People want to live in rural Kansas. They just need houses.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Katie Eisenhour has heard it all before: stories about withering economies killing small, rural Kansas communities.

Sure there are daunting challenges, says the Scott County Economic Development Committee executive director.

But her town has invested over $140 million, from church expansions to bond issues, over the past two decades to ensure that those local investments are far more secure than they might be elsewhere. The decision to thrive as a town is evident nearly everywhere you look, an energy spurred in part by Scott City’s designation as an All-American City by the National Civic League in 2011.

“We have learned to tell our story better,” she says. “When reports come out from economists (some at Wichita State University) that paint a damning future for the frontier communities in western Kansas, we stand up publicly and remind them that a small set of data points (basically births and deaths) cannot possibly find out a value for the passion of a community that has chosen to survive, if not thrive.”

Contrary to the prevailing narratives, there are communities across the plains of central and western Kansas where people desperately want to live, helping position those places to add population.

Remote work has opened possibilities for people looking for affordable housing and a different pace of life. Places such as Stafford County are seeing interest from manufacturers as it looks to develop a rail port to handle grain, fertilizer and other local products.

But there’s a catch: There have to be enough places to live.

“We are in a pretty sweet spot,” says Sara Arnberger, president of Great Bend Economic Development. “We are poised for growth. We are growing. We are in a positive place. But until we get housing under control, we will be limited in what we can do.”

Buying a house isn’t an easy task

What’s on the line is the opportunity to bring home residents like 24-year-old Macy Berning Finch, a sixth-generation resident of Scott City. She graduated from high school there in 2017 and earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications with a film studies certificate from Kansas State University in 2021.

She’s the kind of young talent that just about any community would want to court. But her hometown ties pulled her back.

“I was born and raised here,” she says. As for why she returned, “The biggest reason was to stay close to family. My parents live here, and my siblings moved back after college.” Though small – a population of just over 4,100 – Scott City has an abundance of opportunities for young families. There is a great school system, where her husband worked for three years as the high school business teacher.

She and her husband, Keegan, met when they were 12. He’s from Ottawa, another Kansas county seat town, and their paths first crossed at a baseball tournament in which he was playing.

When thinking about her future, moving back to Scott City was always her top choice. It obviously helped that Keegan shared her enjoyment of the people and the town.

She currently works as the marketing officer at Security State Bank in Scott City. She also owns Macy Finch Photography and serves on the Scott County Arts Council board.

“My job provides numerous opportunities to serve the community through hamburger feeds, Easter egg hunts, etc. Being a photographer, I also have been able to take pictures and produce videos of community events,” she says.

As Finch and her husband settle in, and Scott City hopes to lure more families to settle here, housing plays a role, she says.

“As someone who is looking to buy a home in the near future, I can speak from personal experience that it is not as easy of a task as one might hope,” she says.

Housing is in demand in Scott City, and prices are above average for a town of its size.

“With first-time homebuyer assistance programs, it makes the daunting task of owning a home a bit easier, but I have the unique opportunity of working at a bank to know of these types of programs,” she says. “Spreading the word about assistance opportunities would help more (natives) return to the community.”

This ‘didn’t happen overnight’

Economic development at places such as Scott City and Great Bend can be a heavy lift. To position towns and cities in central and western Kansas for growth takes dogged determination, fierce local leadership and forward-thinking collaboration.

“Rural communities stick together in Kansas,” Arnberger says.

But you can’t fully move the needle in terms of sustaining and nurturing the population unless residents have a roof to put over their heads.

“For us, the problem is a lack of housing,” Arnberger says. “And we need a lot of housing to support growth. But that’s where we are in general in rural Kansas. Our overarching problem is we need more housing.”

The Kansas Housing Resources Corp. and the Kansas Office of Rural Prosperity in 2021 launched the first statewide housing assessment in 30 years. Not surprisingly, it found a shortage of quality, affordable dwellings – a hindrance to growth and development, particularly in smaller communities.

Over the course of a year, RDG Planning & Design, an Omaha-based consulting firm, conducted a detailed study to spot current housing needs and growth opportunities, including goals and strategic initiatives to guide the state’s housing development efforts.

It included 71 virtual and in-person listening sessions with more than 425 community participants across the state, as well as meetings with housing groups. The firm also surveyed more than 4,400 respondents statewide and analyzed census data to develop a comprehensive picture of the housing situation.

