Summer Journal 2024

THE HOUSING ISSUE

What if we saw homelessness as everyone’s problem?

In the view of some advocates, housing can be a cruel and expensive game of “musical chairs” that leaves behind the most socially and economically vulnerable. Could understanding the systemic forces affecting the Kansas housing system help us better shelter both the housed and the homeless?

THE JOURNAL

(Print edition: ISSN 2328-4366; Online edition: ISSN 2328-4374) is published by the Kansas Leadership Center, which receives core funding from the Kansas Health Foundation.

The Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) equips people with any title or role to lead and engage others. Founded in 2007, KLC is a first-of-its-kind nonprofit educational organization with a civic mission, national reputation and global reach.

KLC MISSION

To foster civic leadership for stronger, healthier and more prosperous communities in Kansas and beyond.

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To build a healthy 21st century public square for all to lead.

KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER

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Kaye Monk-Morgan, Wichita (President & CEO)

Jill Arensdorf, Hays

Tracey Beverlin, Pratt (Secretary)

Thomas Carignan, Overland Park

Gennifer Golden House, Goodland

Karen Humphreys, Wichita

Mary Lou Jaramillo, Merriam

David Lindstrom, Overland Park (Past Chair)

Peter F. Nájera, Wichita

Patrick Rossol-Allison, Seattle, Washington (Vice Chair)

Maribel Sánchez, Dodge City

Frank York, Ashland (Treasurer)

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EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Chris Green

316.712.4945 cgreen@kansasleadershipcenter.org

JOURNAL MANAGER

Dani Gains

316.712.4951 dgains@kansasleadershipcenter.org

REPORTER FOR THE JOURNAL

Stefania Lugli

316.261.1582 slugli@kansasleadershipcenter.org

ART DIRECTION + DESIGN

Craig Lindeman lindemancollective.com

PHOTOGRAPHY

Jeff Tuttle Photography

316.706.8529 jefftuttlephotography.com

COMMUNICATIONS

Sam Smith, Director of Communications

Cindy Kelly, Communications Manager

Julian Montes, Creative Services Manager

DEVELOPMENT

Chris Harris, Senior Director

CONTRIBUTORS

AJ Dome, Stan Finger, P.J. Griekspoor, Kim Gronniger, Amy Geiszler-Jones, Jerry LaMartina, Joel Mathis, Mark McCormick, Amanda Vega-Mavec, Dawn Bormann Novascone, Michael Pearce, Timothy A. Schuler, Barbara Shelly, Monica Springer, Beccy Tanner, Keith Tatum, Claudia Yaujar-Amaro, Mark Wiebe

COPY EDITORS

Bruce Janssen, Shannon Littlejohn, Laura Roddy

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Loren Amelunke

Ainsley Smyth

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Selena Favela

Julian Montes

Zach Tuttle

KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER

325 East Douglas Avenue Wichita, KS 67202 kansasleadershipcenter.org

BARBARA

SHELLY

Contributor

Barbara is a veteran journalist and writer based in Kansas City, Missouri. She specializes in reporting on education and health care. Shelly’s work has appeared in the Kansas City Star, where she worked on staff as a reporter, columnist and editorial writer, and more recently KCUR public radio, Flatland, The Pitch, The Huffington Post, The Week and the Community College Daily.

SELENA FAVELA

Photographer

Selena is a freelance photographer from Wichita. Favela enjoys channeling her natural curiosity into telling stories through photojournalism. She regularly finds herself learning something new and unexpected while on assignment. In her free time Favela loves to garden and listen to true crime podcasts.

AJ DOME

Contributor

AJ is an award-winning freelance journalist who has worked in radio, television, and newspapers across the Sunflower State. When he's not writing, AJ is traveling with his spouse and autistic stepson. They live in southwest Kansas.

"At the core of it, I love writing, and I’m grateful for The Journal because of its ability to punch through the noise and get to the heart of the civic matters of our time. I’m thrilled to be a part of that.”

A PUBLIC SQUARE FOR ALL TO LEAD • VOLUME 16 • ISSUE 2 • SUMMER 2024 PUBLISHED BY KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER

2. Is Housing a Game of Musical Chairs? AN ANALOGY GIVES US A BROADER VIEW.

BY: CHRIS GREEN

4.

Connecting Threads

A PATCHWORK OF SHORT ITEMS AND UPDATES OF INTEREST.

BY: BRUCE JANSSEN

6.

The Weight of the Wait

REVISITING THE KANSAS DEATH PENALTY LAW 30 YEARS LATER.

BY: JOEL MATHIS

SPECIAL SECTION: HOUSING IN KANSAS 16.

The State of Home in Kansas THE VIEW FROM A HOUSING AGENCY’S HEAD.

BY: AJ DOME 24.

Journal Talks: Looking at Housing Data UNDERSTANDING OUR CURRENT REALITY.

BY: CHRIS GREEN

34.

‘More than just Band-Aids’ DEALING WITH KANSAS CITY’S CHRONIC HOMELESSNESS PROBLEM.

BY: BARBARA SHELLY

43.

Inside the numbers COUNTING A GROWING UNSHELTERED HOMELESS POPULATION. BY: BARBARA SHELLY 44.

‘Same time next year’ COMING TO TERMS WITH HOMELESS SERVICES IN JOHNSON COUNTY. BY: DAWN BORMANN NOVASCONE 52. Is Housing First a Cure for Homelessness?

THE EVIDENCE BEHIND A MODEL AND WHY SOME DOUBT IT. BY: STEFANIA LUGLI 60.

Ghost Town No More WHAT HAPPENED AFTER JUNCTION CITY OVERBUILT FOR HOUSING. BY: TIMOTHY A. SCHULER 68.

‘Everyone’s in the same boat’ COMMUNITIES MAKE PROGRESS IN HOUSING. JUST NOT QUITE ENOUGH. BY: STAN FINGER

Connection Point LOOKING AT TOPEKA’S MOBILE ACCESS PARTNERSHIP BY: KIM GRONNIGER

• What the point-in-time count does –and doesn’t – tell us about homelessness in Kansas

• What the Wichita Journalism Collaborative has learned from covering housing issues in Wichita

• Why having more places to live is a key to growing communities in Kansas

By Students, for the Community BUILDING TRADES PROGRAMS ADD TO THE RESIDENTIAL STOCK. BY: MONICA SPRINGER 84. Save the Planet, Build a House THE PROMISE OFFERED BY NET-ZERO ENERGY HOUSING. BY: TIMOTHY A. SCHULER 88. Voices from Wichita EXAMPLES OF HOW THE WICHITA JOURNALISM COLLABORATIVE HAS COVERED HOUSING. 92. Making Properties Livable HOW INVESTOR OWNERS CAN BRING DIVIDENDS FOR RENTERS, TOO. THE BACK PAGE 96. Opinion: Contemporary housing challenges have discriminatory roots. BY: MARK MCCORMICK READ MORE HOUSING COVERAGE ONLINE AT KLCJOURNAL.COM, INCLUDING:

LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Is housing a game of musical chairs?

UNDERSTANDING AN ANALOGY THAT MAKES USEFUL MEANING OF OUR CHALLENGES.

CHRIS GREEN EXECUTIVE EDITOR

A popular analogy that I’ve been seeing lately is that housing is a cruel and expensive game of musical chairs.

The gist is this: There are more people than places to live. The rich find housing easily, followed by the middle-class and so on. But at the bottom of the economic ladder, someone gets left out once the music stops. The person who has more problems than just a lack of money is the most disadvantaged.

Just as there are never enough chairs in the game, there are never enough houses to buy or rent to meet the need.

With housing a hot topic, the analogy recently has been popping up in viral videos, talks by housing experts and plenty of news articles. But the idea itself has a longer and deeper history.

Back in 1990, Elliott D. Sclar, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University, wrote an article describing housing and homeless policy as a “game of musical chairs.” He calls homelessness a policy problem where “too many poor people are asked to chase too few housing units.”

I’ve become fond of the analogy because it is a systemic interpretation of our housing challenges. Rather than seeing homelessness as an individual failing tied to mental illness, unemployment or substance abuse, it highlights factors such as high prices and low vacancy rates that lie beyond any one person’s control.

Individual circumstances and choices certainly matter. But entertaining a systemic explanation allows us to consider difficult but far-reaching choices to alleviate the problem. Responding to homelessness as an adaptive challenge allows the housed to consider how they can help ensure that their communities have more forms of affordable housing available or better co-existence between neighborhoods and homeless services such as shelters.

The Journal’s decision to focus on covering the topic of housing and convening conversations in Kansas around it in 2024 initially felt like a departure. After all, the topics selected for the Journal Talks initiative since 2016 were hotly debated and polarizing national issues – the relationship between law enforcement and communities of color, guns and public safety, and immigration. Where would the heat come from in a topic such as housing?

In this edition of The Journal, it often comes when we cover homelessness, whether in Topeka, Wyandotte County, Wichita or Johnson County. The topic touches us emotionally in a way that charts or stories about tax credits and building permits never will.

It hits so hard, in fact, that you might be tempted to turn away. Homelessness is easier to tolerate when it’s out of sight and out of mind. For the housed, being presented with homelessness on our streets, at our intersections and at camps along our rivers is perhaps a subconscious reminder that we live in an insecure world.

As a first step to better understanding our state’s housing challenges, this edition of The Journal asks our readers to confront the problem of homelessness, not just for their sake, but for everyone's.

We don’t have to look too far back in our history to see how confronting the challenges that the most vulnerable experience improves things for everybody. Something as simple as curb cuts on city streets, for instance, helped drive changes –and a movement – that made our country more accessible not just for the disabled but for mothers pushing strollers, children on bikes and elderly people with canes.

The idea that you can benefit by providing housing security for the homeless might seem like a leap at first. But I’d encourage you to consider it, because it’s exactly the kind of systemic interpretation that might help us imagine – and eventually produce –a different reality.

Connecting

Threads

A PATCHWORK OF UPDATES AND ITEMS OF INTEREST

AN ASTRONAUT. FINALLY – In the Summer 2023 issue, Mark McCormick recounted the horror of the 1921 destruction of the Tulsa suburb of Greenwood and the massacre of hundreds of Black residents. Accompanying that article was a Jeff Tuttle photo of The Tower of Reconciliation by sculptor Ed Dwight. The caption briefly noted that Dwight, a native of KCK, and a former Air Force fighter pilot, might have been the first Black astronaut were it not for the racial attitudes of the 1950s. After leaving the service, he studied art and began a fruitful second career: He’s sculpted more than 100 outdoor works. All of which brings us to late May, when he finally made it to space aboard the Blue Origin shuttle. In an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon, which is worth a listen, he offered many thoughts, including looking down on an Earth devoid of dividing lines. To close the interview, Simon began with, “Ed Dwight … now at the age of 90 is astronaut Ed Dwight.” – “Oh boy,” Dwight interjected. “I like that.”

A PROMINENT PLACING – Our Fall 2023 issue recounted the ingenuity and the mission of Randolph Cabral, developer of the Braille American flag, a creation to honor his father, a military veteran who became blind late in life. Cabral wants to have the flag displayed at every school in the U.S. Braille flags are already popular,

having been installed in hundreds of locations around the country, including Arlington National Cemetery. To that growing total, add another.

On Flag Day in June, a Braille American flag –featuring 50 raised stars and thirteen stripes, and the Pledge of Allegiance in Braille – was installed at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Having the tactile Braille flag at the memorial site “is a poignant reminder of the power of inclusivity and accessibility,” Cabral said in his prepared remarks.

MEDICAL DEBT IN KANSAS – Four Journal

writers shared a byline in the Summer 2020 issue that detailed how Olathe Health and one of its physician groups made frequent use of Johnson County District Court to collect unpaid medical bills, including garnishing wages and even asking for bench warrants. (The hospital is now part of the University of Kansas Health System and its previous CEO has left.) While it’s not news that millions of Americans owe billions to health care providers, it was eye-opening when The Wall Street Journal reported this spring that Pratt Regional Medical Center filed about 400 collection cases – Pratt County has 9,000 residents – in the last six months of 2023. In June, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed banning

medical debt from credit reports while making it easier for consumers to deal with inaccurate and confusing bills.

A TABOO SUBJECT – The cover story in the Winter 2022 issue told of a homecoming in the Stafford County town of St. John, one of many northern destinations for Exodusters after the Civil War. The relatives of those Black homesteaders got to meet one another, see the graves of their ancestors and examine photographs made by prolific local photographer William Gray. But writer Beccy Tanner noted that not everyone in Stafford County had come to grips with some of the less savory aspects of the county’s history. Apparently they still haven’t. Dion Lefler of The Wichita Eagle wrote this spring about how Alice McMillen Lockridge, one of Tanner’s sources, was denied permission to use a county meeting room for a historical presentation on the Ku Klux Klan. (In the early 20th century, it’s estimated that 60,000 Kansans belonged to 30 Klan chapters.)

County commissioners and the county attorney, setting aside First Amendment issues, said such a lecture would be too “racially charged” and might embarrass some locals. McMillen Lockridge says she’ll soldier on, speaking from her front porch.

FATHER KAPAUN’S STATEHOUSE MEMORIAL –Stan Finger’s article in the Fall 2021 issue recounted the short but altogether remarkable life of the Rev. Emil Kapaun, Army chaplain, posthumous Medal of Honor recipient and candidate for sainthood. His remains, originally buried in Hawaii, were returned to the States and in 2021 interred at Wichita’s Catholic cathedral, upsetting some in his hometown of Pilsen, Finger informed us. This spring the Legislature took up Kapaun’s legacy and with no controversy at all passed a bill that will put a statue of the priest in the Statehouse.

WHAT WE’VE BEEN READING – The Daily Oklahoman reports that construction on an Oklahoma City development that would put the nation’s tallest building (1,907 feet) in the city’s Bricktown district is a step closer after the City Council approved a needed zoning change. The first phase of the development, to begin this fall, is to build two 23-story buildings, Ruby and Emerald. Point of order, OKC real estate wizards: Ruby slippers and the Emerald City are key elements in the movie version of a best-selling children’s classic that’s based in 1890s Kansas, not Baja Kansas.

That’s native Kansan Ed Dwight (center) along with fellow voyagers (from left) Gopi Thotakura, Carol Schaller, Sylvain Chiron, Mason Angel and Ken Hess as they prepared for their ride into space in May – the seventh crewed mission for Blue Origin’s New Shepard program – from Launch Site One in West Texas. Courtesy of Blue Origin

The death chamber – or more accurately, the lethal injection chamber – at the Lansing Correctional

is in the same pristine condition as it was the day it was finished in 2000. The Department of

has a protocol for the use of the room, but Kansas may never be able to obtain the chemicals that the protocol’s authors anticipated.

THE WEIGHT OF THE WAIT

KANSAS HAS LONG HAD AN AMBIVALENT RELATIONSHIP WITH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. THREE DECADES AFTER THE STATE PASSED ITS CURRENT DEATH PENALTY LAW, ITS NEW EXECUTION CHAMBER REMAINS UNUSED.

SO MUCH HAS CHANGED SINCE 1994, IN FACT, THAT THE STATE MIGHT SOON

BE FORCED TO CHOOSE YET AGAIN HOW JUSTICE SHOULD BE REFASHIONED.

BY: JOEL MATHIS

Facility

Corrections

Courtesy of Kansas Department of Corrections

On the day after Valentine’s Day, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach went to the Capitol and made a surprising announcement to the media: Nearly 60 years after the state carried out its last execution – and almost exactly 30 years after its current death penalty law went into effect –Kansas might soon be ready to once again put a convicted murderer to death.

“It’s possible,” he told reporters, “that one of the cases could be ready as early as nine months from now.”

“My issue is this all happened to us 17 years ago to my daughter,” said Brian Sanderholm, whose daughter, Jodi Sanderholm, was killed in 2007. Justin Thurber, the man convicted of capital murder in her death, received his death sentence in 2009.

Whether that closure is coming soon, though, is an open question. After Kobach’s news conference, Mark Manna – who leads the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit – sounded skeptical that a Kansas execution might come within the year.

“I think that’s highly unlikely,” Manna said, ticking off the appellate status of several cases. But, he acknowledged, some of those cases were entering their final stages. “So it’s possible in the next handful of years there could be a client ready for execution.”

It’s not unusual that Kansas has taken so long to conduct an execution under the law passed in 1994. Capital cases nationwide often take at least a decade or more to resolve, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonpartisan outlet critical of how the penalty is applied.

“More than half of all prisoners currently sentenced to death in the U.S. have been on death row for more than 18 years,” the center says on its website.

The process can take a toll on participants. Prosecutors say they warn the families of victims that capital cases take a very long time to resolve.

“For a case that starts this year, I don’t know what to tell you family members about how long this process will work,” said Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett at the press conference, “but I’m probably buying your grandchildren the misery of seeing this through.”

THE HISTORY

1907, but governors mostly refused to sign off on executions during that time. (There were several executions under military and federal law during that era, however.)

“Personally I have always been opposed to capital punishment,” Gov. Edward Hoch wrote in 1906, “and as a student of the subject have long since become convinced that it is not a deterrent of crime, but a promoter of it.”

WAIT

There were several families on hand for Kobach’s news conference, relatives of people murdered by the nine men who now sit in Kansas prisons awaiting execution. (Two others convicted of capital murder, Kobach said, had died in prison while their appeals were ongoing. They “escaped justice,” he said.) All of the families have been waiting for years. Some of them for decades. They are ready for the wait to end.

“It’s just cruel and unusual punishment, the way I see what we’re going through, because it’s been 17 years,” Sanderholm said that day. “Every day when I go uptown to dinner, to eat or anything, to see anybody in the public – and I am in the public’s eye quite a bit – somebody’s talking about it. Somebody brings it up. Something happens that Jodi’s name and her issue comes up again.

“We have to live through it every day,” he told the assembled reporters. “There is no closure for us, and we need your help getting us closure. So please help us.”

As a state, Kansas has always had an ambivalent relationship with capital punishment. It had a death penalty law on the books from 1861 to

The death penalty law was repealed the next year, then restored decades later, in 1935. But the law was used infrequently. Fifteen men were executed between 1944 and 1965. The last two — James Douglas Latham and George Ronald York – were Army deserters who in 1961 killed seven people in five states, including 62-year-old Otto Ziegler of Oakley. (Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, the infamous “In Cold Blood” killers, had been executed two months earlier.)

“There is nothing to say but that I am going home to heaven,” York said, moments before he was hanged at Lansing.

Seven years elapsed between that execution and the Supreme Court’s 1972 decision declaring the death penalty unconstitutional in all 50 states. The court restored the penalty – under limited circumstances – in 1976. But it took nearly two decades after that for Kansas to pass its new death penalty law.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Gov. John Carlin vetoed bills in 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1985. “We must find other means of deterring murderers, punishing them and seeking retribution from them,” he wrote in 1985. “I am confident we can do that.”

