KSHB 41 reporter Olivia Acree covers portions of Johnson County, Kansas. Share your story idea with Olivia.
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Johnson County, Kansas, is working to provide affordable housing assistance to residents who need it most.
However, the county can only provide a certain quantity of housing choice vouchers a year, and only a fraction of those residents can find housing due to few landlords accepting vouchers.
Johnson County opened its voucher waitlist in June and took 600 applicants.
But Heather McNeive, director of Johnson County Housing Services, explained the success rate of finding those people housing is around 5%.
“Johnson County is able to offer more rental assistance in the community than we have units available for those families to use their subsidy," McNeive said.
Brendon Pishny is the president of Landlords of Johnson County. He’s also a landlord who accepts vouchers.
Pishny decided to accept them because the county offers an incentive to landlords who will — one month’s rent.
“That got a lot of landlords on board to try the program with the hopes ... you have a good experience," he said. "Then, you're willing to do it again and again and again."
The goal is to get more landlords on board, but Pishny said he understands why some still have concerns.
“As housing providers, we're just there to provide the housing. We're not the social services side of things," he said. "If there's other things that are needed, the landlord wants to know that they're going to have that support they need beyond just the voucher supplemental income."
So far this year, the county has recruited around 50 new landlords, but that doesn’t fully solve the problem.
“There's a dramatic shortage. The demand is very high, and the supply is very low," McNeive said.
Unlike Lawrence and Kansas City, Missouri, Johnson County’s housing authority can’t require a landlord to take vouchers.
“We want to be in conversations whenever you punitively send something to a landlord or make them do something, they'll a lot of times leave the market. We want to know that we're a partner in this,” Pishny said.
Federal funding for the landlord incentive program runs out this year.
However, the county has approved $200,000 in the 2025 budget to keep the program running.
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