As costs climb and supply shrinks, thousands of Kansas Citians are struggling to find affordable places to live. At the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Brent Never and students are partnering with local developer VanTrust Real Estate to map redevelopment opportunities and craft investment strategies to expand affordable housing across the metro.
The U.S. housing market is a paradox. Even in a buyer's market with , supply is low, demand is high and affordability is slipping. reports the country is short an estimated 3 million to 4 million homes, and the average mortgage payment now eats up more than a third of a typical buyer’s income.
“We need to think about an everything solution,” Never said. “Build big scale out in the suburbs. Build infill here in Kansas City. Build multifamily, build single family. Everything and above.”
“Affordable housing is something we all feel when we have to pay our rent or our mortgage,” said Brent Never, associate professor of public affairs at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management and director of the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership. “But there's an official definition from the federal government. It's 30% of your income.”
For Kansas City, these national trends translate into very real challenges, where the region faces an estimated deficit of 64,000 affordable units and holds the in the country. responded with new initiatives including the Housing Gateway Program and expanded funding for emergency shelter and eviction prevention, but the scale of the challenge demands coordinated, research‑driven solutions.
Under Never’s direction, students analyzed redevelopment potential across the metro for VanTrust Real Estate, evaluating factors such as transit access, walkability, job proximity, neighborhood amenities and existing infrastructure.
“Everybody needs a home,” said Celeste Carlson (MBA ’25), who joined the project as a graduate student. “Everybody needs a place to live that is safe, well-maintained and has running water and heat.”
Carlson found more than 100,000 households are severely cost-burdened, spending over half their income on housing. While affordable housing is often framed as a wage issue, Never and Carlson argue that the true barriers are complex and deeply interconnected.
“Collaboration is going to absolutely be necessary,” Carlson said. “All entities that can should be working on addressing this issue.”
“We have zoning issues where we can't put in new housing,” Never said. “We have issues where we have a mismatch of where people work and where they live. If you think about the Panasonic plant in DeSoto, we really have to think about greenfield development out in the suburbs, and then we also have to think about developing here in town.”
Carlson added that demographic and market shifts are compounding those structural challenges.
“It is now typical for a family starting out to buy a home and grow into it, instead of buying a home and building on or adding on to fit as you grow,” Carlson said. “Retirees are staying in their homes longer. Housing stock is not becoming available, which drives up the price of homes that do become available.”
Never and his team of graduate students including Celeste Carlson, Wajeeha Gilani (B.A. ’23, MBA ’25) and Samar Rao (M.S. ’25) recommended top contenders for investment in affordable housing. With these recommendations, VanTrust Real Estate created a to put that investment in the Kansas City metro.
“We need to think about an everything solution,” Never said. “Build big scale out in the suburbs. Build infill here in Kansas City. Build multifamily, build single family. Everything and above.”
To get to this solution, Never and Carlson believe the answer lies in collaboration and new development.
“There's a lot of great examples of places where this housing would be a wonderful aspect of creating community but also creating economic development for these cities,” Never said. “We need to clear the decks from a zoning standpoint in order to have communities really move on this vision of housing for everybody.”
Carlson adds Kansas City’s vacant lots, former schools, underused hotels and abandoned churches could emerge as promising sites for adaptive reuse with the right partnerships and policy support.
“Collaboration is going to absolutely be necessary,” Carlson said. “All entities that can should be working on addressing this issue.”
As the project moves from analysis to action, Never says the work reflects 海角论坛’s mission as Kansas City’s only Carnegie Research 1 university.
“One of the best things about 海角论坛 is bringing students into the research process and then moving those research findings out into the community,” Never said. “Research to practice is what an urban public university does. Our region looks to us to have answers that are not only important but current.”
For Carlson, the experience has been both academically valuable and personally meaningful.
“Research like this helps me know who the players are in the city,” Carlson said. “When somebody has affordable housing, there is something that happens in their bodies that allows them to be better at being themselves. They have healthier lifestyles. They are not so stressed out. They can enjoy their kids, they can be better employees and better citizens.”
Together, the team hopes their work will help Kansas City move toward a future where safe, stable and affordable housing is within reach for every resident.