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Prairie Village’s housing recommendations have split the city — How did we get here?

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Why did we write this story? Other Johnson County cities have yet to start attainable housing conversations in earnest, but some have openly shared concerns that approaching the topic may unravel quickly — a subtle nod to what’s happening in Prairie Village. 

When it comes to housing in Johnson County, all eyes are currently on Prairie Village.

The Kansas City suburb — one of the most affluent in the county — is at a crossroads about what role city government should play in addressing a lack of attainable housing stock in the city.

Over a period of months, Prairie Village went from scratching the surface of what it could realistically accomplish to being caught in a fierce debate about who belongs and what types of housing make sense for the landlocked city with very little undeveloped land remaining.

Last summer, after the county released its 2021 housing study that urged cities to take action to address the regional housing crisis, Prairie Village became the first city in Johnson County to bring tangible solutions to the table. But that process came to a screeching halt when a group of Prairie Village homeowners mobilized against the prospect of changes to how they believe their neighborhoods should look.

Since advancing recommendations in June 2022 to potentially carve out spaces for attainable housing options, meetings at city hall have become openly hostile, splitting Prairie Village into two camps.

One side says it wants to keep Prairie Village’s charm with predominantly single-family neighborhoods, while the other side has pushed to make room for higher-density housing within those neighborhoods that would effectively change the way Prairie Village looks today.

For more than a year now, city meetings have devolved into personal attacks, accusations that city leaders have ulterior motives, questions about Prairie Village’s transparency and pleas to leave the city’s single-family neighborhoods alone.

City leaders themselves have faced intense scrutiny. So far this year, residents have tried to recall Mayor Eric Mikkelson six separate times, and thousands more have signed petitions to effectively stop any rezoning changes in Prairie Village and remake city government.

Two months ago, the city filed a lawsuit, questioning the legality of those petitions.

A Johnson County judge sided with the city on the rezoning petition, deciding that it was not eligible to go on the ballot, but the resident group behind the petition has appealed the ruling. (The judge split on the two other governance-related petitions, ruling one could go on a future ballot, while the other was invalid.)

How exactly did this housing debate in Prairie Village unfold?

Here’s the Post’s timeline on how the city went from talking about attainable housing to fighting in court over the future of city hall.

Prairie Village sign
A Prairie Village sign. File photo.

A look at Prairie Village’s housing market

Sometimes referred to as “Perfect Village,” the city has long staked its reputation on outstanding schools, idyllic neighborhoods and high quality of life.

That reputation goes back decades. Former Kansas governor Robert Bennett called Prairie Village a representation of “the great life that Kansas has to offer” back in 1976, when the city celebrated its 25th anniversary.

Prairie Village is known for its Cape Cod-style homes built in the post-World War II era by the J.C. Nichols Company in the 1940s and 1950s.

Nichols himself named the city to reflect his vision for “a village on the prairie,” according to “Reflections: A History of Prairie Village,” a book published the same year Prairie Village turned 25.

But another of Nichols’ legacies also still impacts Prairie Village.

As he set about creating the first-ring suburb, he employed racist deed restrictions to keep Black and Jewish people from buying property in the city. The impact of those covenants — which the U.S. Supreme Court has long since deemed unenforceable — is still seen in the city’s population, which today is 92% white.

Those post-war homes Nichols built are aging, and Prairie Village is seeing a teardown-rebuild trend in which smaller homes are getting replaced with what some call “McMansions,” typically much larger homes with two-car garages and modern amenities.

For years, the city has witnessed how the teardown-rebuild trend has reduced its more attainable housing stock and resulted in newer, bigger homes that often go for $1 million or more.

At the same time, home values have skyrocketed across all of Prairie Village, demonstrating how the city remains a desirable place to live.

Last year, real estate website Zillow named Prairie Village as 2022’s “Most Popular City” in the nation with home listings in the city getting the most clicks of any community in the country.

In 2016, the average appraisal value for a Prairie Village home was about $245,000, according to county records. In 2023, that average had almost doubled to just under $500,000.

But the price homes are selling for is even higher. In 2022, the average sales price in Prairie Village was 25.8% higher than the average appraisal value, meaning homes now are routinely selling for $600,000 or more.

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Prairie Village tried to address the teardown-rebuild trend by developing neighborhood design guidelines within the past decade. But the so-called “McMansions” continue to appear and eat up the city’s remaining attainable housing stock.

The demolition of the city’s original housing stock is part of the reason why city leaders began a conversation over attainable housing in the first place.