According to the report released last fall, Kansas – and the Midwest generally – have lagged behind other regions of the country in terms of population growth, while the average age has climbed. Meanwhile, housing prices have jumped and construction has slumped since the Great Recession.

Granted, each community’s needs are different, Arnberger says. Income levels, home prices and other economic factors can present unique housing issues – and solutions too.

She says Great Bend’s housing shortage has reached crisis proportions. On average, there are fewer than 20 homes on the market in Great Bend compared with a time several years ago when that number regularly hovered around 100.

Of the houses available, most were built before 1980. Many of those looking for a place to live consider the housing stock outdated and not move-in ready, she says.

“This just didn’t happen overnight,” Arnberger says. “We have not been very progressive with housing planning in the past.”

Why?

“We were content as a community,” she said. “The housing market was stable. The workforce was stable” and everything seemed fine.

Then the economy shifted, and COVID-19 arrived. Cities like Great Bend were turned on their ears.

“Now, businesses want to expand,” Arnberger says. “We can’t be complacent any longer. We have to be progressive. We have to make radical decisions so we are ready to take the next step.”

Feeling the pinch

If a new company wants to relocate to Great Bend or an existing one wants to expand, they may be reluctant, Arnberger says. Their recruiting efforts could be hindered by the lack of homes.

But housing developers are going to be reluctant to bet on the mere possibility of a business relocation or expansion. They prefer communities where things are hopping and new development is not as much of a gamble, she says, and “I get that.”

But sometimes even good news can be bad. One example: Kansas’ unemployment rate of 3% – basically full employment.

“That used to be a positive statistic,” she says. “It still is a good thing, but it means businesses need to recruit and bring in employees, and they need a place to live.

“We are over-saturated with low-income housing and under-saturated with higher-income housing,” she says. “Many of those in the middle-income bracket are living in lower-income housing and want to move up but can’t.”

In nearby St. John, that diagnosis isn’t being repeated, but it rhymes.

“There is a huge shortage of housing. Not much has been built since the ‘70s and we have a good number of houses built in the ‘20s,” says Ryan Russell, executive director for the Stafford County Economic Development based in St. John. Not much building is taking place, and there are lots of vacant lots.

For smaller, older homes, home prices can start at $40,000.  Larger houses with three to four bedrooms and two bathrooms usually sell for $100,000 to $300,000.

This shortage is nothing new, Russell says, and they are feeling the pinch. “This has made it difficult for the school to recruit teachers and difficult for people moving to town for other jobs.  We have a good percentage of (those working in the county) coming from outside to work a lot of the jobs.”

They also have the opposite happening, with lots of people traveling out of the county for work. “So, if we had good jobs and more homes, we could attract more people or keep people in the county to work. It’s hard to attract people for certain skill jobs that are good paying. They want a certain level of lifestyle, which includes a quality house,” he says.

With housing, from building to meeting income needs to finding funding, “everything seems to be a challenge,” Russell says.

There are no general contractors in his county, he says. Salaries in Stafford County are also below the state average, making it hard to recruit people. And “there is a disconnect between the skill level of people living here and the wages needed to get someone to do the work.”

Funding for housing programs is a big issue. “We can get funding partially from the state, but we also have to get the cities to invest as well as the county. If the matching request is too high, then it can be difficult to secure the grants. We have local banks willing to give loans to us for projects, and that helps,” Russell says.

The squeeze is apparent, even in communities with some good options.

“The housing stock in Scott City is very, very tight and has been for about 15 years,” Eisenhour says.  “We do have some blighted pockets of residential housing, but they don’t exceed 10.  We are grateful for that and credit it to the city of Scott City through enforcement of proper zoning.”

On the upside, Scott City has built more than double the homes that were recommended in the community’s 2010 housing study. Yet occupancy still hovers between 95% and 100%.

But there’s hope for getting out of this bind. Scott City received approval for Kansas Housing Investor Tax Credits, and the community broke ground on a new senior living complex in May that should provide some help.

“Scott City has a variety of older homes and newly constructed homes available, just not enough of them,” says Eisenhour.  “As summer nears, a few more homes are hitting the market with a handful under $200,000 that often are under contract within a week.”

The current economics of higher interest rates and inflation are only now beginning to slow market demand. Most homes for sale exceed $200,000 and go as high as $700,000.

In Scott City, the private sector is responsible for all but 20 of the housing units built since 2012. The town is attractive to developers and investors because of higher area median income levels (which support higher market-rate rents).