MORE THAN HALF OF ALL PRISONERS CURRENTLY SENTENCED TO DEATH IN THE U.S. HAVE BEEN ON DEATH ROW FOR MORE THAN 18 YEARS.

Brian Sanderholm and Jennifer Aldridge, the father and sister of Jodi Sanderholm, who was murdered in 2007, told reporters at a news conference in February at the Kansas Capitol that solace will never be theirs until Justin Thurber, the killer sentenced to die in 2009, is put to death. Photo by Joel Mathis

There were more failed attempts during Gov. Mike Hayden’s term in the late 1980s, despite his advocacy for a bill. The process that resulted in the enactment of the 1994 law was yet another reflection of political ambivalence: Gov. Joan Finney let it go into effect without her signature.

“I am personally opposed to the death penalty,” she wrote to the Legislature on April 22, 1994, “but believe that a majority of Kansans support it as a matter of public policy.”

And then the wait began.

WHY SO LONG

So why does the death penalty process take so long?

Prosecutors don’t necessarily jump into charging a defendant with capital murder. Kansas law allows the charges in a specific set of cases –“intentional and premeditated” murders generally,

murders for hire, killings committed in connection with kidnapping or rape, and the killing of law enforcement officers all count. So do killings involving multiple victims or victims under the age of 14.

That might seem fairly straightforward. It’s not.

The kind of case that gets prosecuted for capital murder “shocks the senses,” says Kansas Deputy Attorney General Vic Braden, one of the state’s most experienced death penalty prosecutors. Those defendants include Jonathan and Reginald Carr, convicted of killing four people in Sedgwick County in 2000; and John Edward Robinson, an Olathe man convicted of killing eight women starting in the late 1980s.

Even in the face of such horrors, determining whether to prosecute a homicide as a death penalty case “is not a decision to take lightly,” Braden says. The decision to bring capital murder charges “typically … takes at least a year to get to that point, sometimes a year and a half, two years.”

That’s just the beginning. “When I talk to the victim’s family, if we decide to go with the death penalty, I tell them, ‘It’s going to be at least three years from when the crime is charged before we get to a jury trial,’” Braden says.

Part of the reason is that a death penalty trial in Kansas is really two trials: There’s the first phase – determining whether a defendant is guilty – that happens in all trials. The second phase determines whether the death penalty will be applied.

That second phase looks a lot different from other court proceedings. Prosecutors must make the case that the murder was done in an especially “heinous, atrocious or cruel manner.” For the defense, it’s a chance to appeal to the jurors’ sense of mercy – a focus not just on the crime and the victim, but on reasons why a defendant might deserve life in prison rather than execution.

It requires intense preparation, on both sides.

Manna, who has served in the death penalty defense unit for 25 years and as its chief for the last decade, runs down a list of things that lawyers

may want to get before jurors: The defendant’s background. How he or she got to this point. Why the crime occurred. The effect an execution would have within the defendant’s circle of family and friends.

“Is there some reason that a juror may feel that a life sentence is warranted? And that can be any reason – that can be mercy.”

At this stage of the process, though, defense teams are working uphill. To serve on a capital murder case, jurors must be “death qualified” – willing to impose the death penalty if they determine it’s merited. Jurors can’t serve if they’re unwilling or opposed to capital punishment.

“Most people who would tell you that they’re willing to impose a death sentence on an individual tend to be pro-law and order prosecution. Very conservative,” says Manna. “So going into the first stage, the guilt stage, you’re going to be dealing with a jury that’s already kind of leaning toward the state, the prosecution. They’re not going to be as open-minded about defenses.”

Braden is less convinced that prosecutors have an advantage with death-qualified juries.

“Jurors have to say that – they may lean one way or the other – but they’re willing to listen to the evidence, listen to instructions and come to a verdict of both the guilt and the penalty phase,” he says, and adds: “The ones that really are willing to do that, they’re not heavily toward the defense, the death or no death. They’re somewhere in the middle. I think it works.”

All this takes a lot more resources, on both sides, than the typical murder trial.

“It is very expensive, it is very time consuming and it takes a long time,” Manna says.

Braden will consult with a wider range of prosecutors than in most cases, and is more likely to bring in expert witnesses. Manna, meanwhile, follows guidelines from the American Bar Association, which mandate that a defense team have at least two attorneys, an investigator and a “mitigation specialist” to focus on the information presented in the penalty phase.

WAIT

The Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit is a part of the state’s public defender system and operates out of a drably appointed office in Topeka. Its staff handles all cases in which a defendant is charged with a crime that can result in execution. Photo by Joel Mathis

Deputy Attorney General Vic Braden is the leader of the Kansas attorney general’s criminal division and over a career approaching three decades has handled numerous high-profile homicide cases. Courtesy of Kansas Attorney General’s Office

“In a regular murder case, there may only be one defense attorney, there may be a second chair,” or assistant defender, Manna says, “but in a death penalty case, there’s a whole team.”

THEN COME THE APPEALS

It can take years simply to get a conviction and death sentence. The appeals usually last much longer. The first step: The Kansas Supreme Court, where all capital murder convictions are automatically reviewed.

The case of Gary Kleypas shows how that process can be a long and winding road.

Kleypas was 40 years old – and on parole for a 1977 murder in Missouri – when he was arrested in 1996 for the rape and murder of Carrie Williams, a Pittsburg State University student. The next year

he became the first defendant convicted of capital murder under Kansas’ then-new law.

The state Supreme Court overturned Kleypas’ sentence in 2001, then overturned the state’s death penalty law entirely in 2004. That was in the case of Michael Marsh, who had been convicted in Sedgwick County of the first-degree murder of Marry Ane Pusch and capital murder in the death of her 19-month-old daughter, Marry Elizabeth.

The U.S. Supreme Court restored Kansas’ death penalty law in 2006, and Kleypas was resentenced to death in 2008. The Kansas Supreme Court upheld that sentence in 2016. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in the more recent sentencing. (Marsh was later resentenced as well, to life in prison.)

Kleypas’ defense team does not argue his innocence. “We’re not arguing my client is exempt

KANSAS DEATH PENALTY INMATES

KYLE TREVOR FLACK White Jun 18, 1985 May 18, 2016 Franklin

JAMES KRAIG KAHLER White Jan. 15, 1963 Oct. 11, 2011 Osage

JUSTIN EUGENE THURBER White March 14, 1983 March 20, 2009 Cowley

GARY WAYNE KLEYPAS White Oct. 8, 1955 Dec. 3, 2008 Crawford

SCOTT DEVER CHEEVER White Aug. 19, 1981 January 23, 2008 Greenwood

SIDNEY JOHN GLEASON Black April 22, 1979 Aug. 28, 2006 Barton

JOHN EDWARD ROBINSON, SR. White Dec. 27, 1943 Jan. 21, 2003 Johnson

from criminal responsibility,” one attorney said during a 2015 hearing. “He’s guilty.”

Instead, Kleypas’ original sentence was overturned on grounds that jurors who recommended he be given the death penalty had been given insufficient information on how to weigh aggravating and mitigating factors in the crime. When appealing the second sentencing, his attorneys argued that jurors had been prejudiced when Larry Williams – Carrie’s father – lunged at Kleypas during a hearing.

“I have zero thought that he will be put to death,” Larry Williams told The Wichita Eagle in 2017. “I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Williams died two years later. Kleypas turns 70 next year.

Some appeals hinge on errors that might have been made at trial. Other cases take aim at the validity of the death penalty itself. In 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Kansas challenged the capital murder charges leveled at Kyle Young, accused of a 2020 double murder in Wichita. The ACLU claimed that the death-qualification process produced “whitewashed and biased capital juries” that are “uniquely discriminatory” against defendants.

The ACLU “found that (the) race of victim really drives the decisions about when the death penalty is handed down and when it is not,” says Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project. “The death penalty is far, far more likely if there’s a female white victim in the case.”

Young pleaded guilty to first-degree murder charges in October, rendering the ACLU’s challenge moot. The hope, Stubbs says, is “that the evidence that we developed will be used in other cases.”

Which means more challenges are likely.

“THERE IS NOTHING TO SAY BUT THAT I AM GOING HOME TO HEAVEN.”

WAIT

JOHNATHAN DANIEL CARR Black March 30, 1980 Nov. 15, 2002 Sedgwick

REGINALD DEXTER CARR, JR. Black Nov. 14, 1977 Nov. 15, 2002 Sedgwick

Source: https://www.doc.ks.gov/newsroom/capital

THE FUTURE

In 2001, state officials led reporters on a tour of the lethal-injection chamber they had built at

the Lansing Correctional Facility, which remains unused. All but one of the capital murder defendants are held at the El Dorado Correctional Facility — more than two hours away – to separate the staff who work with inmates on a day-to-day basis from those who might be responsible for implementing the penalty.

“An execution is something that has a certain amount of impact on all of the staff who participate,” then-Kansas Corrections Secretary Chuck Simmons told The Topeka Capital-Journal in 2001.

When Kansas’ 1994 death penalty law was passed, lethal injection – currently the only method of execution allowed under the law – was seen as a humane alternative to firing squads, hanging, the gas chamber or the electric chair. In recent years, though, that method has been challenged by critics as itself cruel and unusual. States that do carry out the death penalty have found it increasingly difficult to obtain the necessary drugs: Many pharmaceutical companies will no longer furnish the chemicals to prison systems.

That’s why Kobach in February asked the Legislature to add another form of execution to the state’s options: hypoxia. Prisoners would be deprived of oxygen until they died.

“In a way, we are lying to the people of Kansas if we say that we have the death penalty, but we

George Ronald York, moments before being hanged at Lansing for the murder of seven people in five states in 1961.

NAME RACE DOB DATE OF CONVICTION COUNTY

actually can’t carry out an execution,” Kobach told reporters. When their 2024 regular session adjourned on May 1, however, legislators had taken no action on his request.

Even if hypoxia did become law, though, more court challenges and delays would be likely. Alabama conducted a hypoxia execution using nitrogen gas in January. Some witnesses said the condemned inmate “shook and convulsed” during the execution, making the method a poor candidate for humane death — and a target for a fresh round of lawsuits.

“I thought that given the bad P.R. that it (hypoxia) got, that it just seemed like, why now?” Manna says of Kobach’s proposal. “Why introduce this literally just weeks after this execution that was so controversial?”

Even if the Legislature were to follow Kobach’s lead, however, Gov. Laura Kelly might not.

“Governor Kelly has long supported repealing the death penalty, both as a state senator and on the campaign trail, because it is impractical, expensive and inhumane,” says spokesperson Grace Hoge. The state, she says, spends an “excessive amount of money” on death-penalty

WAIT

related cases, with little deterrent effect. (There were 170 reported homicides in Kansas in 1994; that number was 168 in 2022.)

In the meantime, the system grinds on. The most recent person sentenced to death in Kansas was Kyle Flack, convicted in 2016 of killing three adults and a toddler in Franklin County. (The Kansas Supreme Court rejected his appeal in January.) Those now facing capital murder charges include Michael Cherry, a Topeka man accused of killing 5-year-old Zoey Felix; and Donald Ray Jackson, a Leavenworth man accused of killing his two sons in 2020.

Manna continues his work, but hopes the death penalty will one day be repealed. A life sentence, he says, is always appropriate.

“I think it’s more appropriate than a death sentence. I think life sentences ensure the protection of the community at large, and I think then we avoid all the baggage that comes with, well, What if the person turns out to be innocent?” he says.

Braden, meanwhile, is headed to retirement in the coming months. He says it’s time for Kansas to update its never-used death penalty law, to be

ready for the moment – coming sooner than later in his opinion – when one of the nine condemned men runs out of appeals.

“If we don’t want the death penalty, then the Legislature needs to have the courage to abolish it. But it’s on the books,” Braden says. Without the ability to carry out the one form of execution authorized under the law – lethal injection –the state remains “in a no-man’s-land, and we shouldn’t be. We should either get rid of it or fix it.”

Until then, the families of the victims wait. At that February news conference, Jennifer Aldridge –Jodi Sanderholm’s sister – made it clear that she is ready for some finality.

“The day that he was sentenced was not the end for us,” she said. “It was honestly just the beginning. We are still dealing with him, going to court with him, seeing his face, hearing his name.”

It’s not about revenge, Aldridge said, but justice.

“I don’t have hate in my heart anymore toward my sister’s killer,” she said. “I do want to witness his execution.”

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. What did you notice in your body as you read this article? How might those observations help you “manage self” in this discussion?

2. What parts of the issues around the death penalty are technical, and which are adaptive? How do those parts interplay and relate to each other?

3. Consider the values and loyalties represented by the factions in the article. Where might there be overlap?

3. What leadership principle(s) do you find most helpful to create a productive dialogue with others about an issue where emotions are high and deeply held beliefs will inevitably clash?

- By Rebekah Keasling

On June 29, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court found, in a complicated ruling, that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment. However, only two of the justices thought it was unconstitutional in all cases. Four years later, a majority said the death penalty was legal under limited circumstances.

Photo by Joel Mathis

The state of home in Kansas

JOURNAL REPORTER AJ DOME CHATS WITH RYAN VINCENT OF THE STATE’S HOUSING AUTHORITY ABOUT THE SUNFLOWER STATE’S HOUSING NEEDS.

BY: AJ DOME

Ryan Vincent knows a thing or two about the feeling of “home.”

Vincent is the executive director of the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation (KHRC) and a Sunflower State native whose daily work involves finding quality homes for people in need and promoting the need to greatly expand affordable housing options. He’s been with the self-supporting, nonprofit, public corporation for 20 years, spreading the word on why the state needs to invest in higher-quality housing – and why he believes building more affordable homes is the key to a thriving future for Kansas.

The Journal sought out Vincent for his unique vantage point on the state of housing in Kansas. Here is a summary of his conversation with The Journal’s AJ Dome in a Q&A format. Some answers have been trimmed for length or edited to provide greater clarity.

For years, it seemed like our office, and maybe myself, were the lonely voices in the wilderness, crying out about housing. I think partially it’s economics, and partially it’s the realization or the recognition that came from the COVID-19 pandemic, that we’ve got to stop leaping from crisis to crisis. We have to address the housing problem in our state. That’s good for me, a person with a passion for housing, for homes.

Quality housing is not only essential for people already living in a home, but also for schools, health care providers, and for our employers. All these different sections of our community that we need to work together. It’s not just workers and bankers getting it now.

AJ: That recognition is hugely important, I bet.

RV: It is huge. It’s rewarding to see, and now we’re seeing the results of that attention on homes in our state. Folks are getting that, if we want to invest in housing, we’ll have some long-term gains for our communities. By investing in just a few units in a small town, you can make a big difference.

AJ: Not everyone needs a three-bedroom, twobath house with a garage that’s nearly as big as the house.

AJ: Howdy, Ryan! Thank you so much for chatting with me.

RV: Thank you, AJ! I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about housing in Kansas.

AJ: Likewise. So, let’s begin with the 30,000-foot view. What is the actual state of housing in Kansas right now, from your perspective?

RV: I’ve probably enjoyed the broadest 30,000foot view of what our housing needs are in the state between my travels and my talks with others (across Kansas). One thing I’ve noticed is: There’s truly a bipartisan recognition that we’ve got to do something about our state’s housing needs.

RV: In my time, I’ve seen a wider recognition that building a cookie-cutter single-family home with a garage isn’t the solution to most people’s housing needs. There’s the recognition of an aging population, and the recognition that duplexes and other more accessible units are all keys to meeting the housing needs of our citizens. It’s kind of cool to see the actual product that’s getting built through our office and the private sector starting to catch up to the demands of the market.

AJ: How are some communities meeting their housing needs? I’m sure the market looks different depending on where you are in Kansas.

RV: Stafford comes to mind first. One of KHRC’s first housing grants went to the small community of Stafford (about 80 miles northwest of Wichita) for housing revitalization.

historic home. That home is now being lived in by a teacher who’s able to stay in their community. What that’s doing is keeping the workforce in town. They may eventually raise children who will attend local schools. We could reverse trends of up to 50 years (of population decline) in some communities.

AJ: That could be major for some of our smallest communities. Some places in western Kansas don’t have a lot of quality options for people. And the average age of homes in the state skews older, doesn’t it?

RV: According to the statewide housing needs assessment we did in 2021, a third of our state’s entire housing stock was built before 1960. Some places have a median age of residents in their 60s. You have a lot of seniors living in big homes, probably in more house than they need, but there are no smaller options with better accessibility, so they stay put. By staying put, they’re removing from the housing pool affordable family homes that aren’t available to the next generation.

In my mind, a home is more than four walls and a roof. It creates a place of safety, of comfort, a place where we can be ourselves. That’s what we’re able to finance through my office and the state. What it takes is people to invest in their homes and communities. As far as impact, once we invest in homes in the smallest rural communities, it’s going to create new ‘coverables’ as far as appraising and property taxes, which also leads to more lenders willing to give loans for rural homes. Then we can start addressing some of these communities with a high vacancy rate.

AJ: And, in our time, it seems more and more Kansas towns are shrinking because of their housing issues.

RV: That’s also true. I think of Lincoln as well. KHRC gave a grant to that community to save a

You start to see these sticking points in the market in rural areas particularly. A lot of these folks want to stay in their communities. That’s where their life is. If we’re able to somehow help grease the sticking points a little bit, maybe help fund some accessible duplexes that have some maintenance provided, then we’re opening up some homes for seniors to get into, and those seniors are freeing up larger, multiroom houses for families.

AJ: What are employers saying about the state’s housing needs?

RV: I not only hear about employers struggling to fill the jobs they have, but they’re wanting to grow. It’s not for a lack of interest in moving to a community, it’s a lack of housing for people to live in when they’re off work.

If we can start to build up the supply of affordable housing, or housing that is affordable for both lower- to middle-income families, then we’ll be helping not only those employers, but the communities as a whole.

AJ: That sounds great, but there’s always a “but” in the way.

RV: (laughs) There is a big “but.” There are always barriers outside of our control. I think our housing study does a great job of breaking down the micro- and macroeconomic factors.

I think of how, following the Great Recession in 2007-08, there was just an exponential fall in the number of people who were building homes. That level has never come back up. If you get people out of the building trades – and our builders and plumbers and general contractors, they’re aging and retiring – the supply is decreasing, and the demand is increasing.

AJ: I know many high schools in Kansas offer career and technical education courses that include construction and building trades, but it seems like they can’t graduate enough seniors to meet the demand.

