photo by: Matt Resnick | Journal World

Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority Executive Director Shannon Oury addresses Douglas County commissioners on Wednesday, July 19, 2023.

Douglas County on Wednesday cleared the way for the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority to negotiate real estate transactions and close deals on its own — and potentially to expand its footprint into more of the county’s communities.

LDCHA had previously been bound by a joint city-county resolution that restricted the entity from buying property without the Lawrence City Commission’s approval, as well as from conducting real estate transactions in its own name and holding the deeds to its properties. But at their meeting on Wednesday, county commissioners granted LDCHA’s request to change the resolution to remove those restraints. The City Commission signed off on the changes at a meeting earlier this month.

The changes will still require LDCHA to get permission from the Lawrence city manager and the Douglas County administrator if it wants to take on new debt. But LDCHA Executive Director Shannon Oury said the changes were a positive step toward making LDCHA a “bigger player” in a hot local housing market. She said the previous rules’ red tape had hampered the Housing Authority’s ability to freely negotiate real estate deals.

“It’s not the way real estate works,” Oury said. “We’re asking for this so we can play a bigger part in developing affordable housing. I don’t think I have to express to you the need for affordable housing.”

Oury provided a brief description of LDCHA’s public housing portfolio at Wednesday’s meeting. She said it controls roughly 450 units, 94 of which are “scattered-site units,” meaning they’re not part of a broader housing complex.

But all of the units in LDCHA’s portfolio have something in common: They’re located in Lawrence.

On Wednesday, Assistant County Administrator Jill Jolicoeur was the first to bring up that the new rules would let the Housing Authority more easily expand its footprint outside of Lawrence. The joint city-county resolution was stopping LDCHA from adding properties elsewhere, Oury said, because of the requirement that all Housing Authority properties be deeded to the city. She said the only assistance the Housing Authority could provide for residents outside of the city was vouchers, and that most of the county’s voucher recipients were from Baldwin City and Eudora.

“We do serve the whole county, but the only property we actually own is within the city limits of Lawrence,” Oury said, adding that LDCHA’s top priority is doubling its units “because we just know what a major need it is in our community.”

Oury didn’t mention any imminent plans to add properties in other Douglas County cities, though she said that her agency was “probably open to pretty much anything” when it comes to adding affordable housing. But she did mention one project in Lawrence that would get a boost from the new rules: a plan to add several dozen units to Clinton Place, a multi-family housing complex at 2125 Clinton Parkway.

One public commenter had a question about whether there would be any risk of private partners acquiring the deeds to affordable housing sites under the new rules. Oury said that all of the entity’s deeds have stipulations that require the property to be used for affordable housing, and that it would be virtually impossible for one of its deeds to be transferred to a private owner.

“You would have to pay HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) back all of the capital fund money to be able to transfer that property,” Oury said.

After the meeting, Oury told the Journal-World that she was delighted with the outcome, and that it was a big step in addressing the affordable housing crisis.

“The thing we’ve realized is that we need more of everything,” she said. “More first-time homebuyers, more extremely low-income housing and more supportive housing. So this just gives us more flexibility.”