But some residents fear the aspects of the community they’ve come to love — some for generations — is at stake.

Attainable housing talks date back to Village Vision 2.0

Prairie Village housing discussion will cover only single family districts.
A teardown-rebuild in Prairie Village. File photo.

In 2019, the city kicked off the planning process for Village Vision 2.0, a document that would guide the city’s land use for the next two decades.

Attainable housing quickly took center stage in development of the plan, after residents asked city leaders how they could ensure people at all income levels can afford to live in Prairie Village.

Findings from the countywide housing study validated residents’ concerns that they were getting priced out of the city. And while the study showed that the number of cost-burdened households was on the rise, so was pushback from single-family homeowners resisting apartments and other multifamily projects.

“Talking with a lot of individuals in our small group conversation, the barrier — I’ll just be blunt — has probably been more around the NIMBY [Not In My Backyard] issue and the issue of bringing a project to planning commission and council,” said Amy A. Haase, RDG Planning & Design principal-in-charge, at the 2020 Johnson County Human Services Summit where initial findings from the countywide study were shared.

“They have the ability to do it, but neighbors [are] very concerned about what that means,” Haase added.

Published a few months after the county housing study was released, Village Vision 2.0 called for a number of housing types to be tailored to different neighborhoods, including accessory dwelling units (also referred to as  “granny flats”) that could increase density in some parts of the city.

What is attainable housing? UCS of Johnson County defines attainable housing as “market rate housing for-sale that is unsubsidized, profitable and meets the needs of those with incomes between 80% and 120% of the area media income.” It is different from affordable housing, which “costs no more than 30% of a household’s monthly income,” according to the Housing For All Toolkit

As stipulated in the city’s comprehensive plan, these accessory dwelling units and other housing types, including rowhouses, duplexes and triplexes, intend to provide housing at a wider range of price points than what is currently available.

Some city leaders opposed including “accessory dwelling units” in the comprehensive plan, saying their constituents are more concerned with being priced out of their single-family homes and have no appetite for increased density.

“What they are saying is they’re struggling to afford staying here because of our increasing property tax values due to the developers pushing $900,000 homes and tearing down what was once considered affordable housing,” said Jori Nelson, then the Ward 1 councilmember, in 2020.

The city council ultimately adopted Village Vision 2.0 in January 2021, with attainable housing at its forefront.

The plan prioritized “quality public space, strong neighborhoods, viable commercial centers, sustainability (and) productivity,” according to the city’s website.

A sticking point for opponents of the Village Vision 2.0 plan still is that they believe the process was done in secret because the meetings took place during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when public participation was constrained by efforts to limit spread of the coronavirus.

Read the Post’s past coverage of Village Vision 2.0’s development:

Prairie Village ties racial diversity to housing talks

Mikkelson during a 2023 city council meeting. File photo.

During development of the comprehensive plan, city leaders also openly acknowledged that attainable housing and racial diversity go hand in hand.

“[Affordable housing] feeds into what I believe and I know our city council believes is another opportunity for Prairie Village. That is, increasing diversity in residents racially and in other ways,” Mikkelson said in September 2020. “The more diverse housing options you have, the more you can attract and retain diverse residents.”

In the months immediately following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, Mikkelson announced the creation of a diversity task force.

The city charged the diversity task force with finding ways to “attract and retain” people of color to live in Prairie Village. One diversity task force member was vocal early on about the need to take a look at attainable housing today, not just to focus on the legacy of the racist deed restrictions of the past.

“As a Black man who lives in the community and owns a home in the community, frankly, the last thing I’m worried about is that deed or that restriction,” Todd Harris said during a 2021 diversity committee meeting. “I’m more worried about affordable housing. The reason why more people who look like me don’t live in this community is because there’s no place affordable to live.”

In direct response to commentary from the diversity task force and findings from the countywide housing study, the city created an ad hoc housing committee in summer 2021.

Using the study’s findings as a guidepost, the housing committee explored ways to diversify the city’s housing stock and maintain existing attainable options. Chaired by Councilmember Ian Graves, the ad hoc housing committee met from September 2021 to April 2022.

Those ad hoc housing committee meetings, like most city committee meetings, were not livestreamed or recorded. Opponents of the housing committee’s work, in turn, have taken issue with the city’s lack of video documentation of the proceedings.