RV: There’s also the supply of housing in general. You may have some communities where the only new housing being built is for upper-income

residents. Builders can make more money by just building high-income housing than they ever could by building low- or moderate-income housing.

Right now, there’s no incentive for people to build low- to middle-income housing.

AJ: COVID-19 led to more extremes in housing as well. I can speak from personal experience regarding high rent costs while being unemployed and feeling anxiety about the virus.

RV: We certainly saw that a lot during the pandemic. We served more than 90,000 Kansans who were at risk of losing their home during the 18 months we ran the Kansas Emergency Rental Assistance program. A lot of these folks were more moderate-income Kansans who just found that, because of lost work hours or medical expenses, they quickly found themselves at risk of losing their home. That’s indicative that so many Kansans are just a couple of lost paychecks away from losing their home. When you have

“Builders can make more money by just building high-income housing than they ever could by building low- or moderate-income housing.”

Ryan Vincent

Ryan Vincent has been with the Kansas Housing Resources Corp., the state’s housing finance agency, for 15 years, serving as a staff attorney, general counsel, deputy director and now as executive director. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

“In my mind, a home is more than four walls and a roof. It creates a place of safety, of comfort, a place where we can be ourselves.”

Ryan Vincent

households paying 60 to 70% of their monthly wages on their home, there’s not a lot of cushion.

That’s why housing that’s affordable on every income level is key, and why, by both addressing affordability and supply, we’re addressing the underlying problem and not just putting out fires every time there’s a crisis.

AJ: Is Kansas in a crisis overall with housing?

RV: Kansas certainly isn’t alone when it comes to a lack of affordable housing. This is a national issue. You can pick an era in time, and it seems like we haven’t grasped the issue totally. It still comes down to affordable housing.

AJ: How do you make sure that housing is provided fairly and equitably?

RV: Obviously our office is very aware of housing equity challenges. That’s something we’re working on. We’re very thoughtful of not placing lowincome housing in one area or neighborhood and investing in dilapidated areas.

AJ: And making sure people stay in their homes when they’re having financial trouble.

RV: Yes. At one point, we saw thousands of Kansans who were at risk of foreclosure or eviction (during the pandemic). We wanted to make sure they had housing stability, to make sure they were in a good place. On one hand, we had what I’ll call housing providers. Call them landlords, property owners, what have you. You had these private property owners, many of which were small businesses who were also struggling. We found ourselves in a unique position right between the two, having to supply a resource that was finite but the need large at the time.

It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know the concerns people had, and we started connecting landowners and property managers and tenants. We started to talk through not only what they were experiencing, but also some underlying issues and tensions that we see between people who own property and people who rent. The Kansas Supreme Court put together an ad hoc commission that had landlords and Realtors, but also Kansas Legal Services representatives and

advocates, and they started to talk through the laws, asking if they are fair, what changes they could make.

AJ: And what was the main nugget of information gleaned from that whole process?

RV: If people are aware of their rights and resources, then that’s going to benefit both sides. Most of the issues people are facing as homeowners or renters tie back to having more affordable housing stock to begin with. If there’s more affordable housing available, it’ll deflate some of the competition.

AJ: So then, where are the incentives to build affordable housing?

RV: There’s a few. Right now, whether you’re building a single-family home or a giant property, rural or urban area alike, the problem is there’s an affordability gap. A lot of customers are ruled out by the high starting price or monthly payment for a home. Or there are subsidies, right now mostly from government sources. KHRC administers

government programs to finance part of the cost (of building affordable housing).

I think sometimes people think of affordable housing as only a government program. The truth is that public-private partnerships are the best at it right now. If not for these programs, there wouldn’t be affordable housing in a vast majority of some Kansas communities. If you see new housing or apartments being built in a town, it’s most likely from a program like this. We’re not the only housing provider or funder in the state. What we have is a team connecting people statewide, rural and urban alike. We also know the right resources to be able to fit whatever the need is.

AJ: I hear you. What if that resource is information for first-time homebuyers? Is it still worth it to buy a home in Kansas right now?

RV: When I grew up, all of us heard that buying a home was the greatest investment you can make. I think that ultimately led to some challenges with the housing market collapse in 2008. Owning a home is still the greatest source of wealth for most people. We have to make sure we’re thinking

DISCUSSION

GUIDE

1. Employers in Kansas cite a lack of affordable housing as a barrier to recruiting workers. What are ways that employers, communities and home builders can work together to build up the supply of affordable housing?

2. Given the shortage of people entering the building trades and replacing those retiring, are there ways to experiment with attracting more people to this field?

3. How might someone raise awareness about the lack of affordable housing?

- By Kathy Lefler

holistically about the value and benefits of homeownership, and the stability of it.

One thing I say is: Homeownership isn’t for everyone. It comes with different needs and a different vision. That’s why it’s important to offer as many diverse housing options as possible. If we’re thoughtful about offering a diverse variety of housing options, we can leave it to the population to drive what they ultimately want. Then we can best address our state’s needs.

We do have a couple of programs in our office to help people get into their first home. There’s the First Time Homebuyer Program, and the new Rural Home Loan Guarantee Program. We have flexible programs to help a lot of different people with their needs.

AJ: Tell me what KHRC does to help folks with their home maintenance, making them more energy efficient, helping homes last longer.

RV: KHRC has long administered the state weatherization program, which is also funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Our weatherization program addresses the cause, more than just offering utility assistance, which KHRC also does. Our team does an energy audit. They have infrared cameras and blower door tests. They’ll put all that data in a software system that’ll rank utility measures and cost over time, and our program will actually approve the measures that are working.

AJ: Does that program cost anything to use?

RV: Weatherization is free to eligible Kansans. And, under recent infrastructure investments passed by Congress, we have significantly more funding for weatherization in the coming years, so I would encourage people to use that program. It’s on the KHRC website.

AJ: How important is it to you to “unlock home” for those who are homeless? (Note: “Unlock home” is the agency’s motto.)

RV: We realize there’s always been, and unfortunately probably always will be, people experiencing homelessness. That’s why we provide funding for emergency shelters. We get federal grants for that, as well as domesticviolence centers.

We recognize that it needs to be a holistic approach, that we provide supportive housing services, which ties in with mental health services, addiction recovery, maybe even legal services. The long-term goal for all of us (at KHRC) is to get these folks out of temporary housing and into long-term, stable housing, and ultimately for them to be fulfilled.

AJ: Are there some people who don’t believe that they need more affordable housing in their community?

RV: There are policymakers in Kansas who don’t believe it’s a problem. I think there’s definitely still a stigma that comes with homelessness. I think understanding some of the causes, why people are homeless … It’s worth remembering that it could be any of us.

AJ: Right. Quite honestly, you and I are way closer to becoming homeless than we are to becoming millionaires.

RV: Exactly. Personally, my family is pretty comfortable, but we’re all only one or two medical catastrophes away from disaster. It wipes out our savings, maybe removes our ability to work, and suddenly we’re in that vulnerable position facing housing instability. That’s why addressing all these different things, including affordable housing, is important.

AJ: What’s something you hope for in the next legislative session?

RV: I hope policymakers realize that affordable housing is an investment. There’s some cost up-front, but it’s more than returned through economic development, in job creation and expansion. Housing is worth the investment, and it’s changing a lot of lives. That’s something I hope to deliver to state lawmakers in the coming session.

I think these are exciting times in our state. I think we’re truly making momentum in addressing the underlying housing problem. It’s exciting, and it’s overwhelming at times. The more you achieve, the more you realize there’s a bigger job ahead.

“Homeownership isn’t for everyone. It comes with different needs and a different vision. That’s why it’s important to offer as many diverse housing options as possible.”

Ryan Vincent

JOURNAL TALKS: UNDERSTANDING OUR CURRENT REALITY FOR HOUSING THROUGH DATA

BY: CHRIS GREEN

ARE MOST KANSANS HOMEOWNERS OR RENTERS?

Slightly more than two-thirds of all households own their homes. But more and more people are renting. Among the 10 states often placed in the Great Plains region, Kansas’ homeownership rate would be fifth, trailing first-place Wyoming, where it’s nearly 73%, and leading last place North Dakota, where it’s just over 65%.

Homeownership rates, while not at a low point, are down from all-time highs and have yet to entirely recover from the Great Recession.

What significance might this trend have for Kansans?

HOW OLD ARE THE HOMES THAT KANSANS ARE LIVING IN?

Years of low building activity means the state depends heavily on older residential structures, especially in north-central Kansas, where the median home is more than 80 years old. The age of multifamily dwellings is much newer, “reflecting more activity in apartment construction over detached units,” according to the Kansas Statewide Housing Needs Assessment conducted in 2021. (To which this article owes a great debt.)

What challenges – and opportunities – do the age patterns in Kansas housing create?

AVERAGE YEAR BULIT

HOW MUCH DO WE PAY IN PROPERTY TAXES?

More than $6.226 billion was collected in ad valorem taxes on real and personal property (not just houses) in 2023, about $2,119 for every person in Kansas. That’s more than the $4.93 billion collected in 2018, but it’s only a slight increase if adjusted for inflation.

More than half of the value being taxed is residential property.

School districts receive the biggest percentage of the state’s property taxes, totaling nearly 40% across two categories, while counties (28%) and cities (17%) represent the next biggest taxing districts.

What do these figures help us understand about the property tax burden in Kansas?

Source:

WHO IS STRUGGLING MORE WITH HIGH COSTS – RENTERS OR HOMEOWNERS?

Although housing affordability is on the decline overall, renters are far more likely to be cost-burdened than homeowners. A cost-burdened household is one that spends more than 30% of its monthly income on housing costs, including utilities.

According to America’s Health Rankings, about 43% of Kansas renters reported being cost-burdened in 2022, compared with 19% of homeowners. Those figures are based on the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.

Over the past decade or so, the burden on renters has grown at a faster rate than homeowners, with regions within the state registering anywhere from a 43% to 69% increase in their share of costburdened renters.

What do these figures tell us about housing challenges in Kansas?

% OF COUNTIES WITH INCREASE IN SHARE OF COST BURDENED RENTERS, 2010-19

REGION

METRO MICRO RURAL

HOW BAD IS HOMELESSNESS?

Homelessness is a growing concern in several parts of the state but it’s hard to pin down. The overall number of homeless individuals counted in 2023 was near where it was 10 years earlier in the statewide point-in-time count. (But the numbers are generally up since 2015.)

As Journal reporter Stefania Lugli has explained in her reporting, point-in-time count numbers are a useful data point for a community but they don’t typically capture the full extent of homelessness.

One shift worth noting, if it continues, is the increasing number of those experiencing unsheltered homelessness. When someone is unsheltered, it means they reside in a place that is not meant for human habitation, whether that’s a car, park, sidewalk, abandoned building or on the street. Between 2007 and 2016, the numbers of unsheltered homeless being counted held fairly steady, averaging 268 a year. The count doubled in 2022 and rose again in 2023.

What interpretations might be made about what is happening with homelessness in Kansas? What challenging interpretations are you willing to consider?

Source: U.S. Census Bureau; American Community Survey (5-Year

Source: Kansas Statewide Housing Needs Assessment

HOW MUCH HOUSING DOES KANSAS HAVE AVAILABLE?

The 2020 census showed Kansas with 1.23 million housing units, and current estimates put that number just north of 1.3 million. The 2010 Census counted 1.175 million housing units.

HOUSING AVAILABILITY

Owner Occupied (2020: 795,989) Renter Occupied (2020: 379,305) Vacant (2020: 93,322)

What do you make of the trends related to housing availability in Kansas? How do you see availability issues playing out in your community?

NEW PRIVATE HOUSING UNITS AUTHORIZED BY BUILDING PERMITS FOR KANSAS, UNITS, MONTHLY, SEASONALLY ADJUSTED

The pace of housing growth in Kansas exceeds the rate of population growth, with the number of housing units growing by nearly 11%, compared with a population growth of 3%.

But it’s also true that Kansas builds far less housing than it did prior to the Great Recession.

For instance, according to permit data from Sedgwick County’s Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department, Wichita saw more than 1,000 single-family homes built in 2004 and 2005. At the low point of the Great Recession, the completion of new units hit 213 in 2010.

It recovered in ensuing years, but the new peak of 725 homes fell well short of the pace before the crash of the nation’s housing market. You can see similar dynamics at play in a graph of Kansas building permits from the St. Louis Federal Reserve.

Source: Census data

HOW AFFORDABLE IS HOUSING IN KANSAS?

When compared with markets nationwide, particularly on the coasts, Kansas ranks very high in terms of housing affordability. Metro areas such as Wichita, Kansas City and Topeka rank at the affordable end of an index from the National Association of Realtors.

Rankings above 100 mean that a family earning the median income has more than enough income to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home, assuming a 20% downpayment. All three Kansas metros on the list ranked well above 100 in 2022 – The Kansas Citys of Missouri and Kansas at 142.9, Wichita at 171.3 and Topeka at 204.7.

But affordability is clearly on the decline. The index ranking dropped by more than 25% for each community and is down by at least 30% for each community since 2020.

At one point, in the mid-1970s, housing prices in Kansas essentially mirrored the nation, but they diverged in the 1980s, with the U.S. trending much higher, according to the All Transaction Housing Price Index compiled by the Federal Reserve of St. Louis.

These days, the gap is nearly as big as it’s ever been. But it’s likely of little solace to those residents who feel priced out of the market. The upward curve in pricing here is nearly as steep as it is nationally.

Renters likely feel the squeeze as well. The median gross rent in Kansas between 2018-22 hit $986 a month.

How should we determine whether housing is affordable enough in Kansas? What should the goal be?

GLOSSARY

AFFORDABLE HOUSING: Housing that costs no more than 30% of a household’s monthly income is widely considered to be “affordable.” For owners, housing costs can include principal, interest, property taxes and insurance. For renters, the costs include rent and utilities.

BOOMMATES: An arrangement often involving a baby boomer property owner that enables one or more unrelated people to share housing — occasionally called “The Golden Girls” trend. The owner offers a private bedroom and shared common area in exchange for rent, help around the house or a combination of the two.

CHRONICALLY HOMELESS: A term used to describe people who have experienced homelessness for at least a year – or repeatedly, in the last three years.

HOMELESS: An individual who lacks a fixed, regular and adequate nighttime residence, as well as an individual who has a primary nighttime residence that is a temporary shelter.

HUD: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a Cabinet-level agency whose mission is to create strong, sustainable communities and quality affordable homes. It administers hundreds of programs.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS: Companies that buy homes, sometimes with all-cash offers, sight unseen and sometimes involving homes that need major repairs. Although institutional investors make up only a small share of the housing market, their purchases have significantly influenced local housing costs. Over the past decade, according to the Mid-America Regional Council, five firms have amassed nearly 8,000 single-family houses in the Kansas City region and converted the houses to rentals.

LOW INCOME: Adjusted income that is between 50% and 80% of the area median income (adjusted for household size and location).

MODERATE INCOME: Households whose incomes are between 81% and 95% of the area median income (adjusted for family size and location).

POINT-IN-TIME COUNT: A “census” of people experiencing sheltered and unsheltered homelessness taken on a single night in January. The counts are generally acknowledged to be far from exact. The counts are required by HUD for communities that receive federal funding.

RENT SUBSIDIES: A term typically used to describe HUD’s Section 8 program, which subsidizes the rent of low-income tenants in

‘MORE THAN JUST BAND-AIDS’

BY: BARBARA SHELLY

INNOVATIVE PARTNERSHIPS ARE HELPING WYANDOTTE COUNTY MANAGE A GROWING HOMELESS PROBLEM. BUT ADVOCATES SAY THEY NEED MORE SUPPORT FROM THE UNIFIED GOVERNMENT TO REVERSE THE TRAJECTORY.

The 911 complaint came from an upscale brewand-burger-restaurant in a Kansas City, Kansas, neighborhood with a suburban vibe.

Two men had set up a camp in the woods just off the parking lot, the owner reported. At first they stayed mostly out of sight, but now they had taken to hanging around the patio and the staff’s outdoor smoke-break area. Customers had complained, and the management wanted them gone.

On a Wednesday morning in early May, just after a cloudburst, a police officer and several other people approached the camp.

The scene was by no means unusual in Wyandotte County, where homeless numbers have spiked in the last few years.

In a 24-hour period in January this year, surveyors for the annual point-in-time count found 226 people who reported being homeless. Of that number, 152 of them – or nearly 70% of the overall count – said they were unsheltered, meaning they were living outside, or in cars, vacant buildings and other places not designed for human habitation.

The point-in-time count is imprecise, and advocates say that number is almost certainly an undercount. But of that overall total, 55 individuals fit HUD’s definition of being chronically unsheltered, meaning they had experienced homelessness in increments that

add up to at least a year, and they struggle with a disabling condition such as a mental illness or a physical disability.

That number is significant. For the past two years, HUD has cited the reporting region that includes Wyandotte County as having the nation’s highest percentage of people within the overall homeless population who experience chronic unsheltered homelessness.

That unwelcome distinction speaks to a lack of resources for a vulnerable group of people. Wyandotte County and its largest city, Kansas City, have no year-round overnight emergency shelter. Housing for people with limited incomes is in short supply. Motels quickly become expensive, and crashing with friends or family gets old.

And so people live where they think they won’t be bothered – in the woods, under bridges and overpasses, and in vacant buildings. Some cluster in small groups; many stay by themselves.

“As our population has grown, we’re seeing a lot of camps,” says Kansas City, Kansas Police Sgt. Angela Joyce. “You’ve got people with addictions. You’ve got mental illness. You’ve got a lot of people who’ve just fallen on hard times. It’s such a big problem, and you don’t realize it until you actually deal with it.”

Joyce serves in the community policing unit, which is the department’s first point of reference for complaints regarding homeless camps. She has seen hundreds.

The Kansas City area has struggled to piece together shelters for its homeless population. That’s particularly evident in Wyandotte County, where “Will” pitches his tent on private property not too far off State Avenue in Kansas City, Kansas – an encampment that gets periodic wellness checks from authorities. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

“Some of these camps get really messy,” she says. “So I can understand people being upset. But we don’t have a shelter in this city. We have minimal resources compared to other cities.”

A COLLABORATIVE OUTREACH NETWORK

The encounter on the fringes of the brew-andburger joint could have ended with an order for the two campers to quickly vacate, leaving behind a trashed campsite and their dignity.

But something else happened.

While the physical infrastructure for dealing with Wyandotte County’s unsheltered population is lacking, a remarkably collaborative outreach network uses every resource it can to move people out of homelessness. The network includes social

officers and staffers from other offices of the Unified Government.

Some of those people were among the small group that made its way toward the campsite, where the two men were seated in lawn chairs beside a newish-looking tent. The remains of a campfire-cooked breakfast were still in a pan.

