The restoration of a century-old hotel, a shelter for families experiencing homelessness, and renovations to an affordable housing complex — these are just some of the projects that received money from Kansas City’s Housing Trust Fund this summer, after City Council approved $16.4 million to help fund 16 projects across the city.
The allocation is the largest round of funding the program has ever received, Mary Owens, deputy director for the city’s Housing and Community Development department, told Council members at a July meeting.
“The increased funding level allowed the board to support a broader range of housing projects while leveraging significant external investment,” Owens said.
The Housing Trust Fund was first established in 2018 to support the creation of affordable housing in a city that’s in desperate need of it. But the fund did not receive any money until 2021, when City Council allocated $12.5 million in pandemic relief money.
The next year, voters approved a $50 million bond measure as a more sustainable funding source, which allowed Kansas City to allocate $12.5 million to the fund annually.
“There’s currently a 64,000-unit shortage in affordable housing in Kansas City,” Blaine Proctor, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development, told Council in May, “and that is really made up of very low-income and extremely low-income households.”
This summer, the program got a new lifeline when voters authorized the city to sell $100 million in bonds to replenish the fund and support more affordable housing.
Without the cash infusion, the trust fund would have run out of money in 2027. Now though, the city plans to distribute $20 million every year for the next five years.
“Part of our conversation around the bond renewal and increasing capacity was like: Are there enough developers out there? Are there enough projects?” Katherine Nace, chair of the Housing Trust Fund board, said at a July City Council committee meeting. “I think this clearly demonstrates that there is.”
Providing much-needed affordable housing
More than half of this year’s batch of projects are in the city’s 3rd District, which encompasses neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue.
At Urban 38, an 80-unit affordable housing development off 71 Highway that received $800,000 from the Housing Trust Fund, all the units are available for people with a Section 8 housing voucher.
Emmet Pierson, president and CEO of Community Builders of Kansas City, which has overseen the project since 2005, said the money will go toward security, green space renovation and additional site work at some of the most-needed housing in Kansas City.
“This is all Section 8 housing, and so it is some of our most vulnerable population,” he said. “We are preserving a project that has been around probably since the ’50s.”
Pierson said it's the first time his nonprofit development organization has applied for and received Housing Trust Fund dollars.
“It allows us to do some of the things that we didn't have quite enough money to do, but the property still needed it,” he said. “It allowed us to do more for the residents than we would be able to do.”
The Housing Trust Fund board also awarded $1.6 million to the Belmont Hotel project. The 1912 building along Linwood Boulevard in Kansas City’s Hyde Park neighborhood has sat dormant since the 1980s.
Linwood Equity Investment LLC is part of the development team that plans to convert the crumbling building into apartments.
“Our main focus is restoring and bringing back the original life of the building, and making it a real positive for the community,” said Cait Benedict, who’s part of the development team.
“We’re trying to preserve as much as we can,” she said, “not changing anything.”
The Housing Trust Fund as a ‘critical’ source
In midtown Kansas City, along the spine of the streetcar line, the Housing Trust Fund board awarded $837,750 to support a new shelter for unhoused families.
Nonprofit homelessness services provider reStart opened the Family Lodge in July. The project involved repurposing a vacant hotel into furnished studios and one- to three-bedroom apartments that serve 45 families.
reStart CEO Stephanie Boyer said the Housing Trust Fund money was a crucial piece of the funding needed to complete the project.
“Having the housing trust fund dollars as part of that stack is a really incredible opportunity that we haven't always had here in Kansas City,” Boyer said. “Having it be available — not only to us but to others in the community, too — to get important housing projects done is critical to the preservation and creation of much-needed housing units.”
Last year, Boyer said, the nonprofit received calls from more than 700 families looking for housing.
“Living on the street or living in their car or living in a storage unit — living somewhere they should not be living,” Boyer said. “We were not able to serve them because of our capacity.”
Families staying at the Family Lodge have access to social services, a case manager, food pantry, employment services and education support. And the lodge has provided safety from sweltering heat.
Its location in the heart of midtown means they can also easily access public transportation, like the streetcar.
“We have a group of families that actually meet in the evening in the lobby, and they venture out just for a streetcar ride every evening with their kids as a group,” Boyer said. “Just getting to witness those moments of excitement and joy, and each one of those builds upon their hope for their future. So it's been pretty incredible.”