Read the Post’s past coverage of race and housing in Prairie Village: 

The housing recommendations are OK’d without incident

For those several months between mid-2021 and spring 2022, Prairie Village’s ad hoc housing committee worked on recommendations to address the lack of attainable housing in the city.

The original recommendations included three strategies, the first of which called for changes in zoning regulations to open up opportunities to develop attainable housing options in more districts within the city — including single-family neighborhoods, which make up at least 85% of Prairie Village’s total land.

That first recommendation, which has received the most pushback from Prairie Village homeowners, reads as follows:

“Amend the City’s zoning regulations to allow quality, attainable housing, especially missing middle housing by-right in more zoning districts.”

Per the first recommendation, the zoning regulations would consider, potentially, accessory dwelling units, courtyard patterns or multi-unit houses in single-family neighborhoods.

The city council unanimously advanced the housing recommendations in June 2022 with little fanfare.

By advancing the recommendations, Prairie Village was officially dipping its toe in the water of addressing attainable housing, but it didn’t mean the housing recommendations were now the law of the land. Rather, the city council gave city staff the green light to explore ways to see what of those recommendations was possible.

“Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Prairie Village, right,” said Graves at the June 21, 2022, city council meeting. “This isn’t something we’re going to fix this year, next year, it’s something we have to get ourselves on the right path and get moving in a good direction.

“This is kind of the first step to start a long series of conversations between us, planning commission, staff and the public,” he added.

The action taken on June 21 was to be followed by research, conversations with the Prairie Village Planning Commission and public input sessions.

But within a month, the city’s exploration of attainable housing stopped dead in its tracks due to mounting pushback from residents.

Read the Post’s past coverage of the housing recommendations: 

Initial resident pushback leads to grassroots movement

A Stop Rezoning Prairie Village yard sign. Photo credit Juliana Garcia.

Shortly after the city advanced the housing recommendations, yellow flyers popped up at Prairie Village’s annual Independence Day celebration, Village Fest 2022.

The housing recommendations never mentioned apartments as a potential option in single-family districts. Nonetheless, the flyers warned about the recommendations, declaring that the city council wanted to change the zoning regulations to allow for multifamily housing  — including apartments — in all the city’s wards.

The flyers rallied residents to oppose the city’s attainable housing efforts.

Residents showed up in droves to the next city council meeting on July 18. Some seemed to be under the impression that a specific zoning item was on the agenda that night, which was not the case.

The Village Fest 2022 yellow flyers. Photo courtesy Ian Graves.

A majority of those who showed up to that meeting voiced concerns about citywide zoning changes, increased density and multifamily housing next to single-family homes. They said they were scared that the Prairie Village they know and love would change.

“Now, the city council seems to want to change building codes to allow multi-family residences — that, in my opinion, would be a disaster,” resident Lee Larson said at the July 18 meeting. “The entire character that makes Prairie Village special would be destroyed. Traffic would increase, population density would increase, taxes would go up, schools would be affected, utilities, parking, flood control, all affected.”

The pushback to the housing recommendations quickly snowballed.

Residents have since shown up repeatedly to city council meetings over the past year, pleading with the city to protect single-family neighborhoods from substantive zoning changes.

“I picked Prairie Village because it is a quiet, safe, friendly place with good city services,” resident Lauren Fischer said at a city council meeting in February. “I do not want ADUs [accessory dwelling units] next to me with rentals, street parking, extra garbage, overcrowded schools and pets all over. I don’t want duplexes and multiplexes, I want single-family homes and that’s why I bought my house here.”

Residents eventually formed the group Stop Rezoning Prairie Village, also known as PV United, which, for the better part of the past year, has spent an hour or more at city council meetings passionately voicing their opposition to the housing recommendations.

The group’s pleas to leave single-family neighborhoods alone have, at times, turned into personal attacks against some city officials and councilmembers, accusations of ulterior motives and preconceived outcomes and questions about the city’s overall transparency.

“I’m disheartened by the recalcitrant attitude and frustration expressed by the mayor and councilmembers addressing residents’ questions and concerns,” former councilmember Sheila Myers said at the Sept. 6, 2022, city council meeting. “I’m disturbed by the city officials’ efforts to distort and misrepresent their own statements.”

City officials pushed back at times, and the city also created a website aimed at curbing what officials said was misinformation circulating about the housing recommendations. Since then, the Stop Rezoning PV group’s public accusations aimed at city leaders has only escalated and so have councilmembers’ rebuttals.

A countergroup, Prairie Village for All, came together in response to Stop Rezoning PV, though its members appear less frequently at public meetings.