Police Officer Terry Grimes checked out the situation. Seeing no threat, he walked to the restaurant to talk to the owner. Katie Wiegand and Vanessa Matt, community resource navigators with Cross-Lines Community Outreach, a longstanding safety net agency in KCK, engaged the men separately in conversation.

The younger of the two volunteered he was homeless because of alcoholism. “I’m a smart, able individual,” he said. “I drink anything, all day.”

Wiegand asked if he’d like to get help. Maybe eventually, the man said. But not today.

Matt’s conversation was more promising. The older of the two men said he’d been unsheltered for eight months after a roommate arrangement fell apart. He receives a monthly Social Security check – enough to buy food and camping supplies, a change of clothes every couple of weeks and the tent, which he found on sale. His attempts to find housing hadn’t panned out.

Matt filled him in on the services Cross-Lines provides. He could find food and showers at its headquarters, and she could help him get a copy of his missing birth certificate.

Matt rested on her heels beside the man’s chair, speaking directly to him.

“I feel like we could get you in some housing,” she told him.

Kansas City Homeless Numbers

The man looked like someone who’d just been thrown a lifeline. Matt gave him her card and said she’d come to him if he couldn’t get to her.

Grimes returned and said the owner was willing to give the campers a day’s grace to clear out. The men agreed to move.

“Thank you all for being nice to us,” the younger man said.

And so a potentially tense encounter ended with positive feelings and the possibility of moving one person from homelessness to housing.

“We are always turning it back toward housing,” says Rob Santel, director of programs at CrossLines. “It’s not just about, ‘How can we move you to another location or help you figure out your immediate problem, but how can we figure out the solution to your experience of homelessness’?”

NO SHELTER, AND OTHER GAPS

That’s not easy work, given the limited options in Wyandotte County.

“We really lack the continuum of housing options that we need,” says Rachel Erpelding, executive director of Kim Wilson Housing, a nonprofit that operates under the umbrella of the Wyandot Behavioral Health Network to find housing solutions for people with mental illnesses.

The gap begins with the absence of a year-round, low-barrier shelter that could provide a first stop for people to get out of the elements and learn about available services.

Shelters are expensive to open and operate. They require a partnership of local government and nonprofits – something that’s missing in Wyandotte County. And in a city looking for a way to revive its downtown, a homeless shelter in the vicinity isn’t on many politicians’ priority lists.

“It’s really hard to find an area that works for a shelter,” Erpelding says. “And it’s a lot about funding. There has to be an agency that steps up and says, ‘Yes, we want to do this, and we are going to fundraise and get the money for that.’”

Beyond the absence of a shelter, Wyandotte County needs more transitional housing units, advocates say, where people can get help with sobriety and living skills. It needs more and better housing for people with fixed and lower incomes, and more landlords who are willing to accept government-subsidized Section 8 vouchers to help people afford rent.

“The reality is: Wyandotte County has been so disinvested in this problem for so long that we are in this spot now,” Santel says.

A FRAYED PARTNERSHIP

Wyandotte County is the poorest county in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Its median household income, at $59,362, is nearly $10,000 lower than in Kansas overall.

Many residents struggle with effects of poverty that drive people into homelessness – mental illness, domestic abuse, substance-use disorder and simple economic deprivation.

The circumstances that result in homelessness are as varied as the individuals that find themselves without a roof over their heads. For some, it becomes a cycle – a cycle that’s extremely difficult to break. “Crystal,” for instance, can measure her homelessness in years.

Fortunately, a highly regarded partnership that includes the nonprofit Avenue of Life, the Kansas City Kansas Public Schools and other groups has curbed homelessness among families with children.

Other nonprofits in the county do their best to work with homeless people. Hillcrest Transitional Housing and Shalom House offer short-term housing. Others, including the Mt. Carmel Redevelopment Corp.’s Willa Gill Center, provide food, hygiene supplies and case management. The Wyandot Behavioral Health Network is a longstanding pillar for helping individuals and the community cope with crises and mental illness.

But all those services can do little more than manage increasing homelessness in Wyandotte County. To halt and begin reversing the trajectory, advocates say they need cooperation from the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. And that’s been hard to find.

Part of the problem is political upheaval. Since 2013, no mayor has won reelection. Every change of administration has brought new relationships, plans and priorities, service providers say.

Their relationship with the current mayor, Tyrone Garner, has been strained. Barely a month into his term, in December 2021, the mayor abruptly scrapped plans to open an overnight, cold-weather shelter at a former downtown convention center. Agencies had a contract with the Unified Government and were hard at work getting the place ready.

The Unified Government’s Board of Commissioners interceded, and the overnight shelter opened that winter. It has since moved.

Garner’s first year in office also coincided with an exodus of Unified Government staffers, including some of the people who had worked most closely on homelessness issues.

A month after the public dispute over the cold-weather shelter, in January 2022, Garner announced the formation of a committee focused on homeless residents.

Evelyn Hill, a Unified Government commissioner with extensive professional and volunteer

experience in homelessness issues, co-chairs the Unhoused Residents and Neighbors in Need task force along with Tom Lally, the CEO of Hillcrest Transitional Housing, a regional nonprofit that operates a 90-day residential housing program in Wyandotte County.

“I think we’re at a point, as a community, where we realize we’ve got to do more than just Band-Aids,” Hill says. “We really need some serious solutions.”

Hill is steering the committee toward a strategic plan that centers on opening a year-round shelter and creating more housing opportunities. Ultimately, that will require buy-in from the Board of Commissioners and, ideally, the mayor.

The commission needs to be on the same page regarding its priorities for homeless services, affordable housing and the local government’s role in providing those, says Unified Government Commissioner Melissa Bynum, who attends meetings of the homeless residents task force.

“I am super hopeful that this is a conversation we are going to have with the commission and the mayor sooner rather than later,” she says. “I’ve asked for it three or four times since January, and I’m really hopeful that we’ll have a deep-dive, strategic planning session with this governing body.”

The Journal’s attempts to schedule an interview with Garner were unsuccessful.

MOVING FORWARD WITH WHAT’S AVAILABLE

In the meantime, there are immediate needs to tend to.

Every weekday morning, people without shelter file through the door of the Frank Wilson Outreach Center in downtown KCK. There, they can pick up mail and laundry, take a shower and talk to a case

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

and really help them to be more independent in the community. It takes a while to get there. Sometimes we work with people for years.”

The Wyandot Behavioral Health Network’s 2023 annual report shows that Kim Wilson Housing last year placed 108 unsheltered people in safe, affordable housing.

Kim Wilson Housing sends staffers to work with the outreach teams from Cross-Lines and the police community relations unit that go into the community on Wednesday mornings in search of the unsheltered. The Unified Government’s Health Department recently hired a couple of peersupport workers – people with lived experience of substance abuse who are in recovery – who also join the teams.

The unusual collaboration started during the pandemic, Erpelding says. “It absolutely highlighted the absolute need to work together to get everybody’s needs met,” she says. “Before that we were in silos.”

According to the 2023 annual report for CrossLines Community Outreach, the outreach teams connected with 400 individuals last year.

Help could mean a bus ticket to reconnect someone with family, Santel says. It could mean a call to a shelter across the state line in Missouri, where more services are available. It could mean getting someone on the waiting list for a transitional housing unit or a recovery program.

“I don’t know that there’s anybody I’ve met who truly wants to be outside,” Santel says.

The older man from the campsite outside of the burger restaurant clearly did not. He showed up at Cross-Lines, just as Matt, the caseworker, had hoped he would. She got to work researching housing options.

ONE HAPPY ENDING

But plenty of people do live outside. Joyce sees them as she makes her Wednesday morning rounds.

Joyce has been with the KCK police department since 1996, working patrol shifts and narcotics enforcement. Community policing suits her, she says, because she believes in the power of relationships.

The routine is for the community policing team to go out at 6 a.m. to check locations where there have been complaints and possible problems, then connect with the community outreach workers at 8 a.m. to follow up.

Working alongside another officer, Sabin Evans, Joyce trudges up a muddy road that used to be a city street. Now it’s just a path leading into the woods.

“There was a lady in here last week,” Joyce says. “She wasn’t doing super well.”

On this day, the camp is empty and shows signs of abandonment, with a mattress, pillows and shreds of clothing strewn about. The woods back up to a residential street, and neighbors have complained about a commotion at night and theft from yards.

Eventually, someone from the city will come and clean up the site, Joyce says. She’s been told that, taking into account labor, equipment and dumping fees, that work will cost the city thousands of dollars.

“It’s a way more complex problem than just people who aren’t housed,” Joyce says. Her team’s responsibilities are somewhat unusual, Joyce says. Its role is to work with the outreach teams to solve problems. But sometimes the very presence of police becomes a problem.

“It’s a social issue, but pushing it into the police world is not where you want it,” Joyce says. “Because now you are criminalizing the homeless, and you are forcing officers to have negative contacts with them.”

Like others, Joyce is waiting for the Unified Government to come up with a plan.

“We have all these gaps,” she says. “The solution isn’t with the police department. The solution is

Sgt. Angela Joyce and Officer Terry Grimes of the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department perform frequent wellness checks at homeless encampments. Their job is to work with outreach teams to solve problems. But Joyce is among the officers who believe that policing shouldn’t be the primary solution to unsheltered homelessness.

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

Kim Wilson Housing, a nonprofit where Rachel Erpelding is the executive director, finds housing solutions for people with mental illnesses in Wyandotte County. Last year, it placed 108 unsheltered people in safe, affordable housing. But placements can be laborious, sometimes taking years. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

DISCUSSION GUIDE

with our government. They’re going to have to come up with how to fix it.”

In the absence of that overall strategy, Joyce and others do their best. And sometimes, in the face of a growing and almost overwhelming problem, they find they can make a difference.

Two weeks after the encounter in the woods behind the burger-and-brew restaurant, Santel from Cross-Lines had good news to pass on about the older man who had been forced into a camping arrangement mostly from economic circumstances.

“The gentleman … just got the keys to his unit!” Santel said in an email.

Instead of sleeping in a tent and cooking on a campfire, the man is living in his own apartment. It’s costly, Santel said – rent is 60% of his fixed income. They hope that, in time, he will get into cheaper subsidized housing for seniors.

But for now, one less person in Wyandotte County was living outside.

1. What competing values are showing up as Wyandotte County attempts efforts with the growing homelessness issue?

2. What partnerships or collaborations have yet to be considered? In what ways has the lack of support from the local government hindered progress on this issue?

3. “Band-Aid” fixes were mentioned as not being enough to tackle homelessness in the community. How might stakeholders experiment with approaches that aim for longterm sustainable solutions rather than temporary stopgaps?

- By Camille Scott

Inside the numbers:

UNSHELTERED HOMELESS POPULATION GROWING RAPIDLY IN WYANDOTTE COUNTY

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development each year prepares an annual homeless assessment report for members of Congress. It’s based on data from the annual point-in-time count of homeless people that is conducted on a regional basis.

In 2023 and 2022, those reports singled out the region that includes Wyandotte County as leading the nation in the percentage of homeless people who meet the federal definition for being chronically unsheltered.

Here’s what that means.

First of all, HUD’s data comes from a region that includes Wyandotte County and all of Jackson County in Missouri. The region is known for HUD purposes as Continuum of Care MO 604. It’s an unusual bistate collaboration that came about as a result of decisions made by a nonprofit network responsible for distributing HUD funds.

The Greater Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness is the lead agency for coordinating the point-in-time count and collecting and evaluating data.

When HUD told Congress that Continuum of Care MO 604 had the highest percentage of chronically unsheltered homeless people, it was referring to the numbers from Jackson County, which includes much of Kansas City, Missouri, as well as the numbers from Wyandotte County.

This year, surveyors counted a total of 2,215 unhoused persons in the two counties. And 876 persons in that group – almost 40% – were unsheltered, meaning they were living outside, in cars, vacant buildings or other situations.

Included in those numbers were 226 homeless people surveyed in Wyandotte County. The

percentage of unsheltered people on the Kansas side is much higher than in the region overall. Nearly 70% – 152 individuals – said they lived outside.

Advocates say the high percentage in Wyandotte County reflects the absence of shelters and other resources for people who have lost their housing.

HUD surveys list a person as being chronically homeless if they have experienced homelessness in increments that add up to at least a year and struggle with a disabling condition, such as a mental illness or a physical disability. If those people live outside or in cars or vacant buildings, they are counted as being chronically unsheltered.

When HUD singled out Continuum of Care MO 604 in its 2023 report, it was referring to that subset of long-term unsheltered people.

In Wyandotte and Jackson counties in 2023, 280 people were chronically homeless. Almost all of them – 95.7% – were staying outside or in uninhabitable places, as opposed to a shelter or safe haven. That’s a higher percentage than anywhere else.

That distinction aside, the growing increase in the unsheltered homeless is one of the most startling findings in the count for Wyandotte and Jackson counties in recent years.

In the continuum overall, surveyors counted 476 unsheltered people in 2021. This year, they found 876 people living outside.

The rise in the unsheltered population is especially stark in Wyandotte County. In 2021, 68 people reported being unsheltered. This year, that number had more than doubled to 152.

BY: BARBARA SHELLY

Homeless encampments and the squalor that accompanies them aren’t just eyesores. Someone will eventually pay to clean them up. Every Wyandotte County cleanup costs thousands of dollars. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

‘Same

time next year’

IN THE STATE’S WEALTHIEST AND MOST POPULOUS COUNTY, THE PROJECT 1020 COLDWEATHER SHELTER HAS PERSISTED WITH HELP THROUGH YEARS OF RESIDENTS’ WARINESS AND OPPOSITION TO SUCH SERVICES. NOW JOHNSON COUNTY IS POISED TO MORE FULLY

RECKON WITH ITS HOMELESS POPULATION BY CREATING A YEAR-ROUND SHELTER. BUT THE VENTURE IS LIKELY TO FACE INTENSE OPPOSITION, AND PROJECT 1020 OFFICIALS SEE PURPOSE TO THEIR EFFORT REGARDLESS OF THE OUTCOME.

The sun is setting on March 30 as unhoused men and women slowly filter into the Project 1020 Cold Weather Shelter near downtown Lenexa.

Homeless clients arrive by shelter van and personal cars to the shelter, situated in the back of Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church. Many head straight for dinner and to clean up. Some watch TV, while others chat up volunteers. It looks like any other night. But it’s far from that.

It’s Holy Saturday and the convergence of calendar and liturgical dates weighs on the minds of volunteers. The shelter must close every year on April 1. This spring, it means clients can spend Easter night at the shelter. But the following morning, the doors would lock behind them until Dec. 1.

“Hallelujah, Christ is risen. Now go find a place to sleep,” says Nancy Pauls, a pastor at Old Mission United Methodist Church and volunteer, summoning up a bit of sarcasm before reverting to her usual benevolence. “It’s been really disturbing to me.”

She’s hardly alone.

BY: DAWN BORMANN NOVASCONE

The shelter has a clear goal of saving lives, specifically during winter weather. Still the gravity of locking the doors at an emergency shelter while celebrating the resurrection of Jesus – the central tenet to Christian faith – was not something many volunteers were willing to make peace with anytime soon.

“It disturbs me if it’s Easter or not,” adds shelter founder Barb McEver as she overhears volunteers talk. McEver can’t finish the thought because her phone rings again – another in a stream of calls for the unpaid director, who manages the only

emergency shelter in Johnson County for single men and women. She and a friend opened the shelter when no one else would take it on. Back in 2015, they walked through the woods looking for people on freezing days.

A RECKONING

Volunteer Tim Walker, a Johnson County native, was among the homeless staying at Project 1020 until finding an apartment last year. He looks at McEver and worries about the constant calls she receives from the homeless, area police looking to get men and women off the street, hospitals and many others. He wonders how long she can do it.

“She’s patient with everybody,” he says.

However, as the doors closed this year, volunteers have some hope that things will change.

Johnson County has found itself at a reckoning with its increasing homeless population. The county has embarked on an ambitious proposal to buy a former La Quinta Inn & Suites near Interstate 35 and 95th Street in Lenexa and turn it into a year-round homeless shelter. The plan calls for as many as 45 emergency housing beds and about 40 rooms to be used as transitional housing. It would include wraparound support services for mental health counseling, employment training, health screenings and much more.

The county selected reStart, a well-established Kansas City, Missouri, homeless services provider, to run the facility. It expects clients to stay for 90 days. They will not be required to leave during the day as at Project 1020, where clients leave at 8 a.m. and return every evening. In turn, they would be expected to participate in the facility’s

Barb McEver is one of the founders of the Project 1020 cold-weather shelter, the only emergency shelter in Johnson County for men and women. The shelter started out with 10 beds in 2015 and has grown to its city-imposed limit of 30. But McEver has said the demand is much higher.

Photo by Zach Tuttle

programming, which could include everything from addiction and health counseling to workforce training, employment and more as of press time.

But there’s a big hurdle to clear. This summer, the shelter plan is expected to come before the Lenexa City Council, which will consider a 10-year special use permit that the shelter would need to operate. If approved, the county would purchase the hotel and renovate it for about $10.5 million.

The money for the project would come from federal pandemic relief funds rather than local taxpayer dollars. The county then would step back as reStart takes over the operation.

The nonprofit expects operational costs to be $1.5 million annually. ReStart CEO Stephanie Boyer says its strategic funding plan includes asking county and local cities to help fund a third of it. More financial support caused county commissioners to bristle. But local government financial support is important, reStart believes, to leverage foundations and individual funders that reStart relies on.

Foundations typically ask “Where’s the cities? Where’s the county?” she says. And with good reason. If governmental entities are not on board, foundations are less likely to be generous.

‘DOES NOTHING FOR CITIZENS’

As social service agencies build momentum for the facility, not everyone is rolling out the welcome mat in a county known for stringent zoning regulations and a not-in-my-backyard attitude. A homeless shelter doesn’t fit into a carefully curated master plan for any Johnson County suburb. If the initial meetings are any indication, building support will be an uphill battle with some residents.

Among the concerns: Some Johnson Countians fear they will be footing the annual operating costs.

“The project does nothing for citizens. Nothing but beget further social, health and criminal issues for the county,” Lenexa resident Jeff Lysaught wrote to Johnson County commissioners.

Others think the shelter will destroy home values. Although the property is bounded by Interstate 35 and commercial businesses, it sits about 250 feet from the closest Lenexa homes. Not surprisingly, Lenexa city officials began receiving complaints from concerned homeowners months before they received an application for the shelter.

“I personally have received several citizen concerns for the proposal, which are widely varied in their details but include things such as crime, impact to the neighborhood and area businesses, and the cost to the city, both in terms of increased calls for service and the loss of tax revenue associated with the proposal,” says Lenexa City Manager Beccy Yocham.

