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Lawrence built only 79 single-family homes in 2022. The community routinely used to build 300-plus such homes a year.

When we reported earlier this month that Lawrence single-family home construction in 2022 fell to its lowest level in more than 60 years, I suspect there were some people who said, “So what?”

After all, not everybody wants Lawrence to become a bigger place. “More people, more problems” is the attitude among some. Still, I thought the fact that Lawrence built only 79 single-family homes in 2022 was noteworthy given that we are a community that routinely used to build 300-plus such homes a year.

I also kept wondering what the Lawrence school district thought of the number. I had reported early last year about an odd statistic involving Lawrence and the public school district. During the last decade, Lawrence’s overall population grew by 7%, but the school district’s enrollment declined by 4%.

Now, near the beginning of the new decade, we built the smallest number of single-family homes since the city started keeping good records in 1956. Is that something the school district should care about, or does the idea of “more people, more problems” carry the day?

When I got in touch with school board president Shannon Kimball — the longest-serving member on the board — she didn’t wade into the really thorny issues of single-family housing and population growth. Does it pay for itself or get subsidized by taxpayers? Is it an inefficient use of limited land and precious resources? Will it turn quaint Lawrence into a de facto Johnson County suburb? And many more issues that you hear if you sit around certain coffee tables.

Instead, she talked about a strongly held belief regarding the Lawrence school district: It needs more students.

“We need to continue to grow as a district to make progress more quickly on the big goals we have for our students and staff,” Kimball said.

Kimball said one of the biggest issues that is difficult to address without enrollment growth is teacher and staff pay, which lags behind many districts, especially those in nearby — and growing — Johnson County.

The fact that Lawrence isn’t building very many single-family houses causes concern not only for Kimball, but also with the school board-hired consultants who were tasked with making enrollment projections for the district over the next several years.

Kimball said those consultants have given the district “information that leads me to believe that we may be a declining enrollment district for the next five years.” Given that the state bases a lot of its funding for K-12 education on a formula that pays the district based on the number of students it has, declining enrollments are likely to make for tighter financial times at the district. That would make the wage issue tough to address.

So, it is pretty clear that the issue of declining enrollment is one the school district should care about greatly. But what about declining single-family home construction? That’s different from declining enrollment.

Different but likely related, the district’s consultants suggest. One of the reasons Lawrence has seen population growth but declining school district enrollment is because different types of housing attract different types of people. Lawrence has been going through a more than decadelong transition to a place that builds far more apartments than it does single-family homes.

As we’ve reported, during the last decade Lawrence built 2.6 apartments for every single-family home that was constructed. That trend continued in 2022. The district’s consultants recently produced a number that shows why the trend should matter to school leaders.

The consultants found that single-family housing in the school district produces 34 school aged-children for every 100 single-family homes that exist in the district. For apartments, though, the number falls to just under 15 school-aged children for every 100 apartment units.

Those numbers make the fact that Lawrence now builds more than twice as many apartments as it does single-family homes a big deal for the district. A big enough deal that the school district and the city ought to be talking about it, Kimball said. She noted that the city currently is going through a major rewrite of its development code, which is expected to have a major impact on the shape and style of development in Lawrence for years to come. While the city has a group of stakeholders advising on those changes, Kimball said the district doesn’t have a representative.

“I would like for our development leaders to be more intentional about giving the school district a seat at the table in those conversations,” Kimball said.

She said such communication is critical because it has become clear that decisions that the city makes about development have many implications for the school district. That’s been the case for a long time. Look no further than the city’s decision to place Rock Chalk Park where it did. That $25 million city investment was partially meant to spur growth and development. However, much of the center actually is located in the Perry-Lecompton school district. Any homes built north of the center would add to that district’s enrollment totals rather than to Lawrence’s. That was a topic that really never came up between city and district leaders when Rock Chalk Park was built last decade.

After hearing Kimball’s comments, I caught up with Lawrence Mayor Lisa Larsen and asked her about a lack of representation from the district in the development code rewrite process. Larsen quickly agreed with Kimball’s assessment.

“I think she has a really valid point,” Larsen said. “I’m going to talk to our people about that.”

But I also wanted to know from Larsen whether she is buying into the argument that is often made by the building community about why Lawrence has a low supply of single-family homes being constructed. The development community said it simply is because there is a shortage of lots in the community. There are some segments of the community, though, that have scoffed at that notion over the years, chalking it up to developers simply wanting to be able to build whenever and wherever they please.

Larsen, though, isn’t scoffing. She told me she’s seen enough to conclude that Lawrence does have a problem with building lots.

“I totally agree that we definitely have a lot shortage that needs to be addressed,” Larsen said.

Why we have a lot shortage, though, is another question. There are definitely members of the development community who believe the city has created a hurdle by adding a new requirement to its annexation and zoning process. If you want to get new land brought into the city and zoned for a housing development, you have to convince city officials of the “community benefit” of such a project. In the past, such projects went in with an implied community benefit of providing a growing community with more places for people to live and the new construction would add to the community’s tax base. But, as I mentioned earlier, not everyone believes that single-family housing is a net benefit to the community’s tax base. Thus, what once was implied, the city wants to see explicitly stated.

At times, developers have struggled with what the city wants to hear. In early 2022, the planning commission failed to recommend approval of a housing development that would have added lots for 400 homes just north of Rock Chalk Park. The reason the planning commission didn’t recommend approval is because it did not hear an adequate community benefit.

There are certainly some people in the real estate industry who have argued that 400 new homes would make a dent in what has become a very tight housing market — so tight that the median number of days a home sat on the market before selling in 2022 was just four. Sellers have a big advantage over buyers, which is pushing selling prices for homes ever higher.

With all that background, I asked Larsen why the city wouldn’t consider the creation of single-family building lots in an extremely tight and expensive housing market a community benefit in and of itself.

Larsen — who never got a chance to vote on this particular project because it did not advance to the City Commission — acknowledged that the city might have to adopt the mindset that lots in and of themselves are a community benefit in this environment.

“I don’t leave anything off the table when it comes to a discussion of community benefit,” Larsen said. “It is something to consider.”

But Larsen also said she would want to know more about the types of houses that would go on such lots. Would they be $400,000-plus homes or something more affordable to the average Lawrence resident, she wondered.

But I asked, how much should that matter? There is definitely the theory that building $400,000-plus homes still helps with Lawrence’s affordability issue because it creates a greater supply overall. The argument goes like this: Some of the people who buy the new $400,000 homes are people who are living in existing $280,000 homes in Lawrence. As a result, Lawrence has more $280,000 homes on the market than it would have had otherwise. Some of the people who buy the newly available $280,000 homes live in existing $200,000 homes in Lawrence. As a result, you have more $200,000 homes available than you would otherwise have had. And so on.

“I have heard that argument often,” Larsen said. “There is definitely the possibility that could happen; as families upgrade it opens it up for others.”

But Larsen said she wanted to hear developers make the case that their development would produce that benefit. I didn’t hear Larsen say anything to lead me to believe she wants to get rid of the community benefit requirement that is now in the city’s code. She’s open to defining community benefit in a variety of ways, but it is incumbent on developers to spell out what it may be.

Larsen, of course, is just one of five votes on the City Commission. It will be interesting to watch where she and her fellow commissioners land on the issue. Indeed, if it is true that Lawrence’s school enrollment must grow in order for the district to meet its goals, it could be an interesting issue to many.

School board members, for one. And perhaps next, teachers and staff who want more pay.