Read the Post’s past coverage of Stop Rezoning PV: 

Prairie Village scales back the recommendations

In response to the pushback from Stop Rezoning PV, the Prairie Village City Council in October 2022 amended the housing recommendations by suggesting the planning commission exclude consideration of multifamily housing units like duplexes and apartments from single-family neighborhoods.

Later that same month, the planning commission concurred, saying the city should see if attainable housing efforts can be met in commercial, multifamily and mixed-use districts first — which make up a small fraction of the city as a whole — before exploring any changes to single-family neighborhoods.

Currently, the city is still officially excluding any consideration of multifamily housing units (such as duplexes) in single-family neighborhoods.

The only actions that the city has taken on the housing recommendations since they were first proposed in June 2022 has been in response to pushback from residents.

In February, the city council decided to take another step back by amending the housing recommendations a second time to take exclusive control over the single-family neighborhoods component. This means single-family districts are completely off the planning commission’s plate.

And in April, the city council decided to re-prioritize teardown-rebuild solutions and focus on researching short-term rentals in single-family neighborhoods.

Councilmember Ron Nelson addresses the Prairie Village petitions
Councilmember Ron Nelson. File photo.

“You drive down Tomahawk, you see huge houses, huge,” said Councilmember Ron Nelson at an April city council meeting. “Frankly, in my view, Olathe houses or south Johnson County houses next to a Prairie Village Cape Cod that, frankly, destroys both.”

The planning commission is still looking at attainable housing solutions but only as they pertain to some multifamily, commercial or mixed-use districts, which combined make up about 15% of Prairie Village’s zoned land.

The city also hosted two housing forums earlier this summer to gain feedback from residents.

Despite some of these concessions — particularly about leaving single-family neighborhoods alone for now — the Stop Rezoning PV group has kept pressing the city council.

For Stop Rezoning PV, the issue isn’t over because single-family housing districts are still included in the city’s housing recommendations.

Meanwhile, the group has galvanized thousands of opponents of the housing recommendations into signing petitions that seek to limit rezoning in single-family neighborhoods and remake Prairie Village city government.

Read the Post’s past coverage on amending the housing recommendations: 

Rezoning Prairie Village ballot
Stop Rezoning PV’s May 3 signing event at Porter Park. File photo.

Stop Rezoning turns attention to remaking city government

Stop Rezoning PV wants to maintain the status quo of Prairie Village neighborhoods. At the same time, group leaders have spent the past several months calling for major changes to city government itself.

Over the summer, the group drafted and circulated three petitions to try to put on the upcoming general election ballot in November. Alongside a “rezoning” petition were two others that aimed to remake Prairie Village’s city government.

“This is another route to raise awareness to say, ‘Hey, answer the questions,’” Stop Rezoning PV spokesperson Dan Schoepf told the Post at a signing event in May. “The reality is if it goes to a vote and I’m against it or if I’m for it and it loses — let the people decide.”

At the same time, three residents have also tried to get Mayor Mikkelson recalled, ultimately submitting six separate recall petitions in recent months that have all been rejected by the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office.

Meanwhile, the group collected thousands of signatures on each petition. Here’s what each of them seek:

  • A “rezoning” petition aimed to define rezoning and limit multifamily development in single-family neighborhoods. Rezoning is at the heart of the group’s concerns, though taking one zoning district and turning it into another has never been part of the housing recommendations language.
  • An “abandon” petition aimed to throw out the city’s current mayor-council form of government. The petition’s organizers have called the current form of government a “strong mayor” form of government and signaled an interest in paring back mayoral power.
  • An “adoption” petition included a provision to put a mayor-council-manager form of government in place. It includes language that would effectively throw out six councilmembers in the middle of their four-year terms. The petition states only the candidates elected this November would make up the new six-person city council.

At signing events, Stop Rezoning PV members have encouraged residents to vote for a slate of six candidates running for city council this year. In doing so, the group was effectively trying to remake the city council into a body of six newly elected representatives who all side with Stop Rezoning’s opposition to the housing recommendations.

During public participation, residents aligned with Stop Rezoning PV have called out councilmembers for comments they made on social media. Some have accosted Councilmember Inga Selders for suggesting that candidates Stop Rezoning PV endorses are “right-wing extremists.”

“Instead of the national divisive narratives others are running on in neighboring municipalities and school boards, (Stop Rezoning PV) found a local wedge issue they could latch on to and manipulate,” Selders wrote on her personal Facebook on June 1.

