Whitney Leaming’s door is decked out for the holidays. Red tinsel garland borders the door, along with green ribbon trim, tiny snowflakes, a candy cane and a Christmas tree decoration.
Leaming had to go all-out with the decorations this year. For her and her two daughters, this holiday season is particularly special.
“Having a home at Christmas where you can decorate, that you can make memories and then you can start traditions — it is something that I have missed out on my whole life,” Leaming said. “Even me, growing up, I never had stable housing.”
Leaming and her family have lived at Amethyst Place, a Kansas City nonprofit that provides long-term housing and social services to families, since 2022. This year, her family moved into one of the new apartments on Amethyst Place’s expanded campus along Tracey Avenue.
Completed this year, Amethyst Place added 25 apartments and seven townhomes for women like Leaming who have experienced chronic homelessness and are seeking a safe, stable place to call home. The development received $1 million from Kansas City’s Housing Trust Fund, a program that provides grants to support the development of affordable housing.
So far, the Housing Trust Fund has allocated $39.7 million to dozens of housing projects around the city, adding an estimated 2,433 affordable units for people who need them most. But the money is running out, and Kansas City leaders don’t currently have a way to replenish it.
Michael Frisch, an urban planning professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said the federal government does not provide enough support for low-income housing.
“I'm very happy we have a trust fund, because in the current environment, it's one of the only ways we have to fund really affordable housing,” Frisch said.
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who sponsored the ordinance that created the fund, agrees.
“I don't think there's been a more successful municipal program with a greater impact on a high number of Kansas Citians than this one,” Lucas said.
Amethyst Place’s new campus was among the first trust fund-supported projects to open to the public. That impact can be seen immediately, in the common spaces filled to the brim with donated toys for all 140 kids living there.
But it’s also obvious in Leaming’s ability to relax and enjoy time with her daughters – no longer worrying about where they will safely sleep at night.
“Once that stuff is gone, then you're actually able to build a life, not just survive life,” Leaming said. “I think that's been the biggest thing ever, is actually getting out of survival mode.”
‘A promise to our community’
Kansas City Council first created the Housing Trust Fund in 2018, but the city didn’t put any money into the fund until 2021, when it allocated $12.5 million in federal COVID relief to jumpstart the program.
The next year, Kansas City voters approved a $50 million bond measure to give the fund a sustainable source. Since then, the Housing Trust Fund has received $12.5 million annually.
A board reviews project applications from developers and organizations, and then Kansas City Council gets final approval.
Most recently, this past September, council approved $8.5 million in Housing Trust Fund money to support eight new projects.
They include the development of affordable housing for seniors, the redevelopment of historic buildings downtown, and new housing for people with disabilities. Altogether, city data shows those projects will build and preserve 447 affordable housing units.
The city council also approved funding to support ongoing affordable housing projects, like using $12 million from the fund for the redevelopment of Parade Park. That $300 million development will add more than 1,100 new units to the site, which was previously one of the country’s oldest Black-owned housing co-ops.
At the groundbreaking ceremony in October, 3rd District-at-Large Council member Melissa Patterson Hazley said Parade Park’s story is one of resilience.
“This is more than a development,” she said. “It's restoration, it's renewal and it's a promise to our community.”
Despite its successes, the Housing Trust Fund may be near the end of its life – the money will run out at the end of next year.
The fund will receive its last $12.5 million allocation from the original bond at the end of 2026. Outside of that, the Housing Trust Fund has no other continuous, stable funding source.
Efforts to encourage developers seeking city incentives to pay into the fund have not been successful, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.
Lucas said he would support putting another bond before voters to replenish the fund.
“I think Kansas City should never turn its back on poor and working class Kansas Citians,” Lucas said. “We need to continue to have that commitment to housing. This is better for Kansas City long-term.”
‘This is my apartment’
Leaming’s application to live at Amethyst Place was approved in 2022, and she moved her family into one of the nonprofit’s fully furnished apartments at their main campus along 28th Street and Troost Avenue.
“The first few months, it wasn't real,” Leaming said. “It didn't seem real for a long time.”
Amethyst Place primarily serves single mothers and their children by providing long-term supportive housing and services to help them get back on their feet, like recovery from substance use, access to therapy, job and education assistance, and help to obtain important documents like a driver’s license. Amethyst Place also offers youth empowerment programs for kids.
Families living at Amethyst Place can essentially stay for as long as they need to. And through the nonprofit’s job assistance program, Leaming was able to join the Local Laborers 264 union that constructed the new campus.
“I did everything from the dirt work, foundation and the framing all the way up,” Leaming said. “The whole time I was here and they were doing all the framing, I was running around, signing my name everywhere, like, ‘Whitney was here,’ and, ‘This is my apartment.’”
Sarah Knopf-Amelung, director of strategy and growth at Amethyst Place, said that the Housing Trust Fund’s approval “helped validate” their expansion to outside funders as they worked to finance the project. Amethyst Place was also able to secure an additional $4 million from the city through a combination of other awards and grants – making Kansas City the single largest backer of the project.
“Particularly for a nonprofit owner and developer, you don't want to take out debt on the project if you don't have to,” Knopf-Amelung said. “So the Housing Trust Fund has been a really great source of funding to help spur projects that I think otherwise might not have gone through.”
Before the expansion, Amethyst Place had 37 housing units and a long waitlist. The addition of 32 new housing units and another campus means Amethyst Place can serve even more families.
Leaming is a testament to that impact. In her apartment, she and her daughters each get their own room for the first time.
She’s learning how to cook, and even made Thanksgiving dinner for her daughters this year.
“I have a job. They go to school, we come home,” Leaming said. “And we cook dinner, we eat dinner together. Just the whole routine has made our lives safe.”
