Northeast News
March 30, 2016

Taking a play out of the Ken Bacchus Housing and Economic Development Financial Corporation [HEDFC] playbook of 2004, the city of Kansas City, Mo., Housing and Development Committee and Oak Point Partners Developers are planning on bringing “upscale” housing to Kansas City’s largely blighted East Side.

The Dog is once again dubious, largely because we’ve been there, done that with our once productive CDC, Old Northeast Inc. Shown here are three homes constructed by ONE Inc. in 1992 through largely the same financing mechanism that’s driving the new partnership down near 38th and Cypress, overseen by Oak Point. According to sources with the Kaman Properties, the company managing the construction and leasing of the new “upscale” homes, the project is driven by a $9 million grant from the above entities and will fund the construction of 28 duplexes and one four-plex, totaling 30 new “upscale” units.

Let that math sink in for a minute. Thirty units for a total of $9 million translates to $300,000 per unit. If this is sounding a lot like the HEDFC Union Hill debacle that saw two small Bungalows on Tracy Avenue get rehabbed for between $400,000 and $1.1 million in 2004, then you’re spot on. Throw into the mix that the project qualifies for low income tax credits, which can pay a handsome rebate of between 30 and 40 cents on the dollar if they’re sold on the open market. That’s a nearly 40 percent return on investment guaranteed. The dog thinks those “upscale” units better have polished imported Italian marble countertops and brass filigreed faucets for that kind of scratch.

Let’s focus again on those Ninth Street homes built in 1992, shall we? Twenty five years later, all three are the very picture of blight, all recently boarded up in an attempt to keep scrappers and squatters out. Keep in mind, this was supposed to be the end all, be all of targeted, seeded residential development in the urban core at the time. That said, this dog thinks that throwing $600,000 per building is patently outrageous and would be better spent elsewhere, rather than liberally lining the pockets of developers and subcontractors who will abandon the project like rats off a sinking ship once the guv-ment cash runs dry. Once that happens, and these pictures hold the proof, this is your future. Think hard on that.