Committee hears housing developers, Habitat and analysts on RHID, MIH, tax credits and zoning reforms

Developers, state housing officials and nonprofit housing advocates addressed a Kansas special committee on October 24 about how state programs and local land-use rules affect housing supply and affordability.

Ross Vogel of Artland Housing Partners, Chris Colson of Ad Astra Development and Derek Lee described how local projects used Kansas programs — the Reinvestment Housing Incentive District (RHID), the Moderate Income Housing (MIH) grant program and the Kansas Housing Investor Tax Credit (KHITC) — to lower lot costs and create attainable homes for first-time buyers.

Colson described a Spring Hill project that combined an RHID with a state transportation grant to finance an off-site collector road that unlocked hundreds of acres for development. He said the RHID’s “pay-as-you-go” design — where developers fund infrastructure and receive reimbursement from incremental future taxes — shifted risk to private developers while keeping special-assessment bills off new homeowners’ taxes.

Derek Lee described Stockholm Estates in Lindsborg (the transcript used a different town name in the presentation) where RHID and MIH supported townhomes priced between $199,000 and $225,000. He said MIH standards require high efficiency and accessibility features, and credited the programs with reversing population decline and increasing school enrollments in small towns where new housing had been lacking.

Developers asked the committee to consider tweaks to RHID to make it easier for small projects and for counties and cities to work together. Several speakers said RHID applications and legal steps can be expensive for very small subdivisions, and urged the committee to explore streamlining for small towns.

Katie Killen of Habitat Kansas described the nonprofit network’s work on homeownership, home preservation and a pilot project using the state’s abandoned-housing statutes in Leavenworth. She urged tools to preserve affordability, such as community land trusts that separate ownership of land from ownership of the dwelling so the land’s subsidy is stewarded into the future.

Ed Pinto of the American Enterprise Institute presented data arguing that much of the shortage of starter housing stems from minimum-lot-size rules and zoning that favor larger single-family lots. AEI’s analysis for Kansas showed the median new single-family lot density was roughly four homes per acre (about 11,000 square feet per lot) and argued a regulatory shift toward smaller lots and more townhomes could increase annual housing production substantially while lowering prices for starter homes.

Other presenters and committee exchanges focused on implementation details: how KHITC credits are sold to banks, the competitive nature of MIH grants, and local concerns about tax increment capture and school-district impacts. Tony Kirsnick of Flint Hills Holdings and Jamie Sauter of the Kansas Association of REALTORS highlighted that the state affordable-housing tax credit program materially increased production between 2021 and 2024 and warned that funding cuts will reduce new units in 2026.

Why it matters: witnesses described a combination of supply-side reforms (zoning and lot rules), financing tools (RHID and revolving loan proposals), and targeted subsidy programs (MIH and KHITC) as complementary. Developers said RHID and grant pairing can unlock hard-to-build sites, while nonprofits emphasized stewardship models to preserve long-term affordability.

What’s next: committee members asked Legislative Research and Kansas Housing Resources Corporation staff for follow-up — including RHID process clarifications, examples of small-town use cases, and proposals to reduce upfront legal or engineering costs for small projects — so the committee can consider targeted statutory or administrative changes.

Ending: committee members signaled interest in a two-track study: (1) short-term measures that reduce administrative barriers and refine RHID application/approval for smaller projects; and (2) longer-term review of lot-size and zoning rules in selected jurisdictions.