Overland Park is one step closer to fully implementing a “permit-ready” housing pilot program, a pillar in the city’s effort to encourage more diverse housing options in the future.
Earlier this month, the Overland Park City Council Community Development Committee voted 6-0 to recommend amending the city’s building codes with that effort in mind.
These changes would remove some steps in the approval process for single- and two-family homes smaller than 3,500 square feet. Overland Park would still require other administrative steps before such a housing project could be constructed.
“Housing, I think, is our number one community issue right now,” Council President Logan Heley said at the July 1 committee meeting. “This is going to help us have smaller housing products come onto the market that are more attainable to more folks.”
How will the “permit-ready” pilot work?
Under the pilot program, Overland Park would keep a collection of roughly two dozen pre-designed homes that are “permit-ready” — that is designs that are already reviewed and able to be fast-tracked through the planning process.
These designs would be available for any resident to use for free on any lot in the city that carries the corresponding residential zoning designation.
They would also emphasize more “cottage court” housing developments, which tend to be a little smaller in size, sit on a smaller lot and usually are organized around a common open space.
Planning and Development Services Director Leslie Karr previously told the Post that, once active, the pilot could simplify the process as a way to encourage this type of development. It could also open the market up to smaller developers or private citizens who do want to build this type of housing but might not have the money to get through the traditional permitting process.
“This is about creating a wider selection of housing options and focusing on supply,” Karr said last year. “[In Overland Park], we’re really good at building really big single-family houses and really big apartments, and so we’re trying to find a way to encourage people to do things that might be somewhere in the middle.”
Karr has stressed that the city isn’t using this pilot program as a way to sneak in accessory dwelling units or force higher density in single-family residential areas, topics that have prompted intense debate in neighboring cities.
“This is not about changing our single-family zoning,” Karr said last fall, nodding to housing debates that have, at times, roiled Prairie Village.
Looking back on Overland Park housing efforts
- The need for more housing diversity emerged as a theme during the city’s Forward OP strategic planning process back in 2018.
- Out of that, the city’s planning department started focusing on ways to encourage different types of housing stock.
- Housing choice variety was also a major theme in the recent Overland Park comprehensive planning process, called Framework OP.
- Additionally, beyond Overland Park, other Johnson County cities are exploring ways to encourage housing diversity in their communities.
Next steps:
- The ordinance amendment will go to the full Overland Park City Council this Monday for consideration.
- During the July Community Development Committee meeting, Karr indicated that future revisions will be required in Overland Park codes to implement the “permit-ready” housing pilot program.
- Those other changes include rescinding the city’s minimum dwelling unit size, amending some design standards and potentially establishing a new set of planning procedures for these cottage court developments.
- After that, the pilot is expected to run for three years initially.
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