housing protections for victims of domestic violence, eased code enforcement for newly-acquired properties being rehabilitated, updated criteria for prioritizing construction projects, and established the trust fund—albeit one still without funds— with the goal of creating or preserving 5,000 homes over the next five years.
