This is something I feel strongly about. We have a lot of disillusioned young people who feel they can’t achieve the American Dream, and a major part of that dream is access to affordable housing. While we can’t control high interest rates, we can make progress here in Kansas City by eliminating unnecessary regulations that restrict the supply of new housing.
I believe Kansas City must take a different path.
We need to modernize our housing policies, remove needless barriers, and streamline the building process—just as the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City has urged through its “Let Builders Build” initiative. By adopting commonsense reforms, we can increase the supply of quality homes, make our city more affordable, and ensure Kansas City remains a place where families can plant roots and prosper.
This will not magically happen overnight but we need to be doing whatever we can. Building a house even with less regulations still has a high cost for land, materials and labor. We could go back to building a bunch of small 2 bedroom 1 bath starter houses like in the 1950s.
We need to incentivize builders to build starter homes, and consider deed restrictions that require owner occupancy for a certain number of years. This would also require working with lenders as deed restrictions can cause headaches there.
Right now even smaller homes are built with high end finishes (granite countertops, beautiful hardwoods, etc.). The larger the home and the nicer the fixtures, the more profit they can make. That’s one reason why a new 1500 sq ft slab is over $400k now. Restrict landlords/investment companies from scooping them all up and turning them into rentals.
That being said here is what we should not cut corners on
-Rules on minimum room size, lot size, and electrical capacity, which prevent them from building firetrap tenements with twenty people to a unit.
-Rules on infrastructure investment, which require the builder of a subdivision to fund the roads, sewers, and schools his development will demand.
-Rules on permit processing, so a trained and impartial expert can review plans and ensure no corners are cut in the pursuit of a corporation's profit.
-Rules on labor standards and craftsmanship, to ensure a builder doesn’t use unskilled teenagers and substandard parts to build a bathroom out of soda cans and a light fixture out of a blowtorch.
This isn’t about deregulation just to make a real estate developers fat. It’s about restoring balance: protecting public safety while eliminating the red tape that blocks opportunity. My commitment is simple—Kansas City should be a city where working families can afford to live, young people can build a future, and growth benefits the entire community, not just a select few