Boyer expected the discussion. She’s offered to speak to neighborhood groups and residents, and wants to hear concerns.

“This is an investment of taxpayer dollars into a really critical issue in this community, so we want people to ask questions. We’re here to answer questions,” Boyer says.

Quantifying the challenge to Johnson County residents is essential, says Pastor Lee Jost. He’s often asked if homelessness is really a problem in Johnson County.

“We need to stop answering just with what feels right and simply answer with data,” says Jost, executive director of the nonprofit NCircle and coleader of a feasibility study on a homeless shelter.

NOT JUST AN INNER-CITY PROBLEM

Johnson County, well-known for sprawling parks, academic achievement and wealth, counted 235 unhoused individuals last winter during its federal point-in-time homeless count. That represents a 24% increase from 2019. Of those, 50 people were found outdoors, be it in vehicles, tents or other locations not meant for habitation, when canvassers looked for the homeless on Jan. 25, according to United Community Services of Johnson County.

But many believe the number of homeless is woefully undercounted. The total includes those in transitional

housing, emergency shelters, cars, tents and outside. It doesn’t include people who are temporarily doubling up with friends or couch surfing.

The county’s Coordinated Entry System also offers insight to the challenge. The system tracks requests for help related to homelessness. In 2023, 685 people connected with the system, representing 342 households. Of those, 63% had one or more sources of income, which averaged $1,427 a month.

About 40% of those experiencing homelessness in Johnson County were employed. Thirty-nine percent were fleeing domestic violence, and 40% were households with minor children. Emergency shelters exist within the county for families, those fleeing domestic violence and even adults

involved in the justice system, according to United Community Services of Johnson County.

Social service agencies have long sounded the alarm on the increase in homelessness within the county’s borders and the lack of help for those finding themselves without shelter. Homelessness is often thought of as a problem relegated to the inner city. But even on a casual visit to the county, the problem is becoming more obvious. Johnson County Mental Health hired six new case workers this year in part to help serve the homeless.

As the county’s homeless population increases, many advocates believe offers of help have never been greater. The Good Faith Network, a consortium of local faith-based groups, started sending members to County Commission

For at least some of the 1020 shelter’s clients, a bed and a hot meal at the Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church can be the start of a life-changing journey. In the meantime, clothes, medicine and other essential items are available. Photo by Zach Tuttle

meetings to push for more housing. Churches also stepped up to provide shelter when brutally cold temperatures arrived in January.

SOFTENING OPPOSITION?

Never in recent Johnson County history has affordable housing been so prominent in the public discourse.

“Driving around the community, I see people now who are homeless. You see these folks in our libraries. We see them in our parks. Businesses are having some challenges with folks camping and other things nearby,” says Megan Foreman, Johnson County housing coordinator.

The phenomenon comes as housing and rental costs have increased substantially, and businesses

struggle to fill low-wage positions because employees can’t afford nearby housing. It also comes as fewer landlords agree to accept housing vouchers intended to help those in need receive shelter, Foreman says.

Years ago, McEver felt like Project 1020 was practically forced out of Olathe after the city created constant roadblocks. A lawsuit forced Lenexa’s hand too, though the city and shelter have operated peacefully since then.

She wonders if community sentiment has softened slightly over the last five to 10 years.

A few years ago, a Lenexa art group called McEver to tell her that Project 1020 would be the recipient of its peace pole fundraiser. McEver, near tears at the time, says she didn’t care if it brought in one penny. It marked a sea change for her.

She likes to think that Project 1020 has also prodded residents to realize they can’t look away forever. McEver receives abundant volunteer support, be it through people coming to the shelter to work or the hundreds of people who pitch in to make home-cooked dinners every night for four months. The meals come from businesses, families of former homeless clients, a group of young mothers at a nearby church, book clubs, neighborhood groups and more. All but a few dates fill up almost immediately after the online sign-up sheet is sent out each fall.

‘YOU

NEVER KNOW WHAT MAKES PEOPLE HOMELESS’

The assistance has helped many shelter clients exit homelessness to housing. Walker is among them. Now he spends five to six nights a week volunteering.

“You never know what makes people homeless,” he says.

Addiction, financial woes and wrong decisions are part of it. Many, he says, lack a social network checking on them.

McEver and other volunteers try to fill that role when possible. It’s complicated work without a one-sizefits-all solution. Housing is only one component.

“Stability is, I think, really important, but I don’t think plopping someone in an apartment is the answer either,” McEver says. “You’ve got to walk alongside that person for quite a while for hopefully it to be successful. Especially someone who has been homeless for a while. There are a lot of things that go on that they need help with. It’s an adjustment for them.”

McEver helped Walker find an apartment, just as she has with many others. He admitted to McEver that once he had an apartment, he didn’t know what to do next.

“I used to spend my whole day wandering from place to place, and that took up my whole day,” he told her.

The wraparound services and employees who truly care will be the linchpin of the new shelter, many say.

Johnson County provides many of the essential resources to help, Foreman says, but the new shelter would provide a centralized hub where providers could serve a critical mass of people.

United Community Services points out that success is achievable. The Salvation Army Family Lodge in Olathe reported to the nonprofit that 98% of families who receive their help never again come into contact with homelessness services.

COUNTERING MYTHS AND EASING FEAR

Boyer knows the first challenge will be battling negative perceptions. It’s hard to counter TV images of homeless shelters where men and women are leaving at all hours and wandering area neighborhoods.

That won’t be the case here, she says. The shelter is likely to be full the first day it opens. Rooms won’t turn over daily and the facility will not accept walk-up clients.

“Folks do not line up at the door,” Boyer says. Many will go to jobs.

“People are going to be busy during the day. Forty percent of our homeless people now have some sort of income and are often employed,” Foreman says.

The shelter will use Johnson County’s Coordinated Entry System to serve residents, employees and others who spend their days in the county.

County commissioners have heard from many residents who say they don’t want the county to become the hub for the metro area’s homeless population. They want assurances that clients come from or have strong ties to Johnson County.

Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara questioned how the center could take federal funds and exclude anyone, including “illegal aliens.”

The Project 1020 shelter enjoys a tremendous level of volunteer support. Of particular note is the rush every fall to sign up as a provider of home-cooked meals over the four months that the shelter is open. Church groups, businesses, families of former clients, book clubs and neighborhood groups all pitch in. Photo by Zach Tuttle

“I understand targeting, but when the real world comes knocking on your door, you cannot limit who you accept on a geographical basis,” O’Hara told reStart.

Project 1020 works with the Coordinated Entry System to ensure clients have Johnson County ties so they can access services, are close to jobs and have a chance to regain housing.

At times that system has been tested, McEver admits. Hospital employees in Independence, Missouri, discharged a homeless patient and paid for a car service to shuttle the individual to Project 1020 despite being told the same evening that the shelter was at capacity.

Such efforts may be well-meaning, volunteers agree, but it threatens the entire shelter’s existence if it morphs into a drop-in facility.

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. What can community supporters or church leaders do to bring together neighbors, homeowners and businesses in the area to develop a sense of collective purpose?

2. What conflicting values arise for Project 1020 as the reStart program gains momentum toward a final vote?

3. Given Project 1020’s work and commitment to the local unhoused population, how might McEver engage and align purposefully with reStart? What steps are necessary to support and understand the unique contributions that each entity can make?

- By Lydia Santiago

McEver must then find shelter elsewhere to keep the guest from wandering around Lenexa. It’s also not good for individuals, says McEver. How is anyone supposed to hold down a job if they’re in a shelter 30 minutes from their work without transportation?

“What am I going to do at 8 o’clock in the morning because they’re in an unfamiliar place?” she says.

PROJECT 1020: A CONTINUED PRESENCE

Still the answer isn’t to stop providing shelter on freezing nights, she says. It’s to use local resources to keep men and women near their jobs, families and places they know. Project 1020 clients are picked up and dropped off throughout the county or elsewhere if needed.

She urges policy wonks and residents alike to remember respect as they talk about the homeless.

On any given day, McEver has someone call begging and crying for a bed. Police officers know her cell number and often turn to her to help men and women whom they’ve discovered in freezing temperatures without coats or proper shoes. McEver is haunted by the ones they didn’t find in time.

Yet when an Overland Park police officer called her one day last winter, she had to turn down the appeal for help.

“The police are not used to me saying no,” she says.

McEver had no choice. Her facility was at capacity and she didn’t want to jeopardize its existence.

“You can get caught up in the numbers,” McEver says. “But those are human beings. It’s heartbreaking. It’s wrong.”

Even she occasionally finds herself strategizing about dropping clients at the Waffle House or thinking about whom she might move to another location to make space.

“I catch myself and I think, ‘What the heck are you doing?’ These are people. These are not dominoes that I can shuffle around. They’re people in

Is it possible to be both homeless and thankful? For this client at the 1020 shelter, the answer is yes. Over dinner, he took time to express his gratitude in a greeting card to volunteers for a night of safety, warmth and sustenance.

despair. They’re in crisis. It’s horrible,” she says, near tears.

No matter what happens with the new facility, Project 1020 doesn’t expect to close. It has shown the need after years of work.

And if asked, volunteers aren’t shy in pointing out that while opponents of the new shelter might succeed, homelessness will persist.

“I think they think that because they don’t want it, that then it just goes away,” says volunteer Kelley Korb.

McEver has attended meetings for years listening as nonprofits, government officials and volunteers discussed ideas. She’s usually in the back, sitting alone and listening.

“We have meeting after meeting. Let’s get off our ass and do something,” she told The Journal at one gathering last year. It might not be perfect

but she says, “The people that we’re serving can’t afford to wait.”

County Commission Chairman Mike Kelly suggested this spring that the county stop thinking solely about what a permanent shelter would cost and start considering the cost of doing nothing.

“One thing we must consider when we think of the cost of partnership is also the cost of not partnering,” Kelly says. “Of not having the homeless services center and what are the costs that would be entailed for law enforcement or mental health and other services that the county and municipalities and state provide.”

As darkness fell on March 30, the Saturday night kitchen managers – Heidi Hellwig and her son, Hawk Hellwig, a junior at St. James Academy – departed with a cheery farewell wrapped around a somber pledge: “Bye everyone.

“Same time next year.”

Photo by Zach Tuttle

STORY BY: STEFANIA LUGLI ILLUSTRATION BY: ANTHONY RUSSO

Is Housing First a cure for homelessness?

ALLEVIATING HOMELESSNESS BY MAKING THE HOUSING OF AN INDIVIDUAL THE FIRST STEP IS FEDERALLY SANCTIONED AND BACKED BY DATA FROM PLACES AS VARIED AS ROCKFORD, ILLINOIS, AND ABILENE, TEXAS. BUT SOME KANSAS LEGISLATORS ARE SKEPTICAL OF INVESTING IN HOUSING HOMELESS INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ASKING THEM TO MAKE OTHER CHANGES TO THEIR LIVES.

Homelessness is more visible than ever. The number of people experiencing homelessness has been on the rise for several years across the country, and close to home. Last year, volunteers counted over 2,000 homeless Kansans – and those are just the ones local agencies are aware of. There are likely hundreds more living in cars, surfing on couches or hidden in encampments.

With visibility though, comes attention, then momentum, then, hopefully, action. Urban areas like Wichita, Topeka and Kansas City are seeing more encampments pop up in the warmer months, laying bare the slim safeguards available for the homeless. The rural homeless have even less shelter to find refuge in, leaving them to choose either a frontier lifestyle or a trek toward cities for resources.

Those resources – shelters, food banks, free showers, mobile clinics – are a response to the symptoms of homelessness. But to remedy the problem, to

prevent it from happening over and over to the same person, often requires a different approach.

One intervention that Kansas agencies are depending on right now: Housing First.

The Housing First model recognizes housing as a fundamental human right and posits that people experiencing homelessness deserve to be housed as the first step in the journey to being stably housed. The approach is guided by the belief that basic necessities such as food and shelter are critical needs and must be fulfilled before people are able to properly attend to other needs, such as employment or mental health counseling.

Traditionally homeless initiatives require some sort of commitment from a person experiencing homelessness – such as graduating from a series of programs or getting behavioral health treatment – before becoming eligible for housing.

Although some critics question the approach’s priorities, Housing First does not end with a

Homelessness is a maddingly complex and persistent issue. Across Kansas and in cities such as Wichita, ideas about how to get people off the streets have run the gamut, from quickly getting as many people as possible into shelter, to legislative efforts to criminalize being homeless.

lease agreement. Housing First emphasizes that getting someone into housing is just the beginning of an often complex journey into stabilization. Eliminating housing prerequisites eases the stress of transitioning from living on the street to living behind four walls, the model’s proponents argue, allowing for a greater chance of success when an individual is engaging with services that match their needs.

“For example, in a Housing First program, we wouldn’t have a requirement that they are sober, that they are med compliant, that they are engaging in treatment services. It’s really about the idea that housing is a human right and that everyone deserves housing regardless of their choices,” says Molly Mendenhall, the program director for Destination Home, a joint initiative of the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition and the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services.

Mendenhall adds that every Housing First program comes with access to mental health, substance use and employment services.

“We continually offer services even if people decline to engage,” she says. “We are always there for them. They choose what’s best for their need. That’s the ideal.”

Mendenhall is responsible for a majority of the state’s training on Housing First and making sure that programs funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are implementing the model correctly. She works directly with Sam Tsemberis, founder of the Housing First model. His Pathways Housing First Institute has a nearly $800,000 contract with the state to provide training and technical assistance.

Tsemberis founded Pathways to Housing in New York in 1992, which was one of the first practical

applications of his house-first, treatment-second strategy. His approach has since been followed in 20 countries and across the U.S., including Kansas.

“The predominant health/homeless service system has been focused on improving the individual before they’re housed. It’s like treatment first and then housing,” Tsemberis says. “Housing First reverses that sequence, because people are not really able to or are interested in treatment when they’re worrying about their survival, which is the condition they’re in when they’re homeless.”

When someone is experiencing homelessness, it can be difficult to see beyond the next day. Without stable housing, one is forced to be in the present and prioritizing the most essential needs to stay alive: food, water and shelter. Research shows that some people experiencing homelessness turn to drugs or alcohol as a coping mechanism, which further complicates the pathway to stable, sober living.

Is it really fair, then, to expect someone surviving the elements to prove their worth for a house?

State Rep. Leah Howell, a Derby Republican, thinks that may be the only way to persuade legislators to invest in such a venture.

“Of course everyone needs a place to put their head at night,” Howell says. “There is a strong pushback on the idea that we are just going to take taxpayer dollars from people who are working very hard to pay their bills every day … and just give a homeless person a house without requirements to become productive members of society.”

Howell, a Republican, was a member of the Special Committee on Homelessness last year, marking the first time the issue had a position of prominence in a legislative session, she says.

Many of her colleagues bristled at the idea of Housing First, labeling California’s experience as a colossal failure. The state adopted the approach in 2016 and has yet to see an overall decrease in homelessness. Now it’s considering allowing housing funds to be used on sobriety-focused programs. But notwithstanding California’s struggles, Housing First is federally approved. The

Department of Veterans Affairs found that adopting the model reduced the wait time for housing for homeless veterans from 223 days to 35. Emergency room use also significantly declined. HUD employs Housing First methods for homeless veterans, claiming that the agency’s voucher program has helped “reduce and ultimately end veteran homelessness.”

Research from the National League of Cities cites Rockford, Illinois, as a successful case study for Housing First, where the city reached functional zero, meaning that more people are exiting homelessness than entering it, for both veterans and the chronically homeless. Abilene, Texas cut wait times for housing in half for the chronically homeless, also achieving functional zero. Data from Utah shows that after implementing Housing First statewide in 2005, the state has seen a 91% decrease in chronic homelessness by the end of its 10-year plan.

Tsemberis says that once the federal government decided that homeless veterans were a “national shame,” 80,000 housing vouchers were issued, dramatically dropping the number.

“It shows you that when there’s political will, and we believe people are worthy, we can do something and effectively end homelessness,” he says.

“So if we think veterans are worthy of getting out of homelessness and supporting them to have a better life, aren’t the rest of the people in the country also worthy and deserving of support and a better life?”

THE CHALLENGES OF HOUSING FIRST IN KANSAS

Housing First programs began to be implemented in the state around 2021, according to Mendenhall.

Lawrence was the first Kansas municipality Tsembaris consulted with. The city has a track record for proactive homelessness interventions, putting the principles of low barriers, supportive housing and self-determination into action. The Lawrence Community Shelter boasts of its Housing First approach on its website, although it did not respond to inquiries from The Journal.

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

Current trends in the number of people living on the street tend to make homeless people more visible and close to areas where people live and work. That, in turn, makes many people anxious and sometimes afraid, even though the homeless tend to be victims of violent crime rather than perpetrators.

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. How can leadership foster greater understanding and support among legislators, particularly in rural areas, about the universality and urgency of homelessness as a statewide issue?

2. In light of existing housing shortages in Kansas, how can communities collaborate across sectors –government, nonprofit, and private – to innovate and expand affordable housing options that are essential for the success of Housing First initiatives?

3. “What equity issues do Housing First initiatives raise and how might they be addressed?

- By Anisah Ari

As in most of the country, Kansas struggles to keep up with demand for affordable housing –a limiting factor for Housing First. Without an available home to fill, how can an individual transition out of homelessness?

“That is absolutely a struggle that we face here in Kansas,” Mendenhall says. She explains that HUD can grant funds for the state to build affordable housing for low-income families, something especially helpful in areas with few developers, such as western Kansas.

Tsemberis acknowledges that limited housing inventory restricts the full potential of Housing First. People wait months or years for housing –regardless of the model.

“If we talk about ending homelessness in America, then we’re talking about having to do really dramatic changes in policy and having

the federal government reinvest in building public housing, like they used to before 1980,” he says. The decades-long increase in unsheltered homelessness has coincided with a lack of investment in public housing and the real estate market’s relentless increase.

Another policy change that could reduce homelessness: Medicaid expansion. Kansas is one of 10 states that have not adopted it.

“Obviously Medicaid expansion would help as well,” Mendenhall says. “It would take a lot of the burden off of individuals and families that are having to pay out of pocket for medical expenses. Without that Medicaid expansion, so much of individuals’ money is going to medical expenses and keeping them homeless.”

But changes in attitudes toward the homeless have a tough time gaining traction in the Legislature. Howell was glad to see homelessness rise in prominence, but worries that any momentum will fade by the next regular session.

All 165 seats in the Legislature are up for election this year, and a significant level of turnover is expected with 31 open seats and dozens of primary races.

“We have a lot of change happening right now,” Howell says. “New people get elected. That means we start over.”

She worries, too, that legislators struggle to support initiatives when they don’t necessarily see how homelessness affects their part of the state.

