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I was critical of the ordinance intended to provide more affordable housing, fearing the unintended consequences and depressed overall housing supply. But it's here and we should do everything we can to make it succeed and avoid those fears.
We must align incentives with our goals to become an equitable and competitive urban city and not just make suburban development inside and outside KCMO more attractive. That stretches us thinner and undermines our climate, transportation and economic goals.
We have to make it a lot easier to build in KCMO, which has a reputation of being costly & complicated — especially when doing good infill vs. fringe sprawl. We need housing for every income segment, and we should stop incentivizing (directly or indirectly) greenfield dev
Maximizing supply is the only way to put downward pressure on rents for all people. While affordability gap is most pressing, we also want to make living here (and having disposable income to put back into the community) as affordable as possible for all levels.
We must acknowledge that building back our urban core has myriad benefits and do everything we can to make it happen. It's return on existing investment, stabilization of existing supply, leverage of existing assets, and capitalizing on our boomtown city's original form. Big ROI.
Despite comparisons to trickle down economics, housing really does filter down but only if we maintain it. Today's shiny tower becomes tomorrow's relatively affordable housing option. But we demolish all over the city for parking or speculation, or let it rot. That's gotta stop.
We must make the costs to unscrupulous investors that sit on valuable land in our core for decades and cash out when others do the work to improve the neighborhood in spite of them, paying virtually no tax in the meantime. That land should be working for us. It is our asset.
We should make "missing middle" housing (duplexes, accessory dwellings, townhouses, etc) legal and simple to build everywhere. Almost impossible to build this kind of supply now, which enforces a monopoly for single family homeowners and a higher barrier to entry.
And yes, we must raise wages. The reality is that the gap between what people are paid and what it costs to provide quality housing is gigantic and seemingly intractable. Any program to provide housing will be a swamped, imperfect lottery and inadequate to respond to the need
This is step one. I'm ready to get on board, but let's keep moving and prove we're serious about this and all of our livability, climate, equity and financial sustainability goals. @QuintonLucasKC @Robinson4kc
The city is left holding the bag for wholesale failures of our economic system. That's no small problem, but the buck stops here. These are our fellow citizens and we have an obligation to them. But it is going to take attacking the prob from every possible angle.
