In the Douglass-Sumner neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas, LISC is continuing its partnership with Community Housing of Wyandotte County (CHWC) to build two new single-family homes to help revitalize a historic neighborhood.
On the 700 block of Everett Avenue, two new homes are nearing completion and represent the latest efforts by CHWC and the Douglas-Sumner neighborhood to bring high-quality new homes to the community. LISC received a $1.2MM HUD appropriation for new housing in the Douglass-Sumner Neighborhood and since 2014 has partnered with CHWC to construct seven new houses in the neighborhood. These homes are revitalizing a neighborhood that previously hadn’t seen much new construction in recent years.
The new homes in Douglass-Sumner will be marketed to low- to moderate-income families. Safe, clean, and affordable housing is still difficult for many families to afford. The construction of these new homes will provide two families the opportunity of home ownership that didn’t exist before.
In 2007, Greater Kansas City LISC went through an extensive process that engaged neighborhood residents, the Unified Government and other stakeholders though a weeklong planning charrette for Douglass-Sumner. The charrette resulted in the development of a neighborhood-wide housing production plan to create new, infill homes to address the number of vacant and overgrown lots in the community. Since 2014, CHWC has succeeded in building five new homes in Douglas-Sumner, all of which sold and the program income from the homes returned to LISC. The homes are slated for completion by January 2020.
About CHWC:
CHWC is again serving as the general contractor for these two homes as they have for the five previous homes. Community Housing of Wyandotte County, Inc. (CHWC, Inc.) is a non-profit, community development corporation, whose mission is to stabilize, revitalize, and reinvest in Wyandotte County through improved housing and other related developments. CHWC focuses its programs in the urban core neighborhoods of Kansas City, Kansas/Wyandotte County. CHWC was created through the merger of Catholic Housing of Wyandotte County and Neighborhood Housing Services of Kansas City, Kansas. Jointly, these agencies have built and sold over 100 new single-family homes in the urban core of Kansas City, Kansas, and rehabbed over 50 existing homes in the neighborhoods of Prescott, St. Peters/Waterway, St. Joseph/St. Benedict, Bethany, Chelsea, Riverview, and Strawberry Hill.