“Homelessness, mental health and substance abuse issues are seen as big city problems,” she says. “The rural community does not like to feel left out. They also don’t like to spend money to fix our problems. I will say there are plenty of legislators that don’t think they have those problems. And it is our problem. So that’s another hurdle.”

Eric Arganbright, the director of community engagement at the Kansas Statewide Homeless Coalition, grew up homeless in rural Kansas. He’s eager to tell his story wherever he goes to try to prove to skeptics that homelessness does exist outside of urban areas.

“Also, one of my favorite statistics that we can throw out is 87% of folks in Kansas who are experiencing homelessness have regular annual income. That’s part of what we point out,” he says.

Howell says her views could be swayed if data proved that the Housing First approach is viable. But she also thinks guardrails are needed for someone transitioning into permanent housing –something that encourages “better choices.”

“How do we balance getting them into a house where they are not on the street, where they have a roof over their head and yet, for lack of a better way to say it, forcing them to get help? Where’s that balance? There’s where we have to have a really difficult conversation that I’m not sure we’re really having yet.”

Tsemberis is all-too familiar with skepticism on Housing First. He says that the question to ask lawmakers is, ‘How are you going to spend taxpayers’ money on homelessness?’ “Because if you don’t house people, and you leave people homeless, you’re going to pay for it with taxpayers’ money. You’re going to pay for it through police interventions, through emergency room use, through jail time or all of these shelters and other kinds of programs serving people who are homeless but not giving them housing. So you’re going to pay for it one way or the other.

“The question is: Why not pay for it in a way that you have a solution to the problem as opposed to a perpetuation of the problem?”

On a late December day last year, Thomas Gloster unrolled his sleeping bag and sacked out in a downtown Wichita parking lot. Gloster, who’s from Oakland, California, had been homeless for two years when this photo was taken. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

FOR

YEARS, JUNCTION CITY SUFFERED FROM THE RAREST OF WOES: TOO MUCH HOUSING.

NOW, IT’S FINALLY SEEING THE GROWTH IT WAS PROMISED.

Dawn Meadows in Junction City is fostering an actual meadow. Butterflies flit from yarrow to yellow St. John’s wort. Delicate wildflowers intermingle with wild sumac. In the summer, the vacant lot is a riot of color and sound, filled with birdsong and the insistent hum of insects.

As idyllic as it is, this impromptu prairie and many areas like it represent one of the biggest challenges Junction City has faced over the past two decades. The lot is part of the municipal land bank and a remnant of an ill-conceived building spree that nearly bankrupted the city.

The story of how the city built entire neighborhoods for a population that never materialized is, in some ways, a story of bad timing and unforeseeable events – a fluke. But the experience also illustrates the risks many smaller communities can take in pursuit of economic development, and of the catastrophic fallout that can result if the gamble doesn’t pay off.

In Junction City, the recovery process has not been without obstacles, and there are open questions as to the social costs of its charted path. But the city has made a remarkable comeback, in large part due to high levels of transparency, introspection, and trial and error on the part of the city’s political leaders.

This is not a story about how to avert disaster. It is a story about bouncing back from one.

BUILD. BUILD. BUILD.

Discussions about the housing crisis generally focus on a housing shortage. The United States has a deficit of up to 2 million housing units, according to statistics compiled by Moody’s

Analytics. But for the better part of two decades, Junction City has struggled with the opposite problem: an oversupply of housing.

In the wake of the Great Recession, hundreds of communities were left with half-constructed houses and empty subdivisions. But Junction City’s troubles began not with the subprime mortgage crisis but earlier, with an announcement from the Pentagon.

In 2005, military officials announced that the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, historically garrisoned at Fort Riley but at the time headquartered in Würzburg, Germany, was returning to Kansas. The division, long referred to as the Big Red One for the crimson numeral on its shoulder patch, at the time contained upward of 2,400 soldiers. Additionally, a brigade of the 25th Infantry Division was being stationed at Fort Riley, bringing an additional 3,400 troops and 1,000 civilian employees to Junction City and the surrounding area.

The community was excited. There had been a sense of loss, not to mention economic strain, when the Big Red One vacated Fort Riley in 1995. Its homecoming signaled both a return to better times and a once-in-a-generation shot at economic growth. At the time, officials projected that the city’s population could jump from 18,000 to 50,000 in just a few years. More residents meant more revenue, more business, more investment in the city. As one business owner put it at the time, rapid growth “was a good problem to have.”

Among other things, the population boom meant the city needed to add housing – and fast. The city annexed 1,400 acres of agricultural land and laid the infrastructure for dozens of subdivisions. Prior to that, Junction City typically added about 30 new housing units per year. By the end of 2005, it had added 900.

Outwardly, there’s nothing to suggest that Dawn Meadows in Junction City isn’t a typical housing development in any medium-sized Kansas town. In reality, it’s evidence of how opportunity led to a bad bet, massive debt, municipal woes and finally a creative recovery.

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

As Allen Dinkel, the recently retired city manager, put it, the Army had told Junction City: “‘Build, build, build.’ So the community did, did, did.”

GAMBLING ON GROWTH AND LOSING

From the beginning, they overshot. The city parceled out lots for thousands of new housing units, even though, according to historical trends, only about a third of soldiers stationed at Fort Riley lived in Junction City. So, it should have expected to fill no more than 3,600 dwellings.

More problematic than the math, however, were the arrangements the city made with developers. In the U.S., municipalities generally aren’t in the business of building housing. Outside of code enforcement, tax incentives and a few units of public housing, they generally leave the provision of shelter to the private sector.

contract, for instance, that stipulates should a development fail, the developer will reimburse the city a percentage of the cost of the infrastructure.

In Abilene, for instance, where Dinkel was city manager from 2008 to 2010, the city also invested in new housing developments in response to the Army’s announcement. “But they had some guarantees built in, where the developer at least lost something,” he says. “We didn’t do that here.” It would prove to be a ruinous oversight. By 2008, the city had amassed $112 million in general obligation debt, and the mechanism to pay off that debt was beginning to falter.

in general obligation debt.

The promised population boom never quite materialized, a combination of an oversupply and the fact that a good number of soldiers shipped out right away, which meant they may not have brought their families to the area, explained the current mayor, Pat Landes. Cities like Manhattan had added housing as well, siphoning some of the soldiers away from Junction City.

In Junction City, the local government signed contracts with numerous developers to build out the subdivisions and deliver the necessary housing. As part of those contracts, the city agreed to provide all of the infrastructure: sewer lines, water lines, roads, sidewalks. To do so, the city used its bonding authority to borrow millions of dollars, which would be recouped through what are called special assessments, an extra fee levied on properties that fall within special benefit districts and paid by future homeowners.

“Everyone forms special-benefit districts,” Dinkel, the city manager, says. “You put your streets in, your sewer, your drainage, your water lines. And then you pay it back with special assessments over the next 20 years.”

Most cities, though, negotiate some form of financial protection, Dinkel says, a clause in the

“Manhattan did a lot of multifamily – like duplexes and apartments that I think a lot of soldiers chose to go to,” says Jodie Wilkey, a real estate agent who has lived in Junction City since 2000.

Without buyers, housing developers walked away, leaving the city with dozens of empty cul-de-sacs and millions in uncollected revenue. Pete Robertson, a former city commissioner, told reporters that Junction City had become a “ghost town for phantom soldiers.”

And then, the world economy collapsed. Construction everywhere ground to a halt. An estimated $2 trillion in real estate value vanished overnight. The U.S. entered the worst economic recession in almost a century. It was arguably the worst time for a city’s financial future to be tied to an abundance of unsold homes. Junction City had gambled on growth, and lost.

By 2008, Junction City had amassed MILLION

Corey Johnson (right) is a Florida transplant who lives in the Sutter Highlands subdivision in Junction City in a house built by his employer, Casey Maransani, who’s developed dozens of properties nearby. Photos by Jeff Tuttle

If Junction City seems crowded with construction crews, there’s a reason: It sold 200 housing lots out of its inventory last year alone.

It was in areas like this one, overgrown now and waiting for a contractor, where Junction City got ahead of itself financially years ago, burying sewer and water

‘WE WERE BROKE’

As many communities discovered in the aftermath of the Great Recession, there isn’t a playbook for what to do when millions of dollars in real estate investments go up in smoke. For residents of Junction City, it seemed there was no good way forward.

By 2010, the city’s debt had reached $133 million. “We were broke,” recalls Landes, who has served as mayor six different times since 2011. “(The city) had about $50,000 in the bank. Several funds were in the red. They were having to furlough city employees to make payroll.” There was talk of the state taking over the city’s finances.

The debt was more than three times what Dinkel says a city of its size should ever have on its balance sheets. “There’s an old rule of thumb that you never want your general obligation debt (to be more than) $1,000 to $1,500 per capita,” he explains. “In other words, our magic spot should be between $25 (million) and $40 million.”

Voters understandably lost faith in their leaders. In 2009, former Junction City Mayor Michael “Mick” Wunder was indicted on federal charges of bank fraud, perjury, conspiracy and unlawful monetary transactions. The charges were directly connected to Junction City’s housing developments.

According to the FBI, Wunder had taken $10,000 in bribes from Lawrence developer David Ray Freeman in exchange for a promise that Freeman’s company, Big D Development, would receive contracts to develop at least two of Junction City’s new subdivisions, a deal worth as much as $12 million. Freeman also promised the mayor a house in one of the new developments. The two men were eventually convicted and sentenced to at least 18 months in federal prison. (Wunder died in 2022.)

In 2011, Landes was elected to his first term as mayor. To chart a path out of the financial crisis, he and city officials worked with outside advisers to put together

a fiscal transformation plan. Among its recommendations was to use an increase in sales taxes to begin paying down the city’s debt. That year, voters approved a 1 percentage point sales tax increase whose revenues would go exclusively to debt service.

The additional tax revenue, which last year amounted to roughly $5.3 million, didn’t solve the problem of the vacant lots, however. As developers became delinquent, the county assumed ownership of thousands of empty parcels. When a tax sale failed to attract more than a handful of buyers, the city formed a land bank – one of the first in Kansas.

In the years since, Dinkel (who came to the city in 2014) says the city has experimented with numerous strategies to put the properties back into the hands of the private sector. There have been numerous pricing structures. Tax incentives and rebates. Consultants and real estate agents.

“We’ve tried every which way to sell lots,” Dinkel says. “If you’re a teacher, we’ll give you a lot for $1,000.”

None of it made a dent. Finally, in 2017, the City Commission voted to waive the special assessments that, until then, had been attached to the properties. The attitude was: “We’re just going to eat ’em,” Dinkel says. “We’ve been eating them anyhow; we’re just gonna eat ‘em.”

Additionally, the city began offering lots for $5,000, with a $4,000 rebate if the developer had a certificate of occupancy within 12 months.

It was another gamble, but this time it worked. Local developers and homebuilding outfits began snatching up the lots, slowly at first, and then a little faster. It was a modest renaissance, but it was the most interest the city had been able to attract in years. And when the new houses sold, outfits bought more lots.

lines, building streets and sidewalks – primed for homeowners who only recently have begun to arrive. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. How might the city government have improved its policy decisions by seeking input from a wider range of voices and asking difficult questions?

2. Could Junction City have avoided the most difficult challenges by regional coordination with neighboring communities, such as Manhattan or Abilene?

3. What lessons can elected and appointed officials in other communities learn from Junction City’s experience, especially for communities that are working to accommodate growth in their populations stemming from largescale economic development projects?

- By Chris Harris

BUILDING A NEIGHBORHOOD

Casey Maransani is one of several homebuilders who has purchased land bank properties. A former educator, Maransani is the owner of Italian Estates Property Management in Manhattan. Around 2018, Maransani spun off a real estate development company and began building houses in the area.

Initially, he was hesitant to expand to Junction City. But in 2021, he bought his first two lots and went in with a partner on two others. “The worst case scenario is you’re holding on to a piece of land for $5,000,” he says. “There’s no specials, so the holding costs are basically nothing.”

But the properties sold, and in the three years since, Maransani has developed, in whole or in part, 44 properties, the majority of them in a

subdivision on the far west side of the city called Sutter Highlands.

Most of Maransani’s buyers are members of the military, who finance their homes using VA loan guarantees. But there are exceptions. Corey Johnson, who works for Maransani doing building maintenance, moved from Miramar, Florida, to Junction City in 2022.

Born and raised in Jamaica, he had a friend in the Manhattan area, and the cost of living was a fraction of what it was in Florida. Although most of his work is centered in Manhattan, Johnson and his wife bought a house in the Sutter Highlands subdivision because it was affordable and, more importantly, new. “There were some houses (in Manhattan), but they’re older houses,” he says. “I would have had to put work into it.”

Johnson’s house overlooks Junction City’s new $132 million high school. A lot of his neighbors are retired soldiers, and so the area is “nice, quiet,” he says. What little downtime he has Johnson spends watching Jamaican news on YouTube or tending his tomato garden. Sitting in his driveway one recent evening, he says, in a thick Jamaican patois, “Life is good, man.”

AN UNEVEN PATCHWORK

Driving around the west side of Junction City today still feels a bit surreal. Rows of newish houses face empty lots overgrown with cottonwoods and cedars. Sidewalks dead end in wild meadows. There are cul-de-sacs with a single house on them and cul-de-sacs with no houses at all. The prevailing sense is one of unfinishedness.

But there are also, amid the insurgent woodlands, signs of life. Workers erect the wooden frames for new houses. Kids play basketball in the street. According to Dinkel, the city has sold more than 600 lots since it waived special assessments – 200 lots in 2023 alone.

“It’s working,” he said. “We’ve made a lot of mistakes, and we had to sell the lots at a fairly reduced rate. But we’re getting them sold, and houses are being built.”

“People kind of like the seclusion. They’re OK with the fact that there’s an empty lot that their dogs can go run on or that their kids can explore,” notes Wilkey, the real estate agent, adding that in some cases buyers also purchase an adjacent lot.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the land bank has been a blessing in disguise, but in some instances, the blank slate has been a boon for the city. In one case, the city turned a group of unsold lots into a new city park. “I think we need to do more of that,” Landes says. “I don’t think we have nearly enough park space west of Highway 77.”

The possibilities represented by so much publicly owned open space also suggest an alternative path not taken by the city years ago. Wilkey points out that even at the height of the building boom, the city’s growth was somewhat uneven. Housing dominated, without corresponding investments in downtown revitalization or businesses or amenities such as parks. Perhaps if the city had focused as much on investments that improved the quality of life of the existing community and burnished its reputation, it would have seen more of the growth it craved. It’s hard to know.

Junction City’s chosen path may not be the playbook for every community. Among other things, its reliance on a sales tax – which by its nature is regressive – has disproportionately impacted lower-income residents. And Dinkel says there are still tensions between those homeowners who purchased homes prior to 2017 who are continuing to pay special assessments and those who purchased homes after the assessments were waived.

But Landes says there are lessons for other city leaders. “The biggest mistake was not making sure the developers were bonded in case everything fell apart,” he says. More broadly, he says local governments need to be transparent and honest with themselves. “Don’t be afraid to ask more questions and … get a fresh set of eyes on things.”

Today, through an extension of the sales tax increase approved in 2019, Junction City has slashed its general obligation debt by nearly 70%. “When I came here, we had $115 million in general obligation debt,” Dinkel says, clearly proud. “When I retire this summer (by September) we’ll have our general obligation debt down to $40 million.”

Allen Dinkel, Junction City’s recently retired city manager, is proud that the municipal government has whittled down its general obligation debt by nearly 70% during his tenure.

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

Everyone’s ‘in the same boat’

EFFORTS TO ADDRESS A STATEWIDE SHORTAGE OF HOUSING ARE WELL UNDERWAY. BUT EVEN THOUGH A STATE AGENCY LAST YEAR FUNDED 61 HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS

ACROSS THE STATE, CREATING MORE THAN 3,000 HOMES IN NEARLY 40 COUNTIES, SUCH PROGRESS ONLY SCRATCHES THE SURFACE OF WHAT’S NEEDED. BY: STAN FINGER

South View is such a new neighborhood that the houses at the end of one street at the edge of Salina are still sporting their pale-yellow base coat, their yards bare dirt. Schilling Road down at the corner is merely rutted gravel.

Little more than a mile to the west, on the other side of Interstate 135, Magnolia Village is not even that far along. A sign and some earth-moving equipment are camped in what used to be a cornfield, the gray stalks hugging rich soil, behind a Menards and a Fairfield Inn.

They are two of the housing projects in various stages of development in Salina, where officials are scrambling to meet surging demand for housing thanks to local businesses expanding their workforces.

And Salina’s just one of many Kansas communities grappling with a need for housing they have rarely seen before – if ever.

“Kansas has been a magnet for economic development lately,” says Jeri Hammerschmidt,

a senior housing specialist for First Step Builders in Independence. “Everybody wants to come here. We’ve got the highways and the railways and all of that. But you can’t really recruit these things unless you have your housing and you have your day care, right?”

The annual report of the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation (KHRC) shows the agency funded 61 housing developments across the state in 2023, creating 3,234 new homes in 38 counties. Twenty-five developments fell under the “affordable housing” definition and the rest were moderate income, meaning the residents earn too much to qualify for federal housing assistance, yet struggle to afford market rate homes.

But that is a pittance compared with what is needed. A comprehensive housing-needs study released in 2022 by the KHRC showed nearly 43,000 housing units are needed across the state by 2028 – a number that does not include the needs in Kansas City or Wichita, or in Shawnee, Sedgwick and Douglas counties.

“Every city manager conference, every League (of Kansas Municipalities) training that I go to, it sounds like across the state it’s the same, and it doesn’t matter if you’re in Wichita or if you’re in Colby,” says Ron Alexander, the city administrator in Colby. “Everybody’s in the same boat for housing right now.”

SIPPING ALPHABET SOUP

The Journal has explored how numerous cities around the state are grappling with housing shortages, including several towns that were featured in a 2021 story about the surge in demand.

The results are generally positive, though officials in multiple cities say there are significant obstacles to overcome if Kansas is to make the most of this era of growth and opportunity.

Kansas needs to significantly increase the size of both its development capacity and its construction workforce, officials say, and embrace a variety of

South View Estates in Salina is being built by a development group that received a moderate income housing grant. The townhomes and single-family houses are priced between $179,000 and $204,000.

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

ways to do that. The state also needs to downscale the incentives available for housing projects.

“Nearly every multimillion-dollar housing project benefits from some combination of the alphabet soup of incentive offerings,” Atchison developer Justin Pregont told a legislative committee in February, referring to such tools as Tax Increment Financing, or TIFs; industrial revenue bonds, or IRBs; Rural Housing Incentive Districts, or RHID; Middle Income Housing grants, or MIH; Kansas Housing Investor Tax Credits, or KHITC; and LowIncome Housing Tax Credits, or LIHTC.

