Lawrence City Commission candidates share housing ideas, thoughts on Federal funding threats during candidate forum

photo by: Bremen Keasey
Lawrence City Commission candidates discussed a variety of issues during a candidate forum Saturday morning held at the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vermont St.
Lawrence City Commission candidates discussed how they would approach creating more affordable housing in the city and shared their thoughts on how Lawrence should respond to federal threats that seem to target diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
The four candidates — Michael Courtney, Bart Littlejohn, Kristine Polian and Bob Schumm — spoke during a forum Saturday morning at the Lawrence Public Library, 707 Vermont St. The forum was hosted by the Lawrence-Douglas County chapter of Women for Kansas, the League of Women Voters of Lawrence-Douglas County and the NAACP branch for Lawrence.
The four candidates are vying for two open seats on the City Commission in the November election.
The questions were developed by the members of all three of those organizations, and candidates had two minutes to answer the questions posed to them. The candidates did not see the questions ahead of time. After the forum was completed, the several dozen audience members were invited to speak one-on-one with the candidates.
Here were some of the key takeaways from the forum.
Creating housing is a key focus, but strategies differ
All four candidates said they would make bringing in more housing a key focus if they were on the City Commission, but the ways they would tackle the affordability of housing differed.
Kristine Polian noted ensuring there is affordable housing in the city is a hot topic for everyone, but she thinks it would be crucial to add more single-family housing. In recent years, Polian said there were lots of multi-family units that were added but not many single-family homes, and creating those is the “only way to keep kids and grandkids” in Lawrence.
She said the best way to keep housing affordable is to ensure there is an available stock, but in current conditions, “builders can’t build homes for less than $300,000 today.” She believes it would make sense to look at creating public-private partnerships to help subsidize those homes in the same way many multi-family units have been built. Polian said there were programs like that all across the country that Lawrence can look to if they wanted to implement that.
Bob Schumm agreed, saying the city “needs to build more homes, period.” He noted the fact fewer and fewer single-family houses have been built drives up the pressure on the housing market. One way to change that is to make sure the city is looking to create large plots of land available for development by looking to annex plots to the east and west of Lawrence.
Schumm also discussed the idea of providing more incentives to developments to help create cheaper single-family housing. He floated the idea of waiving building permit fees until development hit a higher level or reducing the costs for select utilities, with Schumm saying a mix of incentives could save $10,000 per building. Schumm said there are lots of things the city can do, but it has to “make something happen.”
Mike Courtney said the average cost for a single-family home on the market in Lawrence is over $300,000, and those prices have led to an “entire generation of renters” who can’t afford to buy a house, especially when less than 60 single-family building permits were issued last year, as the Journal-World reported.
Courtney has long discussed the idea of building modular homes, which could be pre-built elsewhere and could reduce costs by 30% to 40%. He noted with the current economic climate and tariffs in place on building materials, the prices of homes are only going to rise, so Lawrence “needs to think differently.” Courtney added he has already been discussing with the city’s Planning and Development services department on how the city can ease the ability to put in more modular homes.
Bart Littlejohn, the lone incumbent in the race, said he thinks the city has made “a lot of strides” for creating more affordable housing options but there is a ways to go. In addition to the city’s affordable housing efforts, he said Lawrence has made progress in reducing the amount of the city’s population that is homeless — Littlejohn said even officials from Columbia, Missouri, have “shouted out” Lawrence’s policies on that front.
While Littlejohn noted that the city has added a lot of affordable rental options in the city, he said the next step would be looking at attacking the “missing middle” level of housing and creating those cheaper single-family options. Littlejohn said the City Commission will be looking at adding more affordable housing policies during a meeting in the next few weeks.
How would they respond to threats from federal and state officials against DEI policies?
In response to threats from the Trump administration about withholding federal funding to cities that maintain certain policies — especially those related to diversity, equity or inclusion — candidates were asked if they would still have the city commit to maintaining those policies.
Littlejohn noted that as a Black man, he has felt concerns and heard from other folks in marginalized communities about their worries under the “interesting times we live in,” as he put it. Littlejohn said he wants to make sure the city retains its unique Lawrence identity, which means “looking out for each other and neighbors and being a community.”
While Littlejohn said he can’t lie and say the state and federal governments aren’t making that “more and more difficult” each day, he said he feels the city staff is doing a good job of navigating those policies while maintaining the values of the city.
“We don’t want what is coming down from above to change the way we do business,” Littlejohn said.
Polian said she doesn’t know why DEI is “so triggering” to some, and the city will always be inclusive and encompass diversity because that’s what Lawrence always has been.
“(We’ve) always been on the right side of history, we will remain on the right side of history,” Polian said.
While she said the threats of federal funding are “reprehensible,” Polian also said the city might need to remove some policies because the city “can’t lose federal funding.” She was clear saying the city would not discriminate, but if they have to remove specific policies, the city can work around it and still provide protections.
Schumm similarly harkened to Lawrence’s history, noting the community was started by helping the oppressed and it’s “in our DNA … to stand up to people.” Schumm said he has joined with groups of protestors many weekends, saying he was “sick and tired of getting pushed around by the administration.” He said he would maintain the city’s policies because of the city’s pride of helping others and that it needs to fight back against the Trump Administration.
“If you don’t stand up and resist, they’ll keep fighting,” Schumm said.
Courtney said that some of the recent scenes in the news of national troops descending on big cities like Chicago are incredibly concerning to him. Considering that Lawrence is a “blue dot in a big red sea,” he said it would be likely that Lawrence could be targeted by federal policies. He said that the city should look to create a compact with other cities in the area like Topeka, Wichita and Manhattan to build a coalition to fight back.
“We don’t want people from Washington treading on us at a local level,” Courtney said. “We need power to fight back and fight for people in this community.”
The deadline to register to vote or update your voter registration information for the 2025 General Election is Tuesday, Oct. 14. In-person advance voting starts on Wednesday, Oct. 15, and will run through Monday, Nov. 3 before closing at 12 p.m.
The general election will take place Tuesday, Nov. 4.