What “housing, housing, housing” is doing politically

Yes — there are official reports. And no, the “housing shortage” talk is not only about free housing for the homeless. Officials are folding several different problems into one slogan.

The reports they actually cite

The city’s main document is the Citywide Housing Market Study and Strategy (July 2020). It still underpins later RHID write-ups, the 2024 implementation-plan metrics, Consolidated Plan language, and a lot of council/chamber talking points.

HUD’s latest independent snapshot is the Topeka Housing Market Profile as of April 1, 2025. It does not describe a collapsing market. It calls the sales market balanced and the rental market slightly tight.

Other numbers in circulation:

• AEI Housing Center (March 2026): Kansas as a whole is short about 4,200 homes — roughly 0.3% of statewide stock. That is a modest gap, not a 10,000-unit local emergency.
• City Manager Robert Perez (Feb 2026): about 900 units short downtown.
• Topeka Housing Authority CEO Trey George (March 2026): Topeka needs roughly 10,000 additional units across all price ranges. That figure is much larger than HUD or AEI and looks like several 20-year “need” buckets stacked together.
• A 2022 RHID needs memo updated the 2020 study to about 2,367 units of net demand for a “balanced” market.

So the reports exist. The size of the shortage depends on who is talking and what they are counting.

What the market actually looks like

Topeka is not San Francisco or Austin. Prices are still low by national standards, and there is not a raw “no roofs left” crisis.

Sales

• HUD: sales vacancy about 1.2%; market balanced. Average sale price about $236,000 in the year ending Feb 2025, up 7%.
• Recent local/realtor figures: median sale often in the $184,000–$227,500 range; homes sell fast (roughly 8–19 days) at or near list. Demand for existing houses is real.

Rentals

• HUD: overall rental vacancy 7.4% (down from 9.9% in 2020); apartments about 7.2%; average apartment rent about $941. “Slightly tight,” not a 1% vacancy squeeze.
• Listing sites put typical Topeka rents around $850–$1,000. Cheap compared with the country; still a stretch for low-wage households.

Population

• HUD: Topeka MSA population about 233,000, basically unchanged from 2020. This is not a boomtown absorbing tens of thousands of new households.

The 2020 city study itself said something officials rarely repeat: Topeka already had enough units to house everyone and then some, with about 6,000 vacant units (11%), and vacancy as high as 17–21% in parts of east and central Topeka. More than 40% of the stock was built before 1960. The problem they defined was quality, price, type, and location — not a missing 10,000 empty lots.

That mismatch still explains a lot: empty or worn houses in older neighborhoods, and a tight market for decent starter homes, townhomes, and clean rentals.

Production is the real constraint they can point to

Where the “shortage” claim is strongest is how little has been built since 2008.

• Shawnee County private housing permits: 540 (2021), then 199 / 206 / 218 in 2022–2024. The Chamber’s line is that average annual permits are down about two-thirds from the five years before the 2008 crash.
• City of Topeka 2024: 112 new housing units permitted inside the city. That is a trickle.
• 2025 city YTD through early November jumped because of multifamily: 350 residential units, including 250 in 5+ unit buildings. That is downtown/incentive-driven product, not a wave of $200k starter houses.
• HUD (year ending March 2025): about 330 for-sale units permitted metro-wide and only 40 rental units.

The 2020 study wanted hundreds of units a year. The city has mostly delivered far fewer, except when a big apartment deal lands.

Homelessness is a separate, smaller number

Latest official Point-in-Time count (June 24, 2026):

• 460 people / 379 households
• 202 unsheltered
• Down from a peak of 546 in July 2024 and 502 in January 2026.

That is a serious local problem. It is not a 5,000- or 10,000-unit housing gap. PIT counts also miss people doubled up, and they do not measure addiction, mental illness, or whether someone will stay housed. Treating street homelessness as if it were just “we didn’t build enough apartments” is the part of the rhetoric that does not hold up.

Subsidized housing waitlists are a better measure of income-restricted demand:

• Public housing: 744 THA units; waitlist recently cited around 300.
• Section 8: list was closed for years with 2,000+ names; THA briefly reopened it in spring 2026 after working through that backlog. About 938 Housing Choice Vouchers in use.

That is real need at the bottom of the income scale. It is still not the same thing as “Topeka has no housing.”

What “housing, housing, housing” is doing politically

Officials are bundling four products under one word:

1. Low-income / LIHTC / public housing / vouchers — waitlists, trust fund, possible extra sales tax slice.
2. Workforce / “missing middle” — duplex/triplex/quad changes, starter product that private builders have not delivered at volume.
3. Downtown and market-rate apartments — The Hutch (~192 units), Union at Tower District, tax incentives. Perez has said those two projects are “a little over 400 units” at both ends of attainability.
4. Homeless services and shelters — Compassion Impact Center, CoC funding, PIT counts.

