Prairie Village's housing conversation is headed into 2023 with a joint city council and planning commission work session in February. Photo credit Juliana Garcia.
Catch up quick: The planning commission and city council will meet in a joint session sometime early in 2023, in part, to gauge the council’s support for potentially using public tax incentives to encourage the development of more attainable “missing middle” housing, like townhomes and duplexes, in parts of the city.
Greg Wolf, planning commission chair, reemphasized his concerns on Tuesday about the price of land standing in the way of increasing the city’s stock of attainable housing.
City staff defined attainable housing on Tuesday as people spending less than 30% of their income on housing.
Driving the news: The planning commission on Tuesday discussed how “missing middle” housing — defined by the commission as small-scale buildings with single or multiple units — could be encouraged through the city’s zoning policy.
The discussion largely focused on the challenges of approving “missing middle” housing in multifamily, commercial and mixed-use zoning districts, not single-family zoned districts.
Wolf said “missing middle” housing might come through policy changes, but he also argued the building of more attainable housing won’t come without offering developers incentives.
That’s because acquiring the land in the first place, he said, is so expensive that the housing they build must be priced high enough to make a profit.
Prairie Village’s housing conversations continue into 2023 with a joint planning commission and city council work session. File photo.
Key quote: “Look at every major redevelopment we’ve seen since I’ve been on this board for 10 years,” Wolf said Tuesday. “The price points [for land] are incredible. You look at Homestead, you look at Meadowbrook. You’ve seen a couple of people redevelop basically the front of their property, build four or five houses, and they’re selling them for in excess of $900,000.”
Bottom line: The city remains a long way away from implementing any specific policies regarding housing, as some recommendations continue to face pushback.
Watch for yourself: The planning commission meeting is embedded below. Discussion of the housing recommendations begins at 31:46.
Upcoming: The joint work session is proposed to occur in early 2023, likely in February.
Additional public forums about the city’s housing recommendations are anticipated to happen in March or April of next year.
Two planning commission work sessions, one for recommendations and one to finalize recommendations, are anticipated for spring 2023 and late spring or early summer 2023.
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