Kansas City hasn’t cracked the affordable housing code. What will it take? | Opinion
Editor’s note: Welcome to Double Take, a conversation from opinion columnist David Mastio and editor Yvette Walker, tackling news with differing perspectives and respectful debate.
David Mastio: Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas looks like he is taking on the need for affordable housing in a big way. Earlier this year, he and the City Council brushed aside restrictive energy efficiency rules. He’s getting buy-in to slash an affordable housing fee from $100,000 to $5,000 because the tax was so high nobody would pay it. Next up is a plan to get permitting under control by reducing the time to get a building permit decision to 30 days for affordable housing and 60 days for other housing.
Lucas’ latest move: to propose removing strict requirements for sufficient parking for a new development may be his boldest yet.
Those are all smart steps in the right direction, but I don’t think they are ambitious enough.
Yvette Walker: OK, you’re agreeing with the city, but claiming it can do better. That’s new. Can you give me some examples?
David: To begin with, the idea that a month or two decision time for homebuilding permits sounds good in theory, but the homebuilders Mayor Q needs to come back to Kansas City aren’t impressed. Neighboring jurisdictions make decisions in a matter of days or, at most, a couple weeks, less than half the time being proposed by the mayor.
If the mayor and council want to make Kansas City a profitable place to do business for homebuilders, they need an attitude transplant for the permitting staff. Kansas City, like most towns, has a pretty cookie-cutter building code — the standards for the electrical, flooring and other systems in the house from roof joists to the foundation footings. And like most government regulations, there is a lot of room for interpretation.
“City staff interpret the building code so strictly, it is as if they are against housing ever getting built,” one builder, who worked in Kansas City before the electrical efficiency standards were put in place, but stopped as costs became prohibitive, told me.
Will Ruder, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City, explained to me that those restrictive interpretations of the housing code that are not in place in the suburbs mean that when Patrick Mahomes built his palace outside Belton, the code enforcers had lower standards for construction there than for entry-level housing in Kansas City. That’s nuts.
One item that vexes builders is the need for a steel plate to be tied into the flooring system for added stability, a requirement that isn’t made outside the city and adds hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars to the cost of a house.
Another is the need for foundation footings to be inspected for their appearance in addition to engineering standards, even though when the house or apartment is built, they will be buried under tons of dirt.
Yvette: Wait, the city is making three (maybe four?) changes — ending restrictive energy rules, slashing housing fees and cutting permit times — to make it easier for these homes to be built faster and more efficiently, and you and the homebuilders are saying that’s not enough? Considering how slowly a city usually moves, this seems like a miracle.
But what about the other big issue that seems to be a sticking point for the mayor’s plans: defunding the affordable housing trust. It has to do with slashing those housing fees from $100,000 to $5,000. That’s an incentive for homebuilders, but guess where that money was going? To the trust, which was designed to provide funding for thousands of affordable housing units.
These fees, called set-asides, were supposed to work this way: If a developer didn’t provide at least 20% of housing units with affordable units, $100,000 would be set aside for the housing trust. The new number, $5,000, is a 95% drop.
David: But those set-asides aren’t working in Kansas City, are they?
Yvette: Nope. As you said and the Kansas City Business Journal reported last year — these set-asides had directly created no affordable units in five years. There’s a lot of blame to go around as to why this is true, from a lack of enforcement of getting those fees to the trust, to Port KC.
But here’s the thing: Reports show that the trust fund itself, strengthened by a $50 million investment from taxpayers in 2022, has provided funding for thousands of affordable housing units — to the tune of 2,880 new or renovated units so far. Several hundred were delivered last year. Why does one thing work but not the other if not accountability of the set-asides?
Ouch. I can see why this would prompt the mayor to look at other options, but I think he’s ignoring the bigger problem: figuring out how to fund that trust if not through the homebuilders.
By the way, you haven’t mentioned the role Port KC plays in all this. Council members and city leaders have discussed where that rollback number — $100,000 to $5,000 — came from.
The Kansas City Business Journal reported that Lucas said “$5,000 is a rough estimate of what projects have pledged per unit in applications to the Port Authority of Kansas City. Port KC this month started requiring $5,000 per-unit payments. The state-created agency previously had no standardized contribution level.”
Council members wonder if that’s the way to go.
David: Building housing in cities shouldn’t be this hard. I doubt the city will ever let go of enough control to make housing grow like it does outside the city, so nothing will get settled soon, that’s for sure.
That’s not to say Mayor Q isn’t trying. The mayor announced seven housing designs that would be preapproved for use in the city, so no problem getting permits. Sounds good enough, but there is only one design for a two-story house — if this became the way to build houses, Kansas City would become a cookie-cutter town. That’s a bandage, not a solution. All the backyard mini-houses would look the same, too. Duplexes as well. Democrats just don’t understand that the market needs freedom to grow.
I’ll tell you another way the city needs to loosen up — zoning. These are the complex rules for what can be built on each piece of property. If a property is zoned for apartments or duplexes and people want single family homes this takes buildable land out of the market. Builders need more flexibility if they are going to provide what the city needs.
Yvette: I read that announcement, too, and while I was glad to see the designs, I agree that seven isn’t enough. You can easily see double the number of architectural designs featured in any homebuilder neighborhood. Where I can’t agree with you is getting rid of zoning.
As a homeowner who had made a sizable investment in a property, I would want guarantees as to what kind of structures would become my neighbor. Sure, add diverse homes (apartments, duplexes) in the same overall neighborhood, but not on the same street or square block. That would affect the value of your home, don’t you think?
But I have to go back to the housing trust, which you haven’t addressed. The trust has done its job, but with homebuilders now only on the hook for $5,000 instead of $100,000, that will deplete funds at some point. If the argument is that it’s not working, hold these set-asides accountable — don’t defund them. Or, figure out a new way.
David: You’re right, moving from an ask of $100,000 to $5,000 is a big drop, but $5,000 is more than zero. That is what was paid last year.
And all this focus on affordable housing misses an important point. What about the people who are in affordable housing now, but are doing better economically? They need more places to step up to without leaving the city. Every time an affordable housing dweller moves up to a better apartment or buys a house, that puts affordable housing back on the market.
What I have observed is that government planning creates shortages. It is a basic lesson that has been learned all over the world from the former Soviet Union decades ago to Argentina today. I don’t know why urban Democrats can’t understand the solution. Mayor Q is showing he is starting to.
