Affordable Housing
Many cities, big and small, have a problem. Their residents can’t find housing that is affordable. One typical benchmark for “affordable housing” is when it costs a household no more than 30% of its income. Some advocates talk about families that are housing and transportation burdened when those costs exceed 45% of their income.)
As we said recently in A Housing Shortage in Kansas City, data, distributed by The Associated Press, tracks housing inventory in the top 100 metro areas across the country.
There are 5 percent fewer homes on the market nationwide than a year ago. In Kansas City, the figure is nearly 14 percent.
Affordable Housing
Carol Suter, the mayor of Gladstone, Missouri, wants to attack the problem of affordable housing by changing the word order to housing affordability because voters have an adverse reaction to building affordable housing. They automatically think of poor people living next door, high crime rates, and rundown housing. She thinks solutions exist by eliminating those negative thoughts because everyone is committed to affordable housing. Often, employees in an area can’t afford to live where they work not because of affordable housing, or housing affordability, but workforce housing. That has a nice ring to it. Everyone can get behind the need for workforce housing.
Part of the Problem is Government Itself
Despite the growing need for affordable housing in Kansas’ wealthiest county, there’s a lot stopping developers from building it. The high costs of land, construction materials, and fees mean small projects often yield a low return on investment. But even when developers want to build something other than luxury apartment complexes or McMansions, in many cases, it’s illegal to do so.
According to Flatland, “Overland Park, like cities across the region and country, has zoning codes that largely prohibit the construction of duplexes, four-plexes, cottage communities and homes with shared driveways — essentially anything other than big houses and big apartment complexes said Matthew Petty, a city planner, real estate developer and city council member in Fayetteville, Arkansas, who has been studying Overland Park’s housing market. The city has engaged with Petty and the Incremental Development Alliance to look at the barriers to building affordable housing.”
Credit Suter
To her credit, Carol Suter is keen to try just about anything, including exploring small houses created through 3D printing. Lower down the technological scale, she wants the city to look at ordinance revisions that can subdivide one large lot into two, and that encourages sidewalk construction.
A lot of those ideas, she said, could be exported to other communities throughout the region — in addition to an all-hands-on-deck effort to erase negative perceptions about affordable housing by talking about it differently.
Ask for FREE information about How to Sell Your House Fast.
Terra Firma Property Solutions, LLC is a professional, full-service real estate solutions firm.
We buy and sell properties throughout the greater Kansas City area. We specialize in buying distressed homes, then renovating and reselling them to home buyers and landlords. Terra Firma Property Solutions works hard to be part of the economic rejuvenation of Kansas City and its surrounding areas.
Call us today at (816) 866.0566
Photo by Brett Sayles from Pexels
