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Housing

KANSAS CITY, KANSAS

Still at a Crossroads, but with a New Focus

When I-70 came through the heart of downtown Kansas City, Kansas—through historic neighborhoods like Strawberry Hill and St. Benedict—the area earned the nickname “the Canyon,” as residents were displaced and apartment buildings demolished.

But in 1998 the Catholic diocese of Kansas City decided to take matters into its own hands, creating a community development corporation (CDC) called Catholic Housing of Wyandotte County (CHWC). New Victorian-style townhouses now occupy lots alongside stately turn-of-the-century homes of Strawberry Hill. The old commercial strip of North 6th Street has had a facelift. Prescott Park has been cleaned and rebuilt.

These are small but important steps toward the creation of a stable market. So are the CDCs’ credit counseling and lending programs, which give residents the chance to build wealth by investing in their homes. And now the City of Kansas City, Kansas, has chosen CHWC and City Vision Ministries, another faith-based CDC, to develop a large vacant parcel across from the city convention center—a much larger step toward helping the city achieve its economic development goals.

Neither CDC could have done it alone, though. All of these early steps have been based in public-private partnerships. The fledgling CDC created by the Catholic diocese grew and learned, thanks in part to technical assistance funded through HUD’s vital Section 4 program. For the last six years it has received grants and loans from the Kansas City Community Development Initiative, a group funded in part by Living Cities, after which it is modeled. The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) coordinates the Initiative’s largest community improvement program.

To attract buyers to the townhouses in Strawberry Hill, the City is offering a 95 percent tax rebate for the first ten years of ownership. CHWC’s biggest new housing endeavor—over 100 new homes in the St. Peters neighborhood—was made possible by a special $2 million federal appropriation obtained by Senator Sam Brownback.