Wichita denied state funding for affordable housing near new homeless shelter

By Celia Hack/KMUW

The city’s much-awaited multiagency center is meant to include a shelter for people experiencing homelessness as well as on-site and nearby long-term affordable housing.

The city of Wichita said it didn’t receive millions of dollars in tax credits that it would’ve used to build 175 affordable housing units for people moving out of homelessness.

The funding challenge may force Wichita to significantly reduce the number of affordable units it can build adjacent to an emergency homeless shelter the city is in the process of constructing.

The shelter – known as a multiagency center, or MAC – is located at the former Park Elementary school at Main and 9th Street. It will be staffed with a multitude of social services agencies.

The city had plans to build 50 affordable housing units on-site – specifically, permanent supportive housing units that include case management – and 125 affordable housing units a few blocks away, said Sally Stang, the city’s housing and community services director.

Without tax credits, the 125 affordable housing units are “not at all” a possibility, Stang said.

“We’re working right now to figure out Plan B, which is to try and get the permanent supportive housing built on the site of Park,” Stang said. “Trying to figure out a way to get that piece done without tax credits.”

The city has $5 million in COVID relief funds and $13 million from the proceeds of public housing sales that could be used for affordable housing construction.

Stang estimated the 175 units would have cost around $40 million. The city applied for about $26 million in low-income housing tax credits from the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation (KHRC) to build the new units.

“Disappointed, of course,” Stang said when asked how she felt. “You know, we have such a need for affordable units.”

Emily Sharp, a spokesperson with the KHRC, said Wichita wasn’t awarded funding because a privately-owned apartment complex near the city’s proposed units received tax credits last year. The agency has internal rules restricting the number of awards it can grant in one area within a two-year time period.

The city had requested a waiver for the rule, but KHRC did not grant it.

“We felt that it was important that we spread the credits across the state more evenly,” Sharp said.

Sharp pointed out that in 2023, the agency awarded tax credits to two projects that will bring more than 250 new units to Wichita.

The city would be eligible to re-apply for tax credits in October 2025, Sharp said.

This is not the first funding snafu the city has encountered in its quest to build the multi-agency center. Last January, Wichita and Sedgwick County lobbied the legislature to set aside $40 million to build homeless shelters across the state.

The city had hoped to receive $20 million from that fund for the MAC. But legislators left the 2024 session without taking action on the bill.


This article was republished here with the permission of: KMUW