Candidates agree Wyandotte County needs more affordable housing. They differ on solutions

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Affordable housing in Wyandotte County has become a central issue as commissioner candidates make their final pitches to voters ahead of Election Day next week.

Candidates in Tuesday’s local election for five seats on the Unified Government’s Board of Commissioners have suggested a range of ways to house more residents. Many of them support creating a fund like the one in Kansas City, Missouri, that would pay for new affordable housing projects; another recommended the county ban source of income discrimination, which would prohibit landlords from refusing to rent to tenants planning to pay with a housing voucher like Section 8.

The issue is critical in Wyandotte County, one of Kansas’ poorest regions that faces significant economic disparities. Earlier this year, the county estimated that more than 4,500 “highly-stabilized” affordable rental units were needed for low-income households.

Some candidates, including Tina Medina who is looking to unseat District 3 Commissioner Christian Ramirez, said the Unified Government should hire a grant writer dedicated to pursuing federal grants for Kansas City, Kansas’ eastern urban areas. That person, she said, could work alongside an urban planner the county administrator has talked about hiring.

“There are many (grants) just sitting there on the table,” Medina said Saturday at a forum put on by Wyandotte County Democrats.

Ramirez, who has served since 2020, countered that grants are one-time funding opportunities and said commissioners in the cash-strapped county must find long-term solutions. He urged bringing groups who work on affordable housing to the table and said he wanted to see an ordinance that would block landlords from turning down renters based on how they’d pay their rent, often referred to as source of income discrimination.

“You could have the perfect record, nothing against you,” Ramirez said, but “just because of where your income comes from they can say no.”

Evelyn Hill, who is running for the District 4 seat, said Wyandotte County needs a community development director focused on affordable housing. More than 4,000 residents can’t afford $650 for rent a month, she said, noting the urgency of the issue.

Hill’s opponent, Tarence Maddox, said the UG should set up a housing finance agency to seek federal funding as well as public and private partnerships. He pointed to California, where companies like Apple have pledged billions to combat the housing crisis.

At a forum hosted last month by Churches United for Justice, a coalition of 17 churches in Wyandotte County, each of the seven candidates who showed up said they would support an affordable housing trust fund to develop “historically redlined neighborhoods.” Similar housing funds, the churches said, operate in cities like Kansas City, Missouri, and Lawrence.

District 2 candidate Anna Cole, who called affordable housing one of the main reasons she is running, floated taking .4% of a fee that developers already pay and putting the extra money into such a fund.

“We got to get creative like that,” she said.

Responding to a questionnaire by the Beacon, a digital news outlet in Kansas City, Cole’s opponent, Bill Burns, called for decreasing housing costs by rehabbing current buildings before encouraging new development.

“Rent at new construction developments is unaffordable,” he wrote.

At the forum Saturday, District 6 candidate Steve Neal said the Unified Government should take a “stronger stance” on requiring more affordable housing units. As reported by the Kansas City Business Journal, he said he recently read that just five apartments of the 85 to 100 units proposed at the redevelopment of the former Reardon Convention Center are earmarked for lower-income residents.

Philip Lopez, who is running against Neal, encouraged teaching residents “good financial practices” so they don’t need to rely on government.

Questions were posed Saturday by Yvette Walker, The Star’s opinion editor. The candidates had fewer specific answers when Walker noted the county lacks a permanent homeless shelter and asked how they would combat homelessness, with some saying the UG should get experts and nonprofit organizations together to come up with solutions.

On any given night, hundreds of people in the Kansas City region are homeless, with one estimate putting that figure around 1,800.

Hill said not all houseless people are jobless, but instead can’t afford housing. She wants to see more than “bandaids” and commended Eden Village, which describes itself as a “tiny home community for the chronically homeless” that is set to open next spring.

Medina said about 20 years ago, she worked as a homeless case manager at a social service organization. Most people she helped were women who survived domestic violence or sexual abuse.

“We have to truly look at this from a holistic perspective,” she said.

The upcoming election will reshape the Board of Commissioners, Wyandotte County’s 11-person governing body that, among other things, sets policy and passes the county’s budget.

Voters can learn more about the candidates who responded to The Star’s vote guide here.