Lawrence city commissioners voted Tuesday to approve a study and 10-year plan to address housing issues in the city.
Consultants from Development Strategies have been working on the affordable housing study for the city since October. Justin Carney, principal with Development Strategies, presented the final study to the commission on Tuesday.
The study was intended to research and quantify Lawrence’s largest challenges when it comes to housing, and to identify goals, specific strategies and solutions to tangibly improve the situation.
Dani Walters, assistant director of planning and development, told commissioners that the strategies include “some things we have underway, some things we’ve had on our vision boards for a while, and some things are new and very exciting initiatives to undertake.”
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The top five goals the study identified are to unstick the market; make housing more accessible; improve housing conditions; dialogue around facts; and leverage city programs and policies.
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The study projected that the city will need 6,315 additional units — 2,920 for sale and 3,395 for rental — over the next 10 years.
More than half of the total units will need to be affordable for people with incomes lower than the area median income; about 29% of the demand will be for housing for people with high incomes, according to the study.
Here are tables of projected housing demand:
20260721-Affordable-housing-study-Demand-summaryFor the people suffering most from housing insecurity, that insecurity is compounded by fragmented support systems, Carney said. He emphasized finding ways to get the community partners to work together to meet those needs.
Carney also said that out-of-state corporations buying up houses to turn into rentals as investment properties and short-term rentals are affecting the market of older, smaller homes that may need repairs and that might be more affordable to, for instance, first-time homebuyers.
Carney called these types of homes naturally occurring affordable housing, or NOAH. In addition, some of those houses may be purchased and torn down to build a new, larger home or to be replaced with a duplex, which also hurts availability of housing.
Here are summary pages that list the strategies the study identified. Each one is broken down on its own page in the full report, which is available at this link.
20260721-Affordable-housing-study-StrategiesMayor Brad Finkeldei said that “there’s a lot of checkboxes to do in years one through three,” and he was a bit concerned about that. He said he was interested in looking into the strategies that would bring the most bang for the buck.
Lea Roselyn, affordable housing administrator for the city, told commissioners the next step to start implementing the plans would be to take the study and its data to the A Place for Everyone work group, the group who developed the joint city-county strategic plan to address homelessness. That group can help prioritize and put the strategies into action.
“We have great strategies that we can draw from and update and integrate that into the plan,” Roselyn said.
Almost a dozen members of the public spoke to the commission about the plan, and several said they thought the study and plan were well done.
Some public commenters suggested the city look into pre-manufactured or modular homes, which can be built faster and at a lower cost than stick-built homes. Others raised concerns about numbers of short-term rentals in the city that are not owner-occupied — a topic that was not included in the study.
Commissioner Amber Sellers said she liked the idea of modular housing, but it’s not a silver bullet. She suggested coming up with a matrix to determine what various types of housing could look like for various income levels.
“Unfortunately, our missing middle has been because there is no trickle down,” Sellers said. “It’s been missing, and it’s going to continue to be missing if we don’t change policies so that developers don’t feel like the only option they can create to make money is either single-family detached or high-density multifamily. That’s literally been housing policy.”
Commissioner Mike Dever said the city needs to be a place where people want to do business, and to focus on what land the city has and existing homes.
“I feel like if we’re going to start picking on Airbnbs, then why don’t we pick on all the other people who are renting out these homes?” he said. He suggested looking at how many homes are rentals versus owner-occupied, and trying to find owners who might be incentivized to move housing into “an affordable group of homes.”
Commissioners voted 5-0 to adopt the study and plan.
The commission’s adoption of the plan is not tied to any spending, nor does it fund any projects immediately. However, “as potential activities are undertaken in the 10-year plan that require resource allocation, those items will have an impact on a case-by-case basis and will go through the proper budget approval channels,” according to the city staff memo to the commission.
The city put out a request for proposals for the study in February 2025. Development Strategies responded with a proposal costing $99,850. The study is funded by the federal Community Development Block Grant CARES Act dollars that were allocated for the project, according to RFP documentation.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
More coverage of housing and homelessness:
August Rudisell/Lawrence Times
Jacob Rice / Lawrence Times
Jacob Rice / Lawrence Times