Since the signing events earlier this year, Stop Rezoning PV has officially endorsed six candidates running for city council.

Councilmember Cole Robinson
Councilmember Cole Robinson. File photo

“This is much more than a disagreement about housing policy,” Councilmember Cole Robinson wrote in a statement in June. “It’s an attempt to overtake an entire governing body and system. Instead of winning democratic elections, the leaders of this group are attempting to radically change our entire government.”

Stop Rezoning PV formally filed the petitions with Prairie Village and the Johnson County Election Office on Aug. 1.

Prairie Village and the election office went back and forth on taking responsibility for whether to validate the petitions for a ballot measure.

By mid-August, the city had filed a lawsuit challenging the petitions and seeking a Johnson County judge’s ruling on  whether the petitions pass legal muster to be placed on a ballot.

“This is a breakdown in representative government — and the very reason citizens’ initiatives are legal,” Schoepf wrote in a statement in August. “Let democracy work. Let the people vote.”

After three separate rulings — the first two of which directly contradicted one another — Judge Mason ultimately found the “abandon” petition to be the only one eligible for a ballot measure. The “rezoning” and “adoption” petitions are ineligible for a ballot measure.

Still, the “abandon” petition will not appear on Nov. 7 general election ballots because the legal proceedings took too long. Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman said on Sept. 8 that it was too late for his office to accept any new items for the general election.

“Due to logistics required to prepare ballots and the need to meet legally mandated deadlines, the Election Office is now past the point at which it can accept additional items for the November ballot,” Sherman said in his statement.

Stop Rezoning PV is seeking an appeal.

Read the Post’s past coverage of the Prairie Village petitions:

Where things stand

A Prairie Village city hall new construction build would feature a remade city council chambers.
Prairie Village City Council in June 2023. File photo.

As the political clash in Prairie Village has intensified in recent months, the housing recommendations have taken somewhat of a back seat.

Nonetheless, the housing recommendations are what started it all: resident pushback, Stop Rezoning PV and the calls for significant changes to Prairie Village’s city government.

Since earlier this year, the planning commission’s scope in reviewing the housing recommendations has refocused exclusively on developing strategies in all districts except those generally zoned for single-family neighborhoods and duplexes.

This means a vast majority of land in Prairie Village is off limits in the overall housing discussion, as the city turns its attention toward commercial and mixed-use districts and some multifamily, which make up about 15% of Prairie Village.

The city council clarified all of its prior actions in one fell swoop on Monday, Oct. 2, with a motion that specified what the city is and is not currently looking into as far as the housing recommendations go.

As outlined in that motion, the city is now only exploring the following:

  • Updating to neighborhood design guidelines in R1-B districts, which are single-family neighborhoods with smaller lot sizes
  • Developing of short-term rental property regulations
  • Refining multifamily district standards
  • Promoting varied housing options in commercial districts
  • “Establishing ‘missing middle’ building type standards” in mixed-use districts

Prairie Village is not exploring the following:

  • Loosening restrictions on accessory dwelling units in single-family neighborhoods
  • Modifying lot sizes in all zoning districts
  • Allowing “neighborhood-scale” housing types — such as courtyard pattern, multi-unit houses — in single-family districts

During a committee meeting that evening, the city council also directed staff to continue exploring updates to the neighborhood design guidelines that would restrict the size of homes as a way to address the ongoing teardown-rebuild trend.

The city plans to continue updating its neighborhood design guidelines and exploration of attainable housing options in non-single-family districts over the next several months.

To date, no zoning code changes have been crafted, presented or approved as a result of the housing recommendations.

Some councilmembers see the latest action this week as the first step toward healing the Prairie Village community after 16 months of strife, tension and division.

Read the Post’s most recent coverage on housing in Prairie Village:

Editor’s note: Prairie Village City Councilmember Greg Shelton is married to Post publisher Jay Senter’s sister.

About the author

Juliana Garcia
Juliana Garcia

👋 Hi! I’m Juliana Garcia, and I cover Prairie Village and northeast Johnson County for the Johnson County Post.

I grew up in Roeland Park and graduated from Shawnee Mission North before going on to the University of Kansas, where I wrote for the University Daily Kansan and earned my bachelor’s degree in  journalism. Prior to joining the Post in 2019, I worked as an intern at the Kansas City Business Journal.

Have a story idea or a comment about our coverage you’d like to share? Email me at juliana@johnsoncountypost.com.

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