Policy
A collection of policies designed by Dan Camino
The Housing & Economic Development Authority
The Housing & Economic Development Authority (HEDA) is a proposed municipal agency for Kansas City, Missouri, authorized under RSMo Chapter 99, that would function as the City's in-house real estate developer, property manager, and public construction authority. HEDA acquires existing occupied multifamily properties using HUD Section 108 seed financing, sets rents at fifty percent of comparable market rate, accepts Housing Choice Vouchers across its portfolio, and routes all revenue through a structured payment in lieu of taxes that makes every existing taxing jurisdiction whole before generating new surplus for the general fund. The authority operates three coordinated revenue streams, acquisition and rental, new construction demonstrated by the Valentine neighborhood master plan, and fee-for-service construction work for other public bodies and mission-aligned nonprofits, all governed by a 90% Operational Capacity Rule guaranteeing that at least ten percent of total authority revenue flows as net new municipal income in every fiscal year. Backed by a companion Underutilization & Vacancy Ordinance whose civil penalty revenue pledges to HEDA's master drawdown bond facility, the model scales from 513 initially acquired units to 6,513 units over twenty-five years, contributing a cumulative $623.5 million to the general fund while delivering permanently affordable housing with no annual rent escalation, Davis-Bacon prevailing wages on all construction, and architectural standards that treat public housing as a civic asset rather than a concession.
Underutilization/Vacancy Ordinance
The Underutilization & Vacancy Ordinance establishes a civil penalty framework that targets the roughly one-third of Kansas City's land area sitting in some form of vacancy or underutilization — 29,715 vacant parcels, including 9,377 privately-held vacant residential lots, 793 vacant commercial and industrial parcels, and 1,188 surface parking lots whose principal use is parking rather than supporting an active building. The ordinance creates a new Office of Vacancy and Underutilization within the Neighborhoods and Housing Services Department, expands the city's existing vacancy registration program to cover commercial properties and partially-vacant multi-unit buildings, and imposes annual civil penalties that escalate by 50 percentage points for each year a property remains in violation, capping at 5× the base property tax. Penalty revenue flows unrestricted to the city's general fund. The policy exists because vacancy is not a passive condition; every empty unit, every dark commercial floor, every speculator-held lot is a deliberate withholding of housing supply, tax base, and street life from the city, and the most direct way to change that calculation is to make withholding more expensive than putting the property to use.