photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

A single-family home under construction along Cedar Grove Way in west Lawrence is shown on July 7, 2025.

If your hobby is hanging out at Lawrence City Commission candidate forums, you have likely noticed that affordable housing has arguably emerged as the top issue in this campaign.

You’ve also likely heard all four candidates — to varying degrees — say that the first step to tackling the affordable housing issue is to simply build more houses.

If for some reason hanging out at candidate forums isn’t exciting enough, you could expand your hobby by also reading Lawrence building permit reports. A quick read of those reports serves as a reminder of why the “build more” mantra is taking hold.

With three-quarters of the year now complete, Lawrence is absolutely on pace to set — for the second consecutive year — a record low for single-family housing starts. As was the case when we provided an update at the halfway point of the year, the rural areas of Douglas County are now building far more single family homes than what is occurring inside the city limits of Lawrence.

Through September, city officials have issued 24 single family building permits. That is down more than 35% from 38 building permits the city had issued during the same period last year. As a reminder, Lawrence went on to set a record low for single family building permits for 2024, issuing 57 single-family building permits for the year.

So, unless Lawrence builders start at least 33 new homes in the remaining three months of the year — certainly not an impossibility but not likely given the current trends — Lawrence will set a record low number, again.

Indeed, this has become a multi-year occurrence. Lawrence set a record low in 2022 with 79 single-family building permits. That was the lowest number recorded since at least 1956, when the city began tracking building permit totals. In 2024, Lawrence shattered that record low with the 57 single family building permits.

Saying that the city’s housing industry is setting record lows is one thing, but it may not fully express how far the housing industry has fallen. For that, I point to this stat that I found while compiling years of building permit numbers: Going back to 1956, there have only been four years when Lawrence has not built at least 100 single-family homes. Three of the four were 2022, 2023, and 2024. It is all but certain that 2025 will be added to the list.

To be clear, though, 100 homes would have been considered a slow year during most of Lawrence’s recent history. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Lawrence constructed more than 300 single-family homes per year for 11 consecutive years, and generally was considered one of the busier housing markets in the state.

Now, Lawrence is not even the busiest housing market in Douglas County. The rural areas of Douglas County — this doesn’t include the city limits of Baldwin City, Eudora or Lecompton — has seen 45 single-family housing starts through the end of September.

Urban planners would not be pleased with those numbers. Both city and county planners have stressed that the most efficient way to provide new housing in a community is on smaller lots in city neighborhoods, not the five-acre or more configurations that are common in rural Douglas County.

Lawrence builders have been following that cue to some degree. The city has issued 22 permits for duplex homes. That is up from just one such permit during the same time a year ago. So, construction of duplexes, or townhomes, as they are sometimes called, have soared, although they are far from a historic high.

But that is an important caveat in all these housing numbers. It would be inaccurate to say that Lawrence is setting record lows in all housing starts. Single family homes are less common than ever, but when you combine single family and duplex homes, Lawrence will have more new housing units come on the market than it did a year ago.

And, of course, none of this factors in apartments. Over the last decade or so, apartments have been the most frequent type of new housing added to the Lawrence market.

In a sense, we really have two large stories going on in the Lawrence housing market. The first is this multi-year plunge in single family housing starts in Lawrence. That’s the story that has gotten most of the headlines. But there also is an emerging story about how Lawrence is changing its view of what traditional housing looks like. The city is clearly encouraging — mainly through its zoning and development code — houses that are built on smaller lots, or are either part of a duplex or row house type of development.

The most interesting part of that story is whether that view of smaller is better is shared by the house buying public. I explored that topic in a July article that reported on the different approach that nearby Baldwin City is taking. That community of about 5,000 people has made ready about 120 building lots. Most of them are of a traditional size that is now about 40% larger than the 5,000-square foot building lots that the Lawrence code encourages.

The findings from that article were that home construction is happening at a faster pace in Baldwin City than Lawrence, but how much the difference in size is playing into the equation is unclear. But real estate agents I spoke with said the issue of size is an open question. Will buyers want what Lawrence is selling?

The other question that seems to be out there are what are the spin-off consequences from going smaller in the housing market. Certainly, planners are betting that it will help make the cost of housing more affordable, and will make overall city services more efficient to deliver if the city is more compact. But there could also be other questions to answer, such as whether the smaller footprint housing will serve as an adequate housing option for families with school-age children.

As the Lawrence public school system struggles to grow enrollment, the question of housing types is salient. Plus, if you also spend some of your time at school board candidate forums, you’ve likely heard that some school board candidates don’t think the city has been involving the school district enough in some of these big picture issues.

It will be interesting to see where the numbers end the year for Lawrence building totals. While the housing starts don’t yet reflect it, there are lots coming on the market for building. The Beth’s Ranch neighborhood at the southeast corner of George Williams Way and Sixth Street has new construction underway. When completed, there will be 24 single-family homes and 82 townhomes.

But now a question has become, even if a lot is available, when new housing construction might begin on it. Some builders have said new housing starts are likely to slow while the market tries to determine if mortgage interest rates are set to fall.