“The places where those kinds of incentives are most needed, small/rural communities, are the same places where they are least likely to be used, in part because the pathway to accessing the incentive is too expensive to make sense for small projects,” he testified to the committee.

There is nothing wrong with developers in Wichita building large apartment projects and making a reasonable return on investment, Pregont told the committee. “But we ought to find a way to make incentives and resources more available to the side-hustling plumber working their tail off on nights and weekends to self-develop their first spec house.”

“I think, for the most part, our local policymakers and state policymakers get it,” says Renee Duxler, president and chief executive officer of the Salina Area Chamber of Commerce. “These are the investments we do have to make, or we are going to miss that opportunity” for Kansas communities to thrive.

‘SCRATCHING AND CLAWING’

Salina and Colby, among other cities, have utilized incentive programs to help subsidize projects. In Hays, the nonprofit Heart of America Development Corp. invested $2.5 million to help launch the Tallgrass Addition on the east side of town, which sold 54 homes even before they went on the market. Local banks partnered to create a line of credit for Heart of America to cover development costs that exceeded the cash they had available.

Several other projects are completed or on the way, says Doug Williams, executive director of Grow Hays. Construction is about to begin on The Grove, north of the Hays Medical Center campus. It will feature 50 patio homes, eight duplexes and 72 apartments. Loft apartments are being built on upper floors in several downtown buildings, Williams says, and two new apartment complexes are on the way.

Colby just broke ground for a development that will be home to nine duplexes and is clearing a large downtown lot it will offer for free to a developer willing to build a market rate threestory apartment complex. Houses continue to go up in a development that has 30 lots.

“We’re excited about some of the momentum we’re picking up on housing right now,” Alexander says. “I’ve been scratching and clawing trying to get that figured out.”

When he accepted a job in Hays, Nick Cain was struggling to find an apartment that did not carry the scars of being rented by college students – until he discovered Frontier Apartments downtown.

The Frontier building used to be St. Joseph Catholic School, a three-story limestone structure built in 1907. With the help of rural-housing and historic-preservation tax grants, Pregont purchased the building and transformed the three floors into 12 apartments.

“It’s a great use of that property,” Williams says. “It was sitting there empty with no real use in sight.”

Cain says he has been pleased by his move to Hays from a small college town on the East Coast.

“There is a very nice community feel” to Hays, “while at the same time, there’s enough to do that you’re not seeing the same three people over again,” he says.

He also likes that, no matter where he is in town, he can look up and spot where he lives because, even at just three stories, The Frontier towers above the Hays cityscape.

BEYOND THE SLUMLORD MODEL

While developers could probably sell single-family homes as fast as they can build them in Hays these days, Williams says, officials are focusing on filling gaps in the housing spectrum.

“We are taking the position from our urbanization standpoint that ‘If you build it, they will come,’ so we’re trying to build as much housing as we can,” Williams says. “We believe that we’ve got job opportunities as well as a quality of life that people are looking for.”

Filling housing gaps and preserving historic buildings have been Pregont’s focus since he launched Pomeroy Development several years ago. His company has converted three historic

buildings in downtown Atchison into apartments and is also involved with projects under development in Great Bend and Hutchinson.

“It’s been the most rewarding and also the most anxiety-ridden thing that I’ve ever done … trying to take these projects on and make them happen,” Pregont says. “Development is just a math equation. If somebody is not developing, it is because they don’t perceive the profit on the back end to be worth the risk and the time and the effort to get through it.”

Pregont prioritizes historic preservation, walkability, community development and helping to revitalize smaller communities such as his native Atchison. During the 10-plus years he worked in city government, he recognized the

Atchison’s Central School, built in 1938 as a neighborhood elementary, has been redeveloped by Justin Pregont – a Central alum – as an apartment building. Pregont’s Kansas projects also include the 1913 Apartments in Atchison and the Frontier Apartments in Hays. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

need – and the opportunity – for the kinds of developments he wanted to do.

“There was a section of the market that’s not being served very well, even in rural places,” he says.

In too many smaller towns and cities, he says, “the only model was the slumlord” – someone who would buy a property and spend only what was absolutely necessary so people could live there. Pregont wants his properties to be so nice people move there because they love it, not because they have no other choice.

MAKING THE MATH WORK

Bob and Betty Albers moved to 1913 Apartments in Atchison four years ago after downsizing and really enjoy their new home.

“They were very nicely decorated,” Betty says. “It’s close to everything. We’re within two or three blocks of walking distance to several businesses. There’s a grocery store right across the street.”

Most importantly, she says, the building requires access codes to enter, so she feels secure.

“I regret moving because I don’t have any grass to mow anymore or leaves to rake anymore,” Bob jokes.

Phyllis Walton moved into the Central School apartments in Atchison a year ago and loves it. When friends come to visit, they can’t believe she lives in what used to be the kindergarten room.

“When I go to a larger city, I think ‘Now I know why I like to live in Atchison,’” Walton says. “You know almost every person. There’s not a lot of traffic. You’re not afraid to walk around at night. I just love it.”

for tax credits and subsidies, Pregont said. It is vital for that funding to continue – and even be increased – if the state is going to make the most of the opportunity it now has, he says.

Brandon Winn has several projects underway in Sterling, where he graduated from Sterling College and where his wife grew up. With the help of another Sterling native, he created an investment group to finance numerous projects in the city.

Winn’s investment group purchased a brick building dating back to the 1800s that originally was a hospital before eventually becoming a gas station and a mechanic shop. Winn plans to install eight urban lofts upstairs and a restaurant on the ground floor. His business also created a cul-desac and is building houses along it.

Eight duplexes have sprouted like mushrooms in a wheat field on the east edge of town, put up by another developer, and more housing units are planned next to them.

Winn is also a real estate agent and he has been busy since the pandemic selling to people relocating to Sterling from Colorado and the West Coast.

“They’re coming for a change of pace,” Winn says. “The business world is flattened out, … There’s not as much reason for a brick-andmortar location anymore. I think if COVID taught us anything, a lot of business can be done out of somebody’s living room now.”

With Sterling College’s student housing overflowing and local businesses growing, the demand for rental properties is huge, Winn says. KMW Limited, a local manufacturer of front-end loaders, backhoes and other equipment, just announced plans to expand and hire 250 people, doubling in size.

“If you own a rental house, it’s taken in a day,” Winn says.

Owners of about a half-dozen buildings downtown “are watching our project pretty closely” to see how well it does, Winn says. If it performs as expected, more loft apartments are likely to be developed downtown.

LOOKING FOR ALTERNATIVES

While Sterling is bustling with housing activity, a town with similar demographics in another part of the state – Humboldt – is struggling to get new housing projects off the ground despite the intense need.

“It feels like we haven’t made much progress” over the past few years, Humboldt City Administrator Cole Herder says.

While there have been a few modular homes brought in and placed on foundations on open lots, he says, the demand for housing far outstrips what is available. Local manufacturer B&W Trailer Hitches has grown to about 700 employees, Herder says, and has workers commuting from as far as 60 miles away.

“We’ve had houses under contract before I even know they’re for sale,” Herder says.

The city’s most consistent source of new housing has been the building trades program that has been in the high school curriculum for decades now. Students are taught how to build a house, and their “project” is sold at the end of the school year.

But the program only provides one house a year, so Herder is exploring alternatives. Applications for Moderate Income Housing grants from the state were rejected, he says, and he does not know why.

Contractors in the area have so many projects lined up elsewhere, he says, it is often months before they can get to Humboldt for relatively modest rehabilitation or remodeling work in existing houses.

A housing development is going up just east of town, Herder says, and it is creating a potential dilemma for the city.

“For us to go out and annex and build streets and infrastructure, it’s very costly,” he says. “So you’ve got to have some pretty good assurances that those lots are going to be filled for those specials (assessments to pay for the infrastructure) to get paid off.”

When Nick Cain moved to Hays, he was happy to find space in the Frontier Apartments, which once housed St. Joseph Catholic School.

(That’s St. Joseph Catholic Church across the street.) Amenities include an elevator, premium cabinetry and countertops, and stainless steel appliances. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

More than a decade ago, Humboldt officials were invited to the Hutchinson Correctional Facility to learn more about a program in which inmates were taught to build cabins for state parks. That program was poised to transition to single-family homes whose shells would be constructed at the prison in two pieces and then transported to their eventual location. The pieces would be attached and a garage added, with a total price tag of around $120,000.

Under pressure from developers, then-Gov. Sam Brownback shut down the program after the contract for park cabins was fulfilled. But “the climate is different now,” Herder says, and he would like to see that program revived.

“I’d sign up for the first one,” he says. “There’s just so many wins on that deal.”

Not only would desperately needed houses be built and offered at an affordable price, he says, but prisoners would learn skills that they could put to use once they are released.

Former prisoners are among the audience targeted by a fledgling Salina nonprofit organization that wants to expand the local construction and maintenance workforce by connecting people who are willing to apprentice with local businesses.

The Build A Pro Foundation is also focusing on attracting youths, veterans, those with diverse abilities and immigrants, though founder Amanda Jarvis says the last two groups on that list are “more aspirational for now.”

Through apprenticeship, she says, “we get employers who are invested in growing and partnering with us in workforce development. We get apprentices who are looking to invest in a long-term career.

“We’re addressing the issue of growing talent. We’re not increasing the population, but we’re upscaling what we already have.”

But developing a workforce will not matter much if there are not places for the people to live, Duxler says. And without childcare options nearby, families will look elsewhere.

“There’s a lot of different factors to this puzzle,” Duxler says. “There’s not a silver bullet to solve our housing crisis. There are a lot of different things that we are doing and have been doing that I think are definitely moving the ball forward.”

For all that has been done, however, officials say, in many ways it is still just the beginning.

“The truth of the matter is: We should have been working on this 10 years ago with this kind of diligence,” Alexander says of cities around the state. “But you don’t always see everything that’s coming ahead.”

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. What new values, loyalties, and losses might become more prevalent among stakeholders as remote work opportunities are available, even for residents of rural Kansas?

2. What losses may arise for current residents as progress is made to meet housing needs?

3. What could stakeholders on this issue try to make leadership less risky for others and increase the rate of experimentation?

- By Jaryth Barten

Overleaf: The classrooms at Atchison Central School (where generations of locals attended classes and Phyllis Walton now lives) have been converted to apartments. The project was cited in June by the Kansas Preservation Alliance with an Award of Excellence, which noted, in part: “The gymnasium was retained as a communal area. … Many of the historic finishes were retained, including glazed tile walls in corridors and stair halls, terrazzo stairs and historic railings.” Photo by Jeff Tuttle

CONNECTION

POINT

BY: KIM GRONNIGER

COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS BETWEEN THE FAITH-BASED COMMUNITY AND NONPROFITS HELP TOPEKA’S HOMELESS RECEIVE MUCH NEEDED CARE AND SUPPORT.

Twice a week in church parking lots, Topeka’s homeless population finds help through an array of services offered collectively – with purpose –by local partners.

Through the Mobile Access Partnership (MAP), homeless individuals receive hot showers, warm meals and clean clothes, along with primary care services and immunizations for themselves and even their pets. They can also charge their phones and access supplies donated by local companies ranging from sleeping bags and tents to sunscreen and packaged snacks.

MAP partners include the Topeka Rescue Mission, Valeo Behavioral Health Care, Stormont Vail Health, the Shawnee County Health Department, the Topeka Police Department, the Salvation Army and the Street Dog Coalition, which provides health services for pets of the homeless.

An average of 45 to 70 clients seek MAP services each day the site is open. Since the program’s inception in 2021, 1,600 people have been identified as new service recipients.

Bill Persinger, chief executive officer of Valeo Behavioral Health Care, says the community collaboration strengthens clients’ social, mental and physical well-being.

Access to medical services helps individuals stay healthier, which impedes the spread of disease in camps. Opportunities for care and conversation create connections that lessen loneliness. Scotch Cleaners provides laundry services. Assistance is also available for obtaining city IDs, case management and housing resources.

“What makes MAP unique and significant is that the faith-based community works with all of our nonprofit partners to ensure we can consistently deliver services,” he says.

“When you’re living in a situation where you may not have a restroom or running water, being able to take a shower twice a week and access our services underscores how vital this initiative is,” says Aimee Copp-Hasty, Valeo’s corporate development director. “It’s devastating when we have to cancel.”

MAP’s approach has drawn state and national attention with representatives from communities ranging from Seattle to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, visiting the capital city to see for themselves how the program works.

Persinger says having so many partners with a vested interest in the well-being of Topeka’s unhoused population coming together every Tuesday and Thursday cultivates trust among clients and service providers alike.

“We’ve removed organizational barriers so we can adapt more quickly,” he says. “Stephen Covey (the author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’) said, ‘Change moves at the speed of trust,’ and that’s been true for us. Now when a partner needs something, the response is: ‘How can we help you and what do you need’?”

When shower usage accelerated, the team converted the trailer’s former laundry room into a third shower space. During winter months, MAP operates at the Salvation Army location east of downtown, which offers indoor shower services for clients. During a 14-day cold snap in January, MAP was able to simultaneously operate its warming center at the Salvation Army offices and still transport clients to care sites to ensure ongoing access to services.

“It wouldn’t have happened as easily if we hadn’t already had those relationships formed,” Persinger says.

Services are promoted through pamphlets, word of mouth and health-and-welfare checks at campsites.

“It’s a beautiful thing to watch unhoused people bond with others and see our volunteers help us repair bike chains or clean showers,” Copp-Hasty says. “We’ve seen so many relationships formed through our time together. Our volunteers love and care for our clients with dignity and respect.”

“There’s nothing like seeing the expression of a person who has just had a shower or charged a phone,” Persinger says. “This is a rewarding experience for everyone involved.”

Topeka’s Mobile Access Partnership, a collaborative effort that provides a range of services to the homeless, sets up in church parking lots around town on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Phone charging stations are among the most popular gathering points (along with showers) for the dozens of people who typically gather.

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. What factions do you think emerged and will continue to as they collaborate to provide resources for the unhoused population?

2. What is technical and what is adaptive about the challenges that face the homeless population? What types of challenges are the Mobile Access Partnership (MAP) working to address?

- By Neha Batawala

Advanced Practice Registered Nurse Jennifer Brewer treats an arm wound at one of the twice-a-week MAP sessions. Access to medical services is important for people who live in homeless encampments because it can lead to better health outcomes and lessen the spread of disease. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

Pets belonging to the homeless can get free care at MAP sites. Here, Kansas State University veterinary student Sara MacFarlane and veterinarian Naomi Hampton get the clinical picture from the owner of Murray the cat. The service is a partnership of the Street Dog Coalition and K-State’s Shelter Medicine. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

community FOR THE STUDENTS, BY

BY: MONICA SPRINGER

HIGH SCHOOL AND COLLEGE STUDENTS LEARNING THE BUILDING TRADES IN DODGE CITY HELP ADD TO THE STOCK OF AVAILABLE RESIDENCES BY BUILDING HOUSES WHILE ALSO LAUNCHING FRUITFUL CONSTRUCTION CAREERS.

On a sunny day in May, Dodge City Community College and Dodge City municipal officials, along with members of the public, gathered at a newly built house on Military Avenue to celebrate its construction with a hamburger feed.

The home was built in a partnership between the college’s Building Construction Technology Program and the Community Housing Association of Dodge City. The house measures 1,350 square feet and has three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a two-car garage.

The housing association is a nonprofit that for the past 10 years has partnered with DC3 – local shorthand for the college – to build a house in Dodge City annually. Its mission is to address housing needs by revitalizing low-to-moderateincome neighborhoods.

“It’s really a neat partnership and program that we implement here,” says Mollea Wainscott, assistant director of the Dodge City/Ford County Development Corporation.

The program creates additional housing, trains the future workforce in Dodge City and cleans up blighted neighborhoods. Wainscott says every house the program builds is south of Comanche Street, an east-west thoroughfare generally regarded as a demographic dividing line.

Students level the dirt for the concrete work, help set up the forms and pour the concrete for the foundation, frame the floor, install insulation, hang drywall and install windows. They had contract help with the foundation, electrical, plumbing and mechanicals.

The house was designed by a former DC3 student who is now studying architecture at Kansas State University, says Patrick Shiew, professor of building/construction technology.

Twenty-six DC3 students helped build the house. Shiew says the first six weeks of instruction are mainly spent learning about safety and tools. Then at the end of September, activity shifts to the “lab” and construction begins.

“We should have the structure before Thanksgiving, if we’re lucky,” Shiew says. “Next year we’re doing a duplex right by this (justcompleted) one.”

Dodge City High School has a similar program, in which students in its building trades program build one house per year.

The program started in 1969 and has built more than 50 houses.

The current project is a two-story home of 4,000 square feet. It has three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs and a basement with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a large family room.

A few of the 26 students in Dodge City Community College’s Building Construction Technology Program help build a house on the eastern edge of town. Officials celebrated the house at a hamburger feed in May. Since 1969, a

The house will sell for around $365,000, says Kris Moore, who teaches the high school program.

Students get 18 hours of dual college credit and obtain industry certifications in the program.

“A lot of our students are building schools, hospitals, major commercial projects, and they’re overseeing those projects,” Moore says. He added that some former students have started their own drywall business, while others work for companies such as Hutton construction and Crossland Construction Co.

“I had one student call one day during Dodge City Days and he goes, ‘Hey, I just want to thank you. I’m building multimillion-dollar hunting lodges in Big Sky, Montana.’ And I was blown away,” Moore says.

There are between 50 and 60 students in his program each year. For electrical and plumbing work, Moore says the program relies on contractors, but his students assist those contractors.

“Out of 189 days, my students are probably in their (classroom) seats 20 of those days,” Moore says.

The newest house high school students have built is in Rolling Hills Estates, a development a few miles north of Dodge City. And Moore says there’s exciting news to come: For the next five years, high school students will build a house each year at the site of Dodge City Public Schools’ old administration building, which is the 1000 block of North Second Avenue. The building, which was originally built in 1914, was torn down in 2020.

“We’re going to build a smaller scale home,” Moore says. “We’re actually moving into town, so that’ll be different for everybody.”

Moore, a licensed contractor, says he enjoys teaching because he gets to see students excel and find their passion in life.

“I want them to define their dream job. I want them to research that. And then we’re going to be realistic on what it takes to get that career and go pursue it,” Moore says. “With my students, they’re out doing big things – things that I’ve never even imagined.”

similiar high school program has constructed more than 50 houses. Photo by Lance Ziesch

Photo by Lance Ziesch

DISCUSSION GUIDE

What systemic pressures might be at play with the student workers in programs like these?