City Manager Perez has also floated a tenth-of-a-cent sales tax: about $4 million a year, split between the affordable housing trust fund and a market-rate housing fund. That tells you the slogan is being used to justify both social housing and developer incentives.

The 2024 implementation metrics showed the city lagging its own targets, especially workforce rentals (only a handful counted toward a 400-unit goal). Affordable-rental counts looked better mostly because of emergency vouchers and LIHTC, not a private building boom.

What’s really going on

• There is an official study trail. The 2020 city study is the mother document.
• There is underbuilding of new, livable product — especially starter homes and good mid-price rentals — after 2008.
• There is cost burden at the bottom: the 2020 study said about 30% of households paid more than 30% of income for housing, and it estimated a need on the order of 5,000 units at or below 60% of AMI.
• There is not a citywide unit shortage on the scale of the loudest quotes. HUD still calls sales balanced. Vacancy in older neighborhoods has been high. Population is flat.
• Homelessness is real (~460 people) and is not the same problem as “we need 10,000 more units.”
• “Housing shortage” is now a policy umbrella: it supports zoning changes, land-bank lots, LIHTC, Housing Trust Fund money, and tax breaks for downtown apartments.

The cleanest way to hear the slogan is: officials are short of the kind of housing they want to take credit for building — subsidized, workforce, and new downtown product — while the existing cheap-but-tired stock and a small unsheltered population get rolled into the same speech.

Dark Money Killed the Right to Vote Amendment

From: Rep. Pat Proctor <pat@patproctor4ks.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 3, 2026 3:02 PM
To: mcre13@gmail.com <mcre13@gmail.com>
Subject: Dark Money Killed the Right to Vote Amendment

Henry, The Axis of Ballot Harvesting and its allies spent 19 million dollars in dark money to defeat the Right to Vote amendment and keep you from electing y

