Kansas’ Affordable Housing Tax Credit passed with bipartisan support in 2022, but it’s now on the chopping block after lawmakers voted to phase it out.
The program matches federal dollars with state money to incentivize developers to build below-market housing units that wouldn’t otherwise turn a profit.
With help from the credit, over 4,600 new affordable units are in the works as of February 2025, according to data from the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation.
Despite signs of progress digging the state out of a decades-deep housing hole, however, lawmakers scaled the credit back this year.
Republican Rep. Sean Tarwater wanted to eliminate the tax credit, not just roll it back as the Legislature settled on. The Johnson County lawmaker told colleagues the program was supposed to cost $25 million per year — but so far it had left Kansas on the hook for nearly $1 billion.
“Oopsy daisy, right?” he said during debate on the plan earlier this year.
THE CREDIT originally provided up to a $25 million per-year match to state funds, which would repeat annually for 10 years. This session, lawmakers revised that plan to provide only $8.8 million in new awards statewide through 2028 — and then stop issuing new credits completely.
Just like the original plan, this year’s bill to roll it back earned bipartisan support and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s signature.
But the policy change has homelessness researchers and advocates worried that the drought of affordable housing will keep thousands of Kansans from finding steady lodging.
Affordable housing and homelessness
There is no single cause of homelessness.
Access to educational opportunities, well-paying jobs, affordable health care and community support are just some of the factors that influence whether someone can find a place to live on a long-term basis.
But advocates, like Christina Ashie Guidry at United Community Services of Johnson County, say solutions to many of those issues are downstream of one thing: the availability of affordable housing.
“Do some families have additional needs that need to be addressed? Absolutely,” Guidry said.
But she said the biggest obstacle for many families remains finding a place they can afford to live.
“Unless we have enough housing supply, people who are experiencing homelessness now will take much longer on average to get housed and will be more likely again to fall back into homelessness,” she said.
KANSAS IS short over 100,000 units that are affordable for individuals earning half of the area median income, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition.
