photo by: Sylas May/Journal-World

The Affordable Housing Advisory Board meets on Oct. 14, 2026, at Lawrence City Hall

Story updated at 3:24 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15:

Lawrence’s affordable housing advisers won’t be considering the Douglas County Housing Stabilization Collaborative’s request for city funding for 2027 – not because they don’t want to fund it, but because its application came in too late.

The Housing Stabilization Collaborative, or HSC, was created during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide rent and utility assistance to low-income residents, and it had requested $350,000 from the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund for next year. But, because of an oversight by county staff, its application was submitted on Sept. 11, seven days after the deadline for funding applications.

And on Wednesday, the Affordable Housing Advisory Board, which makes the recommendations on which projects the trust should fund, voted 4-3 not to consider the application for funding. Board Chair Mariel Ferreiro and members Faith Lopez and Donnavan Dillon were the three dissenting votes.

In a memo to the board explaining the situation, Affordable Housing Administrator Lea Roselyn wrote that the county notified city staff on Sept. 9 that it had accidentally overlooked the deadline, and submitted the application two days later. City staff then told the county that it would be up to the board to decide what to do with the application.

On Wednesday, Assistant County Administrator Jill Jolicoeur urged the board to consider the application anyway. She said the county had consistently met its deadlines and reporting requirements in past funding cycles.

“Precedent, that’s really important, but I’d say our track record has been consistent,” Jolicoeur told the board. “… We do not have a backup plan for this funding.”

As the Journal-World has reported, HSC has already had to scale back its operations in recent years and change how it distributes assistance because of a decline in city funding.

Originally, HSC relied on COVID funding, but it now uses funding from both Douglas County and the city’s housing trust. The county funding for HSC has remained consistent at $330,000 a year for the past few years. But the award from the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund went down in both 2025 and 2026 because the trust had less money to distribute. In 2025, it fell from $509,000 to $200,000, and in 2026 it fell again, to $150,000.

When pandemic aid ran out, HSC had to change its operations from a first-come, first-served approach to a lottery system with distributions of funding twice a month. Then, in 2025, it reduced the lotteries to once per month and limited eligibility to households with active eviction notices or disconnected utilities. This year, it replaced the lottery with rolling, need-based allocations that give priority to demographic groups most at risk of housing instability, such as people on fixed incomes and single-parent households.

Roselyn said that both the city and the county were invested in HSC’s success. “We’re very close partners with the county, and we all want to see this program succeed,” she said.

But, at the same time, she said that there was “ample notice” of the deadline, which was communicated to potential applicants through news releases, meetings and other means. And, even on the application itself, “it’s clearly stated that applications submitted past the deadline will not be accepted.”

“I’m personally a rule follower, and as much as I hate to say it, I think we’d set a somewhat questionable precedent if we accept late applications,” board member Monte Soukup said.

Board member Matthew Pauly agreed: “It sucks, but the reality is if we don’t draw the line, we’re going to be back here year after year after year.”

But Lopez thought HSC’s consistency should count for something. “It’s not some new developer that’s coming into town,” Lopez said. And Dillon thought not considering the application “would set the work that we’re doing as a board back.”

Ferreiro, meanwhile, said the larger problem was that the trust fund – which is also used for one-time allocations for affordable housing construction and rehabilitation projects – wasn’t a good mechanism to allocate city funding for this program.

“I just have to voice an incredible amount of frustration I have with the city,” Ferreiro said.

The county includes the HSC funding as a line item in its budget, and the fact that the city doesn’t do the same thing “consistently puts this board, this trust fund in a very difficult position,” she said. “We’re not able to see our city leadership do what I think is the responsible thing, which is create a budget line item for this and fund it that way.”

Before the meeting ended, Soukup suggested creating a statement for the City Commission explaining the situation and the importance of funding the program, and the board agreed. But board member Mark Buhler said he didn’t want it to come off as demonizing the city or the county.

“I think we should make a statement for good things, and that program is a good thing,” he said. “But to pick the villain, I’m not about that.”

Jolicoeur told the Journal-World in an email on Thursday that HSC will continue to seek additional funding sources and will work to prioritize assistance for the most vulnerable community members and households.

The HSC funding already secured for 2027 includes $241,500 from the Douglas County Commission and $75,000 from a federal Community Development Block Grant administered by the city.

Any individuals, businesses or organizations interested in supporting the rental and utility assistance program can donate to a dedicated fund through the Douglas County Community Foundation at dccfoundation.org/fund/Housing-Stabilization-Collaborative-Fund.

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The HSC request wasn’t the only one that the board discussed. It heard from applicants about 11 other projects, including both new developments and several housing-related programs, that will be considered for the roughly $700,000 in funding in the 2027 award cycle.

Board members had questions about some of the projects. For the 711 New Hampshire senior housing project that’s proposed for a city parking lot downtown, Ferreiro said there had been “significant community feedback” about the location and asked what Cohen-Esrey Development Group would do to engage with the community about its plans.

“Obviously we want to work with the downtown businesses,” said Jack Brenton of Cohen-Esrey, adding that the developers had had conversations with City Manager Majed Al-Ghafry, too. “… We’re expecting a lot of neighborhood meetings, a lot of stakeholder engagement, but we just haven’t kicked that off quite yet.”

On a request for the renter education program from Lawrence Tenants, which recently became a 501(c)3 nonprofit, the board wanted to know more about its fundraising strategy. Vince Munoz of Lawrence Tenants said the organization had a fundraising team meeting regularly to look for opportunities and planned to begin soliciting recurring monthly donations from supporters soon.

And, for Flint Hills Holdings’ two projects, the New Hampshire Lofts II apartments and a redevelopment of the former East Heights School, board members asked developer Tony Krsnich which one was the bigger priority.

“It’s a very legitimate question,” Krsnich replied. “I’m going to answer it by not answering it. … I’ve played that game before and I’ve been burned on it before.”

He said that, in his estimation, both projects were likely to score highly for state incentives.

“The city will likely receive both of these projects’ funding this year,” Krsnich said.

— Reporter Josie Heimsoth contributed to this story.