My colleague David Stokes recently testified that housing in Kansas City and St. Louis is pretty affordable:
St. Louis was ranked as the fourth-most affordable housing market in the country in one survey, and Kansas City ranked 13th. Another study ranked St. Louis as the third and Kansas City as the 11th-most-affordable metro area out of 94 major metros internationally.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of things those cities—and all cities across Missouri—can do to keep costs low and encourage housing construction. The Housing Supply Accelerator Playbook, a collaborative effort by the American Planning Association (APA) and the National League of Cities (NLC), provides some solutions. It is designed to support local governments and community planners in developing effective strategies to increase the quantity and quality of housing.
Key recommendations (with some of my own thoughts) include:
Model Practices and Ordinances: The playbook provides detailed policies that support housing construction. These include zoning reforms, land use policies, and development regulations aimed at reducing barriers to development.
Innovative Financing Solutions: The playbook encourages public–private partnerships for using federal funds to finance housing projects. Any approach like this would need to be well defined and limited—too often we’ve seen these so-called public–private partnerships devolve into either crony capitalism or operate in a way that protects developers from market forces.
Regulatory Reform: Existing regulations impede housing development and drive up costs. The playbook recommends removing barriers through reforms such as streamlining permitting processes and revising outdated ordinances.
Collaboration and Partnership: The authors place a significant emphasis on the importance of collaboration among local governments, community planners, builders, financial institutions, and housing policy associations. Of course, collaborations should not undermine market forces.
Community Engagement: The playbook stresses the importance of engaging with community members to ensure that housing policies benefit all residents. As with financing, this can be a thorny issue. Community engagement should not be used to limit anyone’s property rights or blunt the market forces that spur innovation and bring prices down.
Kansas City and St. Louis do not have many of the housing challenges other cities have, thankfully. But where barriers exist, this report can help identify opportunities to improve housing policy.
