Editor’s note:
This story is the third of a four-part series about housing challenges in Johnson County. Read our first part introducing the county’s housing shortage here. Read our second part about costs for developers to build housing here.
Later this week, we’ll explore some small-scale solutions communities across Johnson County are working on.
The room was packed and hot, both in temperature and in palpable anger.
It was just a regular meeting of the Olathe Planning Commission in late 2024.
But on this agenda, a Michigan-based developer called Magnus Capital Partners LLC wanted to rezone a 14-acre property west of 161st Street and Mur-Len Road for mixed-use development featuring what was referred to as “workforce housing.”
The developer said the project, called HōM Flats, would be geared toward the young professional making between $50,000 and $85,000 annually, with 200 or so apartments proposed in all.
Roughly a dozen neighbors spoke in opposition to the project during the public hearing. The reasons they gave ran the gamut: Fears about traffic, crime, property values, the degradation of the views from their property, etc.
There was one common thread, though: HōM Flats wouldn’t be the right fit for the existing character of the neighborhood, one of the eight Golden Criteria based on a 1978 Kansas Supreme Court ruling.
At one point during the Olathe meeting, one speaker asked people to stand up if they thought the HōM Flats plan was “inappropriate” for the area. Nearly everyone sitting in the audience rose to their feet.
The scene at this planning commission meeting, and the animosity it raised, has played out time and time again in similar meetings across Johnson County. It’s proven to be a more apparent force that plays a role in an inability to address housing shortages, one touched on in the 2021 county housing study.
That tension echoes in several debates about what types of housing belong where. At times, the force of neighborhood opposition has stalled or completely killed housing projects altogether, harming efforts to address Johnson County’s housing shortage.
In the previous story in this series of stories on housing, the Post looked in depth at some of the less visible forces hindering new housing projects. This story focuses on something that is much more prominent and in the news more regularly in Johnson County: NIMBYism.
Neighbor opposition can be a big barrier
Housing projects frequently face pushback from neighboring homeowners. Often called NIMBY, an acronym that stands for “Not in My Back Yard,” the phenomenon can delay residential developments, prompt cities to reject them, or lead developers to abandon them altogether.
The 2021 housing study from United Community Services of Johnson County identified NIMBY attitudes as a factor in the city approval process that can contribute to a housing project’s failure.
NIMBYism most commonly appears in rezoning decisions, a process through which a property is moved from one land use designation to another at the request of a landowner or prospective developer.
During that process, applications and associated site plans go to the planning commission of the city in which the property is located, triggering a public hearing. Before that, property owners within a certain distance, typically 200 feet, of the project must be notified of the rezoning request and the date of the hearing.
Neighbors, particularly on projects that involve denser housing development or a stark change in land use, tend to come out in large numbers against projects. Some submit protest petitions that eventually raise the approval threshold when the application goes to the city council for final consideration.
Pete Heaven, a real estate attorney who previously worked as the city attorney of Merriam, said the process has become something of a “three-legged stool,” with developers, cities and neighbors weighing in to varying degrees on these decisions.
“It’s important for all three to work together to come up with a good product,” he said, though he warned that putting too much emphasis on one leg — particularly the neighbors — can upset the balance.
Travis Schram, from Overland Park-based GRATA Development, called neighbor opposition “one of the biggest hurdles” to developing some housing projects. That’s in part because developers sink a large amount of money into a project on things like designs, land costs and attorney fees before it even comes to a planning commission or city council; a financial risk they’re not willing to take if they don’t feel a project is a safe bet.
“You don’t want to go, kind of take one of these things on, unless you think you’re going to get it approved,” he said. “If you’re not confident that it’s going to get done [or] at least have a good chance of getting done, you just don’t take it on.”
“NIMBY” has stifled housing talks and scuttled projects in the past
In the few years since the housing study, the NIMBY attitude persists as neighbors continue to voice concerns about crime, safety and privacy, among other things. In fact, in some cities, opponents to new development have become more hardline.
In Prairie Village, after the housing study came out, the city mulled ideas like allowing detached guest houses or granny flats on single-family home lots. However, talks devolved into a fiery and at times exceedingly personal debate laced with misinformation about the original intent of the process.
City Administrator Wes Jordan said the goal was originally to make it easier for individuals who are considered “working class” but are integral to the operation of a community — firefighters, teachers, etc. — to find a place to live in Prairie Village.
Eventually, those efforts to formulate solutions in the city came to a halt when a group of homeowners mobilized against it because they saw it as a threat to their vision of Prairie Village as a bedroom community made up primarily of single-family home neighborhoods.
Many of those homeowners worried that tweaking the city’s zoning codes to allow for more types of housing would be a “disaster.”
“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,” said Lee Larson, a resident.
The pushback against the housing recommendations in Prairie Village sowed discord, including an attempt to remake the city council and multiple unsuccessful tries to recall the mayor.
To date, no significant change to residential zoning standards has moved forward, and the city has moved away from the issue, though conflicts among elected officials and some community members persist to this day and heavily colored city council elections this year.
“I think it’s safe to say [city leaders] have moved away from it,” Jordan said of housing talks. He also said the city is no longer working on anything related to the findings of the housing study at this point.
Efforts to address housing in other Johnson County cities have faced roadblocks from neighbors, too.
In 2020, Sunflower Development Group proposed building a five-story apartment building at 5700 King St., formerly home to the Wonderscope Children’s Museum in an old elementary school near the heart of downtown Shawnee.
Despite the Shawnee Planning Commission’s unanimous support for the project, the Shawnee City Council voted it down amidst forceful opposition to the plan from nearby single-family homeowners.
The developer warned that if the project didn’t move forward, then a “blighted building” would sit untouched. Later, Sunflower submitted a pared-back plan with townhomes for the site, and the city council approved it, but it ultimately stalled. Since then, the old museum building has continued to deteriorate and remains vacant.
The city of Shawnee declined the Post’s request to speak to the city’s community development or planning officials for this story.
Putting a “math problem” through a “political process”
All of that pushback from residents can complicate the process, said Will Ruder, from the Kansas City-area Home Builders Association.
“We’re running a math problem, which is what housing is,” he said, “through a purely political process, and we’re confused as to why we’re getting a political outcome. The politics of housing are dominating the economics and the mathematics of housing.”
Adding governing bodies and neighbors to these decisions inherently makes it political, though, Heaven said.
“It has a political overtone, obviously, because the neighbors vote and developers don’t,” he said.
Schram agreed, noting specifically that neighborhood opposition can increase the cost of a project.
For starters, redesigning projects after the fact, he said, reapplying for them at the city level or using more of a lawyer’s time throughout all of that can add another $100,000 or so to the development costs before a shovel even hits the ground.
And in the end, those extra costs trickle down. If a developer ultimately makes it through the planning process, then it can make the end product more expensive. That higher price tag gets passed down to the renter or owner.
Or, Schram said, developers can decide to scuttle a project altogether, ultimately hampering efforts to boost housing supply.
“We need more supply, and finding builders that are willing to take the risk and build more product is going to be part of the solution,” he said.
“We do need to find a place it fits”
At that Olathe Planning Commission meeting last fall, the commissioners unanimously voted against the HōM Flats project, dealing it a significant blow. More than a year later, it has yet to make it to the Olathe City Council for final consideration.
Still, a couple of commissioners described what they saw as a “need” for this type of workforce housing.
“We do need more workforce housing,” Commissioner Chip Corcoran said. “We do need to find a place it fits.”
Juliana Garcia contributed reporting to this story.
Keep reading: In Johnson County, cost and land availability can be roadblocks to housing projects
