ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
Recognizing the critical role housing plays in improving the lives of all residents and supporting economic growth, the Seward County Development Corporation, along with the Nebraska-based agency Five Rule Rural Planning (FRRP), recently completed a comprehensive housing study to understand the county’s most pressing housing needs.
FRRP owner Bobbi Pettit recently reviewed the study with community leaders, and she said she tried to gather and organize as much information on the local housing situation as possible to make it tangible for those in the audience.
“Housing is really hard to tackle,” she said. “It’s a hard topic to tackle because it’s a very personal thing, but it’s very necessary.”
Pettit said Liberal has many moving parts with people on both ends of the socioeconomic spectrum living in the community, but she said from this and other visits, the future looks bright for Liberal.
“I feel that way every time I come back,” she said. “I feel I see something new being built. We came through here in 2020 during COVID, and the only place to stay was the Holiday Inn Express, which it was a brand new hotel.”
For Pettit, planning for housing goes hand in hand with planning for people, and she began her review with Seward County’s 1950 census count, which showed a population of 9,900.
“You can see how your county grew,” she said. “Your population has not really gone down except for between 2010 and 2020, when you had a little dip. Otherwise, you continued to grow in every decade.”
Pettit then gave an estimate of what local populations would look like through 2050.
“If your population pattern follows the same population pattern over the last 100 years, you’re do for a big jump in population in the 2020s,” she said. “This only goes back to 1950. I did this in a simple Excel formula to say from 1900 to 2020, repeat that pattern over again.”
Pettit said 2018 to 2023 saw a 20.5 increase in take home pay overall for the state of Kansas, and Seward County saw a 20.9 increase in that same period.
“Your wages are increasing at a faster pace than the counties that are in your area and the state of Kansas a whole,” she said. “Good news for your employees, bad news for your employers who have to deal with the cost of labor.”
Labor and housing costs are tied together, and Pettit showed how weekly wages are growing quickly.
“Individual wage earners in 2023 were bringing home $1,000 a week. Incomes are increasing, but the trend line for home value is much sharper than wages,” she said. “The cost of labor is trying to keep up with the cost of housing right now. Median rent is also increasing at a more dramatic rate than wages are.”
Pettit said in 2023, the median age in Seward County was 31, and she said household sizes too have gone down somewhat in the last decade locally.
“It was 3.05 in 2013 and down to 2.95 in 2023,” she said. “That means the number of people living under one roof is getting smaller. At the same time, your average family size is increasing. 3.6 was your average family size in 2018, 3.78 in 2023.”
Pettit said normally, household and family sizes mirror each other, but with family size going up and household size going down, she believes this means different kinds of households are competing for housing.
“You have your college students who are single who are all living together,” she said. “You have professionals the college is trying to recruit or the hospital is trying to recruit. You also have families coming have. You have different kinds of households all trying to get the same housing.”
Pettit also looked at business situations, asking employers if they would see growth with more people or if they were experiencing limited growth due to a lack of labor.
“Any of the ones who said they’ve had limited growth because they didn’t have enough labor, I asked them about what they thought was the housing situation their current employees or potential employees were having when it comes to housing,” she said. “The cost of homes for sale, along with the condition of homes for sale are holding people back.”
As a general rule, Pettit said about 25 to 30 percent of take home pay is spent on housing, and she added if more than that is spent, the housing is not affordable.
Pettit said much participation was received for the survey from local residents, meaning housing was top of mind for people.
“These are the folks who vote,” she said. “These are the folks who look at their utility bill. These are the folks who know what they’re paying in property taxes.”
Pettit said 54 percent of households reported paying more than 30 percent of their take home pay for housing, and she said half of the respondents had searched for a place to live, with most searching in Liberal and 10 percent searching in Kismet.
“The majority said they were still searching,” she said.
In fall 2024, Pettit said she came to do a tour of Liberal and Seward County, and she saw many situations with smaller houses having many vehicles being parked nearby.
“Over half the folks said they’re aware of overcrowding happening in other households, and 8 percent said they have overcrowding in their household right now,” she said.
Pettit said a large percentage of respondents said their house is not big enough for their family.