View this email in your browser Support Our Campaign With your help, we put up record-setting fundraising numbers in 2025. But the Axis of Ballot Harvesting has struck back in 2026, showering my Democrat opponent with over $180,000 in cash from the George Soros, foreign billionaires, and left-wing radicals on the East and West Coast. I need your help! Every contribution, no matter the size, brings us closer to victory. Click the button below to join me in this critical mission. Contribute DARK MONEY KILLED THE RIGHT TO VOTE AMENDMENT The Axis of Ballot Harvesting and its allies spent $19 million in dark money to defeat the Right to Vote amendment and keep you from electing your own Supreme Court justices. This massive influx of out-of-state cash, spent on deceptive and outright false ads and mailers, makes it clear why we must get foreign and dark money out of Kansas politics. In this edition of the Proctor Election Report, I will discuss the troubling sources for the money spent to defeat the Right to Vote amendment, detail my ongoing fight to get foreign money and dark money out of our elections, and explain why we need a Secretary of State who will actually defend our election laws. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with ALEC TV to talk about the work I have done as the Chair of the House Elections Committee to restore confidence in our elections here in Kansas by combating dark money and foreign influence in our politics. Kansas elections should be decided by Kansas voters, not by China or foreign billionaires. This August, Kansas voters had a chance to abolish the unaccountable, lawyer-controlled nominating commission that picks our state Supreme Court justices. The Right to Vote amendment would have restored transparency by allowing citizens to directly elect our highest court. It was a simple fix to return power to the people. In a recent decision, the Kansas Supreme Court came within just a single vote of stripping the state legislature of its constitutional authority to write our state's election laws. If just one more justice had flipped, activist judges would have had the power to strike down every common-sense safeguard we've passed—from signature verification to bans on ballot harvesting. That's why I fought so hard for Kansans to take back the court! But we were simply overwhelmed by millions in dark money, some of it apparently from foreign sources. The radical Left relies on activist judges to legislate from the bench and rewrite laws they cannot stop in the legislature. So they spent millions in dark money--buying thousands of hours of false and misleading ads--to keep you from having a voice and to protect their control over the courts. Planned Parenthood and Axis of Ballot Harvesting charter member, the ACLU, funneled over $19 million into Kansas to defeat the amendment. Much of this money came from out-of-state billionaires and George Soros-linked nonprofits, many of which are linked to foreign billionaires. “On Aug. 4 Kansas voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have changed how state supreme court justices are selected. The measure failed 61% to 39%... “Those opposing the amendment raised about $13.7 million while those supporting it raised only about $3.4 million. Over $4 was raised to oppose the amendment for every $1 raised by those supporting it... “The dominant opposition player was a progressive group (KUIC) with two very similar names, but registered in Kansas as two business entities: Kansans United for Impartial Courts (KnsUIC) Kansas United for Impartial Courts (KsUIC) “KnsUIC and KsUIC share the same board of directors: Evan Gates (Kansas Values Institute employee) Micah Kubic (ACLU-Kansas, Executive Director) Emily Wales (Planned Parenthood Great Plains, President and CEO)” Earl F Glynn Watchdog Lab August 28, 2026 Learn More I have spent the last four years as Chairman of the Elections Committee fighting this exact kind of dark money and foreign influence. We cannot allow shadowy nonprofits to dictate how Kansas runs its elections. After a Swiss billionaire poured $1.2 million into defeating the Value Them Both amendment in 2022, I carried and passed the law banning foreign money from Kansas constitutional amendment campaigns. This common-sense safeguard closed a massive loophole that allowed foreign nationals to put their thumb on the scale of our elections and rewrite our constitution. Not surprisingly, the ACLU immediately sued to stop it. They are desperate to keep their foreign funding pipelines open so they can continue subverting our elections. And the massive influx of money into this election appears to show they have found ways to circumvent the law. Last year, I passed a ban on foreign money in Kansas Elections.  Not surprisingly, the ACLU and its allies, awash in foreign money, sued to try to stop me. Moreover, the radical Left does not just use dark money in ballot campaigns. It appears they are also exploiting loopholes in our campaign finance laws to funnel unknown money directly to Democrat candidates. Last year, I called for and led a special committee hearing to investigate the Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue. We heard shocking testimony from retired data scientist Earl Glynn about a fraudulent practice called "smurfing." Bad actors use the stolen identities of everyday Americans to make thousands of tiny donations, evading detection and disclosure requirements. Even Democrat Governor Laura Kelly and Johnson County Democrat Congresswoman Sharice Davids are implicated in these accusations. Earl F. Glynn spoke to the Wichita Pachyderm Club on the topic of dark money in politics at the club’s April 17, 2026, luncheon. Glynn is a retired data scientist who retired in 2022 after a career research and development for large medical companies. He also worked for the CIA.  In 2024 Glynn was appointed to the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission by Attorney General Kris Kobach. Glynn has degrees in engineering and computer science from Kansas State University. This vulnerability allows unknown, and potentially foreign, money to flow right into Kansas Democrat's campaigns. We must require transparency and close these loopholes to ensure our election system is not subverted by foreign interference. Now, this same network of dark money is trying to buy the Secretary of State office. My opponent, California Democrat Jennifer Day, was recently endorsed by March On PAC. This out-of-state political action committee is funded by the exact same radical Left dark money network that pours millions into Kansas to fight every single law I pass to restore confidence in our elections. My opponent, California Democrat Jennifer Day, is endorsed by a massive left-wing PAC that has poured hundreds of thousands of dollars of dark money support into her campaign. What do they think they are buying? This definitely isn't a reflection of the quality of the candidate. She abandoned her post as a State Representative after serving only one year of the two-year term she had committed to her neighbors to serve.  It's because they will have her in their pockets. She's a quitter who defends illegal non-citizen voting and is bought and paid for with dark money. How hard do you think she will fight to defend the laws I have passed to ban foreign funding when her friends at the ACLU and March On PAC the Secretary of State use that same funding to tear them down? She will simply step aside and let them dismantle our election system from within. “A women-led political action committee (PAC) that has spent the last several election cycles targeting key races across the country is pointing to a string of recent endorsements and victories as evidence of its growing influence in Democratic politics. “March On PAC, founded in the wake of the 2016 election, has built its strategy around backing candidates it describes as “bold Democratic leaders,” with a focus on reproductive rights, voting access, economic issues, and racial justice...   “In its latest statements, the PAC made clear it sees its work as part of a longer political fight, tying individual race outcomes to national stakes.   “We don’t just talk about change,' the organization said. 'We invest in it.'” Stacy M. Brown The Washington Informer April 13, 2026 Learn More I have relentlessly defended our election system against the Axis of Ballot Harvesting and their foreign-funded lawsuits as the Chairman of the House Elections Committee. With your help, I will continue that fight as your next Secretary of State. I produce this weekly newsletter, the Proctor Election Report, because it's important to me, as the Chairman of the House Committee on Elections and a candidate to serve you as Kansas Secretary of State, to keep you informed on the latest developments in Kansas elections. But I also want to focus on the subjects that are of interest to you. Is there a topic you would like me to discuss in a future edition? Do you have feedback or questions on the topics in this edition? Please REPLY to this email. I respond personally to every reply I receive to this newsletter. I look forward to hearing from you! Copyright © 2026 Pat Proctor for Kansas, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in by providing us with your email address. Our mailing address is: Pat Proctor for Kansas PO Box 3421 Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. Any solicitation contained herein is not intended for lobbyists, political committees, or persons other than individuals. Paid for by Proctor for Kansas, Amy Cawvey, Treasurer