KSHB 41 reporter Grant Stephens covers downtown Kansas City, Missouri. He also focuses on stories of consumer interest. Share your story idea with Grant.
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The Kansas City Land Bank will lay out its strategic plan Tuesday morning, which housing experts say could play a key role in addressing the city's affordable housing crisis.
The Land Bank owns around 3,500 parcels scattered across the city. With more people moving to Kansas City every day, the affordable housing gap is getting wider.
"We're down 64,000 affordable units," Joey Dominguez, director of Abundant Ground KC, said.
Dominguez works for a nonprofit that looks at unused land for affordable homes.
"There's a lot of momentum in Kansas City around housing," Blaine Proctor, Kansas City director of Housing & Community Development, said. "There's way more coming than has happened”
The thousands of empty parcels owned by the Land Bank could give that momentum a place to build.
Many of the properties are in chronically underinvested areas like KC's northeast.
Land ends up in the bank through tax foreclosure, abandonment, or donation.
However, many of these stoops to nowhere come with baggage. Grassy plots hide old demolished homes buried underneath, and unearthing that waste is expensive.
"Land bank has a huge responsibility with remediating some of the land that has some environmental issues," Dominguez said.
"It seems like it's a hurdle for not only them, but for developers that want to develop on that land," Dominguez said.
Overcoming this hurdle might take both public and private help.
"Dedicate some of this land, or not, most of it to affordable housing, somehow figuring out how to create restrictions on that land, incentivizing some projects," Dominguez said.
"I just think that we need to start connecting some dots better in Kansas City, so that way we can create future affordability," Dominguez said.
The Land Bank will present more about its strategic plan at a meeting Tuesday at 9 a.m.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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