photo by: Journal-World File

The site of the proposed Floret Hill development in west Lawrence is pictured in this February 2025 file photo.

Tiny homes, tenant education, senior apartments and a handful of other projects are all seeking money from the city’s affordable housing trust in 2026, and an advisory board next week will start the process of figuring out what to fund.

The Affordable Housing Trust Fund is supported by a local sales tax measure that voters approved in 2017, and next year there will be $1.2 million available to distribute — the same amount as there was this year. But the requests for funding for 2026 total just over $4 million, so the Affordable Housing Advisory Board and the City Commission will have some decisions to make.

Lea Roselyn, the city’s affordable housing administrator, said the program has more applications than in its last cycle. Some of them are for projects that have sought or received funding in the past; others are new; and some categories have more applications than before, like the community engagement efforts, which have multiple projects seeking funding for the first time.

“We’ve also continued to increase the number of applications for new development and home repair,” Roselyn said.

Of the new construction projects, Roselyn said, the majority are bigger multifamily developments that rely on low-income housing tax credits. She said that’s “fairly typical,” but there is one exception in the 2026 applications: a tiny home project on Garfield Street in East Lawrence.

When AHAB meets at 6 p.m. Thursday at Lawrence City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St., we’ll have a better idea of which projects could get funded. The board will make its recommendations then, and Roselyn said the City Commission should make the final decision on Dec. 2.

Here’s a closer look at the projects applying for funding this year.

Senior apartments at 711 New Hampshire St.

This proposal, which is seeking $1 million from the trust, was conceived by the Cohen Esrey Development Group after the city called for ideas to redevelop city-owned parking lots in downtown Lawrence.

Currently, the developers are proposing 94 affordable housing units for seniors, with a mix of studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. The building would be six stories high and would include an underground parking garage and a fitness center, among other amenities.

As the Journal-World reported, this project applied for state tax credits late last year, but was not selected by the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation to receive any. Cohen Esrey Development Group has never received any funding from the affordable housing trust fund before.

photo by: Richard Gwin

East Heights School building at 1430 Haskell Ave.

Projects from Krsnich’s group

Three of the applications for affordable housing projects come from Tony Krsnich’s Flint Hills Holding Group — two are for developments that have been planned for a while, and a third would be for maintenance work on an existing affordable apartment building.

One of the requests is for redevelopment of the East Heights School site at 1430 Haskell Ave., which the Lawrence school board sold to Flint Hills for $875,000 in 2024. The project’s application says it will have 30 affordable housing units and 10 market-rate units, as well as a community center and a day care. Flint Hills is requesting $900,000 from the trust fund for this project.

Another request is for a project that’s already gotten some support from local governments — 9 Del Lofts II at 716 E. Ninth St.

This project would feature 36 apartment units and six live-work commercial units; 26 of the apartments would be reserved as affordable housing. Earlier this year, the city and county commissions and the Lawrence school board approved a package of tax incentives for this project: a sales tax exemption on construction costs and a 95% property tax abatement over 15 years on the valuation increase resulting from the new development.

For 9 Del Lofts II, Flint Hills is seeking $80,000 for a fee waiver. Roselyn said that projects that obtain a fee waiver have an easier time getting low-income housing tax credits, and that’s the reason the development is requesting this.

Flint Hills also submitted a request for about $84,000 to make repairs to the HVAC systems, sewer line and masonry at Poehler Lofts, 619 E. Eighth St. Poehler Lofts, located in a former grocery warehouse building, has been open since 2012.

Multiple of Krsnich’s past projects have received support from the trust fund, including the New Hampshire Street Lofts and Penn Street Lofts projects.

121 units on the west side

A development called Floret Hill near the southeast corner of Bob Billings Parkway and K-10 received $1.3 million from the trust in 2024, and now it’s seeking $800,000 more.

The Floret Hill development is by Tenants to Homeowners and its development partner Wheatland Investments Group. Plans call for 121 units of affordable housing, a mix of multi-story apartment buildings, townhome-style buildings and duplexes, on 14 acres of vacant land. Most of the housing would be rental units, but some units would be available to buy, and Roselyn said that this mixed-income style of development was different from most affordable housing projects.

“That’s going to be an innovative project,” she said.

