Kansas City has made some meaningful changes to how it regulates housing development, and they are worth applauding. In recent weeks, city leaders have advanced reforms that begin to reduce longstanding barriers to building—most notably by eliminating parking minimums across much of the urban core and by issuing pre-approved housing plans.
I’ve argued for the removal of parking mandates, and the logic is straightforward: when cities require developers to build a fixed number of parking spaces, they raise costs, limit design flexibility, and often crowd out the very investment they say they want to encourage.
Kansas City has also taken steps to streamline development through its use of pre-approved housing plans—also something I have advocated. By offering a set of ready-to-use designs at no cost, Kansas City reduces one source of expense in the building process. For small builders and homeowners, eliminating the costs of repeatedly checking in with city staff can make the difference between a project moving forward or not.
These changes may not seem significant, but housing shortages are often the cumulative result of small policies. Pre-approved plans will not transform the market alone, but they can help at the margin by making it easier to build modest infill housing in neighborhoods that can benefit from it.
Kansas City’s pre-approved plan program is relatively limited, both in the number of designs offered and in its role within the city’s broader housing strategy. The city has not abandoned its interventionist framework that relies on subsidies, mandates, and planning requirements to shape outcomes.
Overland Park’s “Portfolio Homes” program, for example, is more ambitious. It pairs a larger number of pre-approved designs with zoning flexibility, fee reductions, and streamlined approvals. The emphasis there is not just on providing plans, but on reducing the regulatory barriers that make housing difficult to build in the first place.
Nevertheless, these changes are good news and suggest Kansas City’s leadership is beginning to absorb some important lessons. The city also stepped away from its cost-prohibitive energy codes.
Expanding housing supply will require not just targeted reforms, but a broader understanding of how regulation adds costs. City leaders still want to tinker with the market; they need to get out of the way altogether.