“At the same time, the next biggest category was they’d like to downsize,” she said. “Some people are living in houses that are too big for them. Other people are saying they’d like a bigger house, but they can’t find one. That goes with their family size and household size not matching each other.”
For Pettit, the debate of putting taxpayer money into private housing is something that still exists years after it was first proposed as a solution, and many people still feel it is up to residents to make the type of house they want.
“It’s up to you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and build a nice place to live,” she said. “We’re seeing that mentality is not working.”
After reviewing the study, Pettit advised community leaders to work at getting a handle on vacant houses in the community.
“Houses were meant to be lived in,” she said. “Every day water doesn’t run through pipes hurts that house. There was a huge investment at one time to serve all these houses in Liberal and in Kismet.”
Pettit said the number of vacant houses in Seward County is quite high.
“This is the census estimating how many vacant units you have in the whole county,” she said. “They’re estimating you have a total of 8,299 units.”
In Kismet, Pettit said eight houses have had the utilities shut off for a year or more.
“Their vacancy rate is about 4 percent,” she said. “Think what eight new families living in Kismet could do for that community, and think how much it would cost to build an eight-unit subdivision on the edge of Kismet.”
Pettit estimated Liberal has just less than 5,000 single-family residential units at this time and another 936 multi-family units.
“I count 6,000 total housing units in Seward County,” she said. “The census had you at 8,299 units. 95 percent of your housing stock is in Liberal.”
Pettit said Liberal’s only decrease in population was between 2010 and 2019, but decreases in units being built were a constant.
“I don’t know what you were doing in the ‘80s and the ‘90s, but you were not building very many houses,” she said.
Pettit said roughly twice a household’s income is what can be afforded in housing, meaning if income is $50,000 a year, housing valued at $100,000 can be afforded.
Historically, Pettit said by 2040, Seward County will have 1,500 households earning $25,000 or less, and this means housing valued at $50,000 or less will be needed.
“If you follow that historical pattern, by 2040, you’ll have 747 households that are earning $150,000 or more,” she said.
Pettit, though, emphasized the need to focus on single-family housing, adding she does not see housing such as duplexes or town homes doing well for a long period of time.
“It’s harder to take pride in it, and kids beat the crap out of stuff,” she said. “If you own it or if it’s your own house, I think you’re more motivated to care for it.”
Pettit said the housing she is helping solve are Liberal neighborhoods previous developed that are ready to be developed again.
“I don’t think these nice new housing starts on the edge of town are what I’m here to help you solve,” she said. “What you’ve got to do to incentivize your builders to be interested or be willing to go back and redevelop something to help them with the bottom line is what I hope this study will help you back up.”
Pettit said local constituents are seeing overcrowding and people living in poor housing conditions.
“They also think investing in workforce housing is something you can do to make a positive impact,” she said.
Pettit said 150 people took the recent survey, and while they may not seem like much compared to 22,000 residents in Seward County, that same number of people with the same message would have leaders listening at local meetings.
“You can take what you’re doing for the comprehensive plan, and you can lay it on top of what you know you have for housing right now,” she said. “That can be where you start.”
Pettit said with people coming to the Liberal community in consistent numbers, leaders do not have to work as hard to get new residents.
“You have more of a challenge of serving the people who have come and having enough resources for everyone,” she said. “The big thing to focus on first with your housing strategy is just taking care of the people who are here now searching for housing.”
Pettit said she feels housing in rural parts of the county is not a good strategy for a community’s overall vision for growth.
“If you want to go more than a mile away from the community and build a beautiful acreage, I’m not advocating against that, but housing dropping in within one mile of a city is hard for everyone,” she said. “It’s hard to regulate what’s happening out in the county. Nobody knows who’s in charge out in the county when you’re that close to town, and every septic tank that drops out in the county, one day someday, will make it harder for you to run your public water system by there.”
Pettit said she hopes the study can be used for the purpose for which it was intended.
“It can support you with your own taxpayer money to give you the justification or rationale you need to put public funds aside for this housing investment,” she said. “I also hope it will help you with competing for external funds.”