- By Jennyfer Lopez

Dodge City Community College and the Community Housing Association of Dodge City held an open house and hamburger feed in May to mark the completion of their latest project, at 1306 Military Ave. (Shown under construction on Page 80.) The crew, faculty and officials that gathered that day (left to right): Loren Coval, DC3 building/construction technology assistant; Isaac Hernandez Gonzalez, dual-credit high school student from Cimarron; Josue Gallegos, dual-credit high school student from Dodge City; Trevor Taghon, DC3 freshman from Rockford, Michigan; Evan Pyle, DC3 freshman from Dodge City; Esaid Mendez, DC3 freshman from Dodge City; Aldo Aguero, DC3 sophomore from Dodge City; Connor Benton, DC3 sophomore from Cimarron; David Ethan Hamilton, DC3 sophomore from Dodge City; Shawn Goodwin, DC3 sophomore from Dodge City; Koa Nolte, DC3 sophomore from Dodge City; Dr. Harold Nolte, DC3 president; Mollea Wainscott, assistant director, Dodge City/Ford County Development Corp.; Dylan Wainscott, dual-credit high school student from Dodge City; and Patrick Shiew, DC3 professor of building/construction technology. Photo by Lance Ziesch

In a quest to narrow the gap between the cost of housing and what people can afford to spend (and in the process reduce energy use), Michael Gibson, an associate professor of architecture at Kansas State University, has been focusing on the design and construction of relatively inexpensive net-zero-energy homes.

BUILD A HOUSE

A UNIVERSITY DESIGN STUDIO PILOTS HIGH-PERFORMANCE HOUSING TO REDUCE COSTS AND MITIGATE GLOBAL WARMING.

BY TIMOTHY A. SCHULER

Photo by Jeff Tuttle

In the race to lessen the effects of climate change, experts often talk about the conservation of Earth’s forests or about new battery technologies to power electric cars. A less-talked-about strategy is housing. And yet, in the U.S., our homes are responsible for 20% of the nation’s energy consumption, at an average annual cost of $2,200 per household.

“Especially in the last couple years, everything’s gone up in price,” including electricity, notes Ryan Russell, the executive director of Stafford County Economic Development, which, among other things, develops affordable housing in central Kansas. “People end up paying almost as much for their electrical bill in the wintertime as they pay for rent.”

hundred a month could be child care. Or maybe that’s the thing that takes enough pressure off that someone doesn’t have to work a second job,” Gibson says.

The residences Gibson and his students design as part of K-State’s Net Positive Studio are not cookie-cutter, but they all follow the same basic principles. The first is that there is such a thing as too much house. “In 1976, the average size of U.S. homes was 1,590 square feet,” Gibson says. “In 2016, it was 2,422 square feet.” That’s an extra half of a house for every home built in the U.S., which affects both the base price of the home and how expensive it is to heat and cool.

“So just getting rid of the bloat in the house is the first priority,” Gibson explains. The students also maximize daylight to reduce the need for artificial lighting and to enhance a feeling of spaciousness, and super-insulated prefabricated panels make up the walls and roof.

Josh Brewer, the executive director of the Manhattan Area Habitat for Humanity, has partnered with Gibson and his students on two

houses in Ogden, a town of about 1,600 between Junction City and Manhattan. Until recently, he says he hadn’t considered the social justice implications of energy efficiency in housing. “Before we met Michael, we had never really thought about framing housing affordability as an energy equity issue,” Brewer says. “His studio’s focus on energy efficiency really changed how we look at some of the drivers of housing burden.”

Gibson’s partners are now testing just how replicable the student-built houses are. Stafford County Economic Development this year completed 10 houses modeled on the prototype in St. John. They lack the solar panels but feature the passive strategies.

According to Brewer, the approach of Gibson’s students is what is needed in times of deep economic challenges and environmental turbulence. “We’re going to have to rethink every system – food systems, transportation systems, but especially shelter systems,” Brewer says. “What Michael is doing is a leadership practice that is producing real results and impacting people for generations.”

DISCUSSION GUIDE

For the past six years, Gibson has run a design studio at K-State focusing on the design and construction of affordable net-zero-energy housing. In partnership with various nonprofits and construction training programs, Gibson and his students have built 11 houses so far, including a three-bedroom, two-bath house in St. John with Stafford County Economic Development.

Completed in 2020, that house cost just $91,803 to build and yet uses 64% less energy than a similarly sized house, according to energy models. With electricity provided by rooftop solar panels, the home’s electricity costs are estimated at zero dollars per month. “That extra two or three or four

For Michael Gibson, an associate professor of architecture at Kansas State University, the widening gap between the cost of housing and what people can afford, coupled with a home’s intensive energy use, makes housing “one of the major problems of our generation,” as well as a prime target for innovation, both as a means of increasing access to shelter and addressing global warming.

1. How might universities or similar institutions contribute to advancing sustainable housing solutions in your local community? Which key stakeholders would need to participate in this effort?

2. What challenges might individuals or groups need to overcome to scale this initiative?

- By Dani Gains

Michael Gibson is the founder of the Net Positive Studio, whose credo has been put this way by one of his admirers: “Lessening environmental impact is not enough. Sustainable actions should have a positive social and environmental impact too.” Here, he and his son, Elliott, move panels salvaged from an old building to be transported to Habitat for Humanity. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

The Manhattan Area Habitat for Humanity partnered with Michael Gibson and his students on two houses in Ogden, in Riley County. Habitat’s Josh Brewer says, “His studio’s focus on energy efficiency really changed how we look at some of the drivers of the housing burden.” Photo by Jeff Tuttle

WICHITA VOICES FROM

A 56-year Millair resident and president of its neighborhood association, Bennett was one of those opposing the opening of a temporary winter shelter in northeast Wichita.

At a November City Council meeting, Millair residents criticized the city’s decision to place the

shelter in a residential neighborhood, expressing concerns about cleanliness and safety. Past winter shelters were located in Midtown. Residents were also angry that a predominantly Black neighborhood was being forced to take in another disadvantaged population – the homeless.

Bennett claims that Millair residents noticed more trash and nuisances such as public defecation and urination around the shelter, complaints validated in part by a city council member but difficult to document. She also took issue with the shelter’s no-barrier system, saying that allowing anyone to seek shelter meant that people suffering with severe mental illness could be just down the street from a child care center and the Boys and Girls

Club of South Central Kansas, located nearby on Opportunity Drive.

“They didn’t screen anybody, so that was a concern for us,” Bennett says. “I think we need to think of the safety of our residents.”

She notes that homeless people were dissatisfied with the situation too, citing complaints about their treatment while in the shelter.

Millair residents opposed the winter shelter, in part because they are weary of putting up with additional stressors beyond what they’ve accumulated. Living near homeless residents was not new. Bennett points out that the area already hosts Union Rescue Mission, a privately-run men’s only homeless shelter and service tucked alongside Glen Dey Park. Stays at the shelter usually run for only 30 days.

If clients leave the shelter without housing set up, they tend to stay in the area by either living at the park or sleeping at bus stops, she says.

“So to have to deal with both of them at the same time was kind of a challenge,” Bennett says.

Wichita’s next winter shelter, part of a complex called a Multi-Agency Center, is slated to be located in a recently closed elementary school in Midtown. Millair will still coexist with a nearby homeless shelter, but Bennett says the dynamic between Union Rescue Mission and the surrounding neighborhood is peaceful after years of work.

If there are issues, she says, there’s an established line of communication. There’s trust between community leaders like herself and service providers like Union Rescue Mission.

-STEFANIA LUGLI, REPORTER FOR THE

JOURNAL

FRANCISCO ENRIQUEZ: RISKS AND REWARDS TO BUYING A CITY-OWNED HOUSE

Armed with flashlights, the public can check out for themselves the boarded-up houses, one-time public housing units, that the City of Wichita is selling. Totaling 352 units in all, it’s been a two-year process to get them to new owners, and out of the city’s hands.

But as one buyer, Francisco Enriquez, learned, there can be more to renovating one of these houses than can be recognized at first glance.

He knew the opportunity came with risks. The condition of the house was less than perfect.

“Although visually, there were some items that needed to be addressed, at the time it didn’t seem that it needed too much work,” he says. “But once we got in here, it was a different story.”

Enriquez, a Wichita native with a background in sales and construction, took the opportunity to buy a house below market price. Now after months of work and a few unexpected setbacks, he’s ready to sell.

AUJANAE BENNETT: COEXISTING WITH HOMELESS SERVICES

Aujanae Bennett, president of the Northeast Millair Neighborhood Association, brings the kind of advocacy to an issue that makes people listen. Photo by Jeff Tuttle

Francisco Enriquez, owner of 360 Construction, is a familiar face in Wichita. It began with his stint as president of the Wichita State Hispanic American Leadership Organization. Photo by Selena Favela

Enriquez grew up with a father who worked in construction, as a subcontractor. He remembered times when his father would finish a job, but not get paid. Enriquez looked up to his dad, but it was frustrating seeing him get ripped off.

When he started his own company, 360 construction, in 2014, Enriquez wanted things to be different.

“The goal was to protect the workers,” he says.

Despite some setbacks, Enriquez and the roughly 30 subcontractors he employed throughout the process finished their renovations in April.

Up next on the list is to buy an AC unit because the house, while sitting empty before Enriquez bought it, had its unit stolen.

Enriquez said he’s hoping to sell the house, and get enough for it to make all that work worth it. He said he’s not just in it for the money, though.

BILL VANN: MINISTER TURNED INVESTOR-OWNER OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

As senior pastor at Northeast Wichita’s Iasis Christian Center, William “Bill” Vann says he is first and foremost a pastor, having served in the ministry for 34 years, the last two decades at Iasis.

But he is also a sought-after speaker, teacher and advocate for his entire community, where his role as a businessman extends his ministry beyond the church.

Since he sold a chrome-plating business in 2009, he’s become involved in helping solve a growing community problem – deteriorating housing. Vann buys rundown houses, predominantly in ZIP code 67214, the city’s poorest and most distressed area, and rehabs them.

So far he has rehabbed about 40 homes. While most of them he still holds as rental properties, about a handful of them he’s sold to some of his solid tenants, whom he believed in. For them, he carries the mortgage.

It’s a model that helped him buy a home 36 years ago.

To keep his rents low, Vann said he tries everything in his power to keep costs down. Many of the homes he works on have the hardwood floors that were popular when they were built in the 1950s, and he restores those when possible.

“I don’t put in granite countertops and high-end appliances,” he said. “I save a dime every place I can to keep the price down and still offer a nice home – something you are proud to invite your friends into, but something affordable.”

-P.J. GRIEKSPOOR, THE COMMUNITY VOICE

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. What leadership challenges do you think journalists experience when they work together in a collaborative? Are there any challenges that you see as being unique to their contexts?

On top of repairing the roof and ceilings and replacing the broken window, they refinished the original wood floors, replaced other flooring, redid the bathroom completely, made the kitchen larger and added a bedroom.

He says he tries to buy a vacant property for $15,000 to $20,000 and put an equivalent amount into it. That makes a sale for $40,000 to $60,000 profitable for him. And it also means he can offer a house for rent at a lower price.

“There’s a need for those lower-priced homes. There are people who are just never going to be in a position to pay $100,000 to $150,000 for a house. But half that is within reach for a lot more people.”

2. What role should journalists be playing in helping us understand our housing challenges??

3. What would we see happening if they were playing their roles well?

- By Chris Green

“The housing market has gone extremely high and sometimes unreachable for many people,” Enriquez said. “So the opportunity that (the city is) providing for people like me to come in and revive these and provide affordable housing; it’s a wonderful incentive.”

–AINSLEY SMYTH, INTERN FOR THE WICHITA JOURNALISM COLLABORATIVE

In addition, he’s able to keep the rent on his properties well below Wichita market rate and a rate that keeps them at or below the standard ceiling of 30% of a household’s income.

The Rev. Bill Vann was able to buy his first home because the seller was willing to carry the mortgage. That arrangement made a lasting impression, and he’s been paying it forward since.

Photo by Julian Montes

MAKING PROPERTIES

BY: LOREN AMELUNKE

WICHITA PROPERTY OWNER KEEPS RENT AFFORDABLE, BUILDS RELATIONSHIPS WITH TENANTS.

Yes, this is the same room in one of Mike

rehab projects, before and after he applied some sweat, money and construction expertise.

Livable

Heldstab’s

Photo by Selena Favela

COSTS FOR TENANTS HAVE SKYROCKETED, SO PROPERTY OWNERS MUST BE PROFITING OFF OF RISING RENTAL PRICES, RIGHT? NOT ALWAYS.

Wichita’s Mike Heldstab is an example of a real estate investor who doesn’t merely flip houses to make his profits and rent prices skyrocket. He buys and rehabs damaged and poorly maintained homes that an average buyer may not be able to buy and fix themselves, then rents them at affordable rates.

In the process of rehabbing houses, Heldstab is contributing to the supply of livable housing in the area. Homebuilding collapsed following the Great Recession and never returned to previous peaks.

The investing game doesn’t come without risks, though.

“For a lot of us, like myself, the margin of profit is lower now than it was five years ago,” he says.

A Redfin report found that in March 2023, approximately one in seven homes sold for less than what the investor paid for it.

Still, Heldstab doesn’t raise rents, “probably even as much as I should,” he adds. That’s why a number of his tenants have been with him for over a decade.

“It’s tough for anyone to be able to afford those things (costs for tenants) when their incomes maybe haven’t gone up,” he says.

Heldstab says if each neighborhood were analyzed according to average rent prices, “I would bet that almost every one of them (his properties) is double-digit percentage below market rents.” He has invested in about 100 properties since he began in 2013, nearly a year after graduating from Kansas State University.

“I thought I could figure it out because I’d seen all the TV shows about how easy it is to flip a house –and I learned that it’s not that easy,” Heldstab says.

He spent lots of hours doing the work himself. At the time, after his day job ended, he would work until midnight every night on a house – a schedule that remained like that for four or five years.

One property took ten months to finish. It was a firedamaged duplex that needed extensive attention.

That property posed a big challenge, but navigating the housing market during COVID-19 – especially the pandemic’s first several months –required even greater thought and skill. The pace of the market ramped up so rapidly that it began to feed on itself.

“We saw a very low supply of houses and lots of demand, and then it was a little bit of a domino effect,” he says “People would see their neighbors selling their houses for way more money than they thought their house might be worth in their neighborhood. So it just kept going one after another, and then naturally, the price continued to go up higher and higher.”

For three months, Heldstab had to operate while only receiving half of some of his tenants’ rents.

“It was a little bit of a scary time, operating on less money each month than what your bills were,” he says.

That’s why when rental assistance checks landed in tenants’ mailboxes, it saved landlords like Heldstab.

“We understood – it was out of their control. There was no way of paying rent, so we worked with our tenants and put plans together,” he says.

Victoria Baca has been one of Heldstab’s tenants for four years. She says during the pandemic, Heldstab or his wife were willing to drop by and bring whatever they needed.

“He treats us just as if we’re his family,” she says.

According to Baca, Heldstab also sends out Christmas cards every year.

“Just little things that mean a lot – that we’re not just money going in his pocket every month.”

She says Heldstab keeps his word on getting stuff done. “All I have to do is send a text to him when something goes wrong,” she says.

Once, Heldstab eliminated a decade-long tenant’s rent for a few months after they had a death in the family, and he worked with the community to support the family’s funeral costs.

“It just makes it much different when you’re not, you know, the guy pulling up only when it’s time to collect rent,” Heldstab says.

DISCUSSION GUIDE

1. How does Heldstab's approach challenge typical landlord stereotypes, and what are the potential long-term implications of this model?

2. How can property owners balance maintaining affordable rents with rising costs while keeping their businesses sustainable? What trade-offs might be involved?

3. How might Heldstab's flexible approach during crises impact landlord-tenant relationships, and what broader effects could this have on the community?

- By Dani Gains

Mike Heldstab is not your run-of-the-mill landlord. Some of his tenants have been with him more than 10 years. And he admits that the biggest percentage of his properties rent at below-market prices.

Photo by Selena Favela

Contemporary housing challenges have discriminatory roots

BY: MARK MCCORMICK

One of the more amazing stories from Wichita’s segregated past – briefly recounted in The Journal’s Spring edition – involved NAACP Branch President Chester Lewis’ clever purchase of a home.

Lewis, a nationally prominent African American lawyer, had white friends view homes along with Lewis’ wife, masquerading as the couple’s maid. The friends purchased the house, then deeded it to Lewis.

Still more white friends then sat on the porch at night, shotguns in their laps, protecting the home from people wanting to keep the neighborhood white.

Such attacks may live in the past, but housing remains a fairness barometer for our society. Where you live offers insights into wealth. It’s an indication of the kind of education your children will receive. It reflects your employment status and stability.

What’s lost on many is that intentional government policies of the past drove housing patterns that stand today as perhaps the nation’s best example of discrimination as theft.

Most people think our housing patterns were de facto, emerging from people’s individual preferences. But Richard Rothstein, in his awardwinning 2017 book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America,” says de jure segregation – racially explicit laws and ordinances – created these patterns.

“Racial discrimination in housing was not a project of southerners in the former slaveholding Confederacy,” he wrote. “It was a nationwide project of the federal government in the twentieth century.”

Individual racism played a role, he continued, “But it would have been considerably less effective had it not been embraced and reinforced by the government.”

Rothstein says, for example, that New Deal projects such as public housing explicitly excluded African Americans, who also were excluded from Federal Housing Authority (FHA) loans that literally subsidized white movement into new suburbs. Rothstein discussed the ways police and courts

enforced covenants that forbade the sale of homes in white neighborhoods to Black people and other minorities.

What did this mean broadly?

It meant that because schools are financed through property taxes, residents of wealthier communities have enjoyed better schools. It also meant that they could build enough wealth to send their advantaged children to college and help them purchase a home and continue this cycle.

It meant the opposite for African Americans.

Weaker and poorly funded schools invariably begat fewer opportunities. Far less wealth accrued, if any, to pass on to children for college and young-adult home buying. Worse, those redlined areas of the past are the very areas today with the greatest health disparities and concentrated disadvantages.

Rothstein contends this discrimination partially explains the current racial wealth gap.

According to Pew Research in 2021, the median wealth for white households was $250,400 but $27,100 for Black households.

The neighborhood Lewis integrated back in the 1960s is now predominantly Black. No one has to guard homes there from rock- or bomb-throwing bigots. The folks who once “protected” the area long ago moved to wealthier pastures.

That old neighborhood Lewis moved into has changed.

The forces that created it, however, have not. Mark McCormick previously served as editor of The Journal.