The land originally belonged to the city, which purchased it in the 1990s for possible use as a fire station or police substation. However, the city never needed it for those uses and donated the land to Tenants to Homeowners in 2022.

Tiny homes in East Lawrence

This project from the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority and Peaslee Tech is seeking $180,000 to put two 240-square-foot tiny homes on a lot at 800 Garfield St. They would be fully furnished, permanently affordable rental units, priced on a sliding scale based on renters’ income.

Whether both homes actually get built depends on how much funding the project receives. The application says that “for every $90,000 we will be able to proceed with a unit. Partial funding will result in fewer units.”

Peaslee Tech’s students have built small homes before for local housing projects. In 2023, Peaslee Tech began a partnership with Tenants to Homeowners that involved building houses in the classroom and transporting them to be installed elsewhere in Lawrence.

“It’s always nice to see tiny homes that offer privacy and permanent affordability,” Roselyn said.

Repair and accessibility efforts

Lawrence Habitat for Humanity is seeking $250,000 to help homeowners with repair work, such as roof replacements, and work on plumbing and heating and cooling systems. Habitat currently has 18 families who have been approved for repairs and are waiting for funding to become available, and it said in its application that the amount it requested could help 15 to 16 families.

Habitat said its repair program was developed in 2019; it received $50,000 from the trust in 2021 and $100,000 this year, according to its application. While it expected to serve more than 30 households this year, it said it actually served 16 households, because “the need for repairs at each individual home was vast” and the costs were higher than anticipated.

Two other programs that make home repairs and improvements are also requesting funds. Both of them focus on helping seniors and people with disabilities remain in their homes.

One is the Accessible Housing Program from Independence Inc. This program makes improvements such as ramps, accessible showers and widening doorways for walker and wheelchair access. Independence Inc. is requesting $75,000 for this program.

The other request is from the Senior Resource Center for Douglas County, which wants $25,000 for its Safe, Accessible Housing for Seniors project. This program has received funding from the trust before, including $25,000 in 2025, and it intends to fund six to 10 repair and accessibility projects in 2026. The SRC said in its application that this program focuses on “projects that are outside the scope of other currently available programs.”

Rent and utility assistance and vouchers

The Housing Stabilization Collaborative is seeking $350,000 for its rental and utility assistance program, which has received awards from the trust fund in the past couple of years, too.

The HSC currently offers rental and utility assistance through a lottery system once a month. It provides help to low-income renters who have received eviction notices or whose utilities have been disconnected.

Previously, the HSC allowed residents at or below 50% of the area median income to apply for assistance, and its lotteries were held every two weeks, as the Journal-World reported. But the HSC’s award from the trust was lower this year — $200,000 in 2025, as opposed to $509,000 in 2024 — so the HSC put stricter limits on who could apply for aid, restricting it just to people with an eviction court date, eviction notice or disconnected utilities.

A voucher program from the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority is also on the list of applications. The program is called New Horizon, and it provides rental assistance and case management for those transitioning out of homelessness. Participants are referred to LDCHA by the Lawrence Community Shelter, Family Promise of Lawrence or the Willow Domestic Violence Center.

New Horizon is expected to house six to seven families in 2026, and the request is for $75,000. It has received funding in past years, too — $50,000 in 2024, and another $50,000 in 2023.

Educating the public

Two applications on the list aren’t for housing projects or assistance — rather, they’re for campaigns to educate the public on affordable housing efforts in Lawrence and on tenants’ rights.

One of these campaigns is from the Homeless Resource Center and is called “Community Voices for Housing.” This 12-month campaign would produce weekly videos and other content for social media about “affordable housing in Lawrence: what it is, who it impacts, and why it strengthens the whole city,” according to the application. It’s seeking $38,000.

The other campaign is by Lawrence Tenants and is called “An Educator for Everyone.” The application describes it as mainly an in-person campaign, through knocking on doors and holding workshops, and it has a goal of educating more than 3,000 low-income renters on their rights as tenants. Lawrence Tenants is seeking $170,000 for this project and intends to train 25 volunteers.

According to its application, Lawrence Tenants received $70,000 from the trust for education efforts in 2024, and it has since been able to hire a full-time tenant educator and has “educated as many as 1,100 tenants.” However, a statement from the group said, “Lawrence Tenants will only be able to maintain momentum with AHAB’s continued support.”