There are fixes for Kansas City’s housing shortage. Why don’t we use them? | Opinion
Kansas City is short on homes, especially affordable ones. Rents have risen faster than wages, vacancy rates remain tight and thousands of working families are cost burdened, paying more than 30% or more of their income just to keep a roof overhead. Local coalitions such as the Greater Kansas City Regional Housing Partnership and community development groups have been trying to close the gap with mixed-income projects, rehabilitation of aging housing stock, and coordinated financing, but the scale of the shortage still outpaces the pace of construction and preservation.
Against this backdrop, President Donald Trump’s January executive order banning large institutional investors from buying single-family homes is being sold as a national fix. It is not. Even nationally, large institutional investors own only a small share of the housing stock, with most investor-owned homes held by small landlords with fewer than 10 units. In the Midwest, and in Kansas City specifically, the affordability crisis is driven far more by under-building, restrictive zoning, infrastructure gaps and stagnant wages than by Wall Street bulk buying.
The larger national picture makes the limits of this policy even clearer. The United States is short roughly 4.7 million housing units, according to estimates cited by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Federal Reserve. At the same time, the Center for American Progress has warned that Trump-era tariffs on building materials are adding about $17,500 to the cost of constructing a typical new home and could result in roughly 450,000 fewer homes being built by 2030. Fewer homes and higher construction costs are the opposite of what affordability requires.
Kansas City feels this directly. The metropolitan area needs tens of thousands of additional units over the next decade, particularly affordable and workforce housing, while also needing major reinvestment in older neighborhoods where infrastructure and housing quality have deteriorated. Local efforts, including land banking, mixed-income developments and partnerships supported by organizations such as the Local Initiatives Support Corporation of Greater Kansas City are moving in the right direction. But local tools alone cannot close a gap of this size without strong federal partnership.
Under President Joe Biden, that partnership began to take shape. The American Rescue Plan and infrastructure law sent billions nationally to stabilize renters, expand housing vouchers, repair aging water and sewer systems that unlock new development, and increase funding for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and Department of Housing and Urban Development programs. In Missouri and Kansas, these streams supported affordable housing construction, rehabilitation of older properties and homelessness prevention through rental assistance and supportive services.
Credit, construction costs, regulation
By contrast, Trump has moved in the opposite direction. Beyond the investor ban, his administration has cut or proposed cuts to fair housing enforcement and homelessness programs, and on Jan 24, he rejected a proposal that would have allowed first-time buyers to use limited 401(k) funds for down payments, arguing that retirement accounts should not be touched. For families in Kansas City locked out of homeownership by high prices and limited supply, that decision closed one more potential on-ramp.
What would actually help Kansas City is not symbolic bans, but a coordinated supply strategy. Federally, that means expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, increasing funding for vouchers and supportive housing, offering tax incentives and low-cost financing for rehabilitating older homes, and tying infrastructure dollars to zoning reform so that cities can build more densely near transit. It also means tackling the financing bottlenecks identified by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which has shown how credit constraints, rising construction costs and regulatory barriers are central drivers of today’s housing shortage.
At the local level, Kansas City can accelerate by allowing smaller lots, legalizing accessory dwelling units more broadly, streamlining permitting and coordinating land use with transit investments so that working families can live closer to jobs without spending unsustainable shares of their income on housing and transportation.
The housing crisis here is not about punishing one category of buyer. It is about building enough homes, at the right price points, in the right places, and pairing that supply with wages and infrastructure that make stable housing possible. One year into his second term, Trump continues to blame past administrations while offering policies that shrink supply and raise costs. Kansas City cannot afford that detour.
The call to action is clear: Our congressional delegation, state leaders and city officials should press for expanded federal housing investment, zoning and financing reform, and infrastructure-linked development that grows the supply of affordable and workforce housing. Without that, bans will make headlines, but Kansas City families will still be searching for homes they can afford.
Patrick Machayo is author of the forthcoming book “The Weight of the Biden Presidency: Power, Repair and the Strain of Governance.”