photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A home under construction near 17th and Harper streets is shown on Jan. 7, 2025.

Lawrence not only set a new record low for single-family home construction in 2024, it took a hammer and saw to the old record and demolished it.

The City of Lawrence issued just 57 single-family building permits during the last year, which was well below the previous low-water mark of 79 single-family building permits, set in 2022.

In other words, Lawrence broke the record low by nearly 30%.

The numbers say that 2024 was the worst year for single-family construction in Lawrence since at least 1956, which is the earliest local building permit data is readily available. While the 2024 numbers were 27% below the 2022 record low, they were down nearly 42% from 2023 totals, when Lawrence builders started 98 single-family homes.

“I definitely would say ‘lack of opportunity’ would be the way to describe it,” Trent Santee, outgoing president of the Lawrence Home Builders Association, said of 2024.

Another way to describe the year: Against the grain. Lawrence home building is running counter to both national and regional trends. Nationally, through November, single-family home construction is up 8% from a year ago, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s monthly homes report. In the Kansas City metro area, through October, single family home construction is up about 5%.

Lawrence home builders all year have been saying that the reason for low housing starts in the city is because of a lack of approved building lots in the city limits. Local builders actually have been saying that for the past several years.

Indeed, there is reason to believe that Lawrence is in the greatest home-building slump of the city’s history. The city has now built fewer than 100 new homes for three consecutive years, and that is believed to have never happened before in the city’s modern history. City records show a sub-100 year has only happened four times since 1956 — 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2011.

The numbers are a reversal from a previous decade when Lawrence was generally considered one of the busiest home building markets in the state. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Lawrence constructed more than 300 single-family homes per year for 11 consecutive years.

Today, Lawrence is building fewer homes than many nearby communities a fraction of its size. Through October, the town of Basehor — population 7,700 — has built 84 single-family homes, Shawnee — population 69,000 — has built 73, and Spring Hill — population 9,600 — has built 206 single-family homes, for example.

Bobbie Flory, executive director of the Lawrence Home Builders Association, said Lawrence’s laggard numbers will play a role in the city’s overall economy. She said businesses of all types — retailers, service providers and even industrial users — look at household growth numbers as they are deciding where to invest. City officials rely on those commercial businesses to help fund the city’s budget, she noted.

“What happens is it puts more pressure on our existing taxpayers to pay for everything,” Flory said. “So, it is not just the builders who are feeling this.”

Public school officials also may be feeling the impacts of fewer single-family homes. During the last decade, Lawrence’s population grew by 7% but the school district’s enrollment declined by 4%. Some argue that Lawrence’s population has grown through apartment residents who often don’t have school-age children. Those families, the argument goes, are locating in area communities where single-family home construction is a larger part of the building scene. Eudora, for example, during the last decade saw its overall population grow by 4% but its school enrollment increased by 8%.

The group that may be feeling it the most, however, are people looking to buy a home. Housing prices have been rising in Lawrence and most other communities. But in September, a national report — by the trade journal Construction Coverage — did list Lawrence as one of the communities with the slowest rates of new housing growth. The same report, which used 2023 numbers, also showed the Lawrence metro area had one of the highest prices for a “typical home” in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas, using data from the real estate company Zillow. Only the Fayetteville, Ark. metro had a higher typical home price.

Santee said Lawrence’s affordability issue has been a tough one to battle. He said, at times, it seems like the community has been reluctant to support approval of some new housing developments because they see that new homes in the development will cost well more than $300,000, which doesn’t square with an affordable vision for many. Santee said he understands the perception, but said the issues that are driving those housing prices up are national, not local.

“A lot of times we are dealing with the local politics of trying to fix what is a national problem,” Santee said. “We can’t control interest rates. We can’t control tariffs that cause everything to go up. The only thing we can control is the supply of homes.”

Lawrence builders have been saying they think affordability in Lawrence will gradually improve if homes are built in greater quantity. The idea isn’t universally accepted, however. Some academics argue that a housing shortage isn’t the driving factor, saying Lawrence’s population numbers compared to its growth in housing units doesn’t support such a theory. Plus, there are frequent debates at Lawrence City Hall over whether traditional single-family housing pays for itself or whether the amount of infrastructure and services required to support such homes is a net negative to the city’s finances.

Home builders have argued against such theories, but Santee said there is a less academic debate that often impacts the ability to build new homes in Lawrence — a NIMBY or “not in my backyard” argument.

“We have people from all sides of the political spectrum who get up there and say ‘not in my backyard,'” Santee said.

He said groups of neighbors who oppose projects often carry sway at Lawrence City Commission hearings. They often make appealing arguments about Lawrence’s quality of life and urge commissioners to strive for more than what is happening in every other community. Santee, a Lawrence native who grew up in the construction industry, said he understands the arguments about Lawrence’s desire to be a special place.

“I feel like our community at large has tried to say, ‘we can do better,'” Santee said. “That is generally a good thing, but then you try to do perfect, and you don’t do anything.”