“However, whatever is accomplished is slower than the demand, and this situation has persisted for many, many years,” she says.

“This defies the premise that out-migration is killing rural towns – definitely not true here,” Eisenhour says. “We saw that the post-COVID economy altered the ability of a moderate-income family (both current residents and those relocating ) to afford a moderate-income home.”

Building on the future

But where some see problems, others see opportunity.

Economic development officials in Great Bend have established a downtown loft program that provides funds to help remodel the upper levels of buildings into housing and businesses. Part of this effort includes a partnership with the city to put $1 million towards grants.

In addition, Mytown, an organization striving to fill downtown storefronts, is developing moderate-income housing through a $6 million renovation of the historic downtown Zarah Hotel. The Lofts at the Zarah will include 28 studio apartments.

The developers received a $1.4 million Moderate Income Housing Grant from the Kansas Housing Resources Corp. for the project.

The City of Great Bend has joined the effort by approving the establishment of a Rural Housing Incentive District for the Zarah Project, providing help with financing to the developer.

The city also established a Rural Housing Incentive District for the Amber Meadows housing addition that it is developing in the community’s northwest corner.

“In that way, we are getting ready to take that next step,” Arnberger says.

Stafford County is building a nine-house, moderate-income project with help from the Kansas Housing Resources Corp. in St. John and Stafford.  St. John will receive five houses and Stafford will receive four, Russell says.

They will all be three bedrooms and two baths, and  either a garage or basement, or both.

“Housing projects are a big undertaking, as it takes a lot of different funding pools to make them happen,” says Russell.

Funding is coming from Stafford County, the city of Stafford and the city of St. John, with help from pandemic relief funds and as well as state housing funds and tax credits. Great Bend-based Housing Opportunities Inc. will serve as the general contractor.

“The cities have been aggressively tearing down old, worn-out houses that have either needed extensive investment to be salvaged or were left in disrepair by absentee owners,” Russell says. Stafford and St. John have a land bank that helps in acquiring dwellings that need to be demolished and acquired through tax sale or donation. These properties are either renovated or used to build new for investors or by the economic development group.

The organization was also behind the construction and recruitment of White’s Foodliner to St. John , an effort led by Caroyln Dunn, a project manager for Stafford County Economic Development.

Other new projects in the community include the building of 10 low-income homes and the start of construction on nine more middle-income homes, Russell says.

With all the bad news, the efforts are important to Stafford County residents, Russell says.

“These projects have meant a lot,” he says. “With the low-income properties, this was a big need.  We have a good number of low-income people in our communities, and with the rising rents and other everyday products, these properties have really helped elderly people, single moms and families that would otherwise struggle to find a rental property that they could afford.”

There are a lot of demoralizing trends in rural areas, some made worse by the Great Recession and the pandemic. But there are communities that are defying these trends, says Russell.

“I think there are a lot of families with young adults returning to rural areas. We’ve seen it here,” he says.

“We’ve also seen people from out of state buy and move to our communities.  We’ve even seen some people from larger cities in Kansas move out here,” he says. “We still do have an out-migration trend, but we’re hoping to change that through building more houses as well as creating businesses.”

Telling Scott County’s story of progress is important, Eisenhour says, especially to lawmakers in Topeka.

“We are home to some of the best farmers, ranchers, cattle feeders and swine producers in the Midwest,” she says. In 2017, she says Scott County was  second in the state for total agriculture production revenue (it is probably higher now), but that’s nothing.  “We are also 26th in the nation. What Scott countians do for Kansas makes an impact globally.”

When it comes to housing, it can also be important to take the long view.

Eisenhour likes to recount a conversation she had with a colleague and good friend, Joann Knight of the Dodge City/Ford County Development Corp., who told her, “It will take a decade for you to see results from your efforts in Scott City, Katie.”

Rural Kansas faces myriad challenges aside from housing – enough to overwhelm even the strong. But people like Eisenhour, Arnberger and Russell are reminders that the energy to take a stand and not give up hope can be found not just within but also among those they live with.

Says Eisenhour: “When a community has generation after generation of citizens with a fire in their bellies to provide the best future possible for their children and grandchildren, there is no statistic that can measure what miracles might be achieved.”

This article is being published digital only in conjunction with the Summer 2024 issue of The Journal , a publication of the Kansas Leadership Center. To learn more about KLC, visit its website . Order your copy of the magazine at the KLC Store or subscribe to the print edition.

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