Nonprofit revitalizing KC’s urban core
A million-dollar revitalization project inaugurated in summer 2016 is making progress. Since launching “Restore the Core” a little over a year ago, Neighborhoods United has rehabbed six of the 20 houses it has purchased. The nonprofit sold two and is renting the others. The goal is to obtain 350 blighted, abandoned houses and 75 vacant overgrown lots in the urban core over the next eight years and make the properties livable, single-family dwellings.
“Restore the Core specializes in housing homeless veterans and people with chronic disabilities,” says Bill Kimble. “We’re taking distressed, blighted properties, gutting them to the studs and rebuilding with new roof, windows, doors, plumbing, wiring, floors and fixtures. We’re giving a good quality product to the neighborhood and helping raise appraised value.”
Kimble, who founded Neighborhoods United in 2010 to help the urban core become self-sufficient, says the houses he’s rehabbing demonstrate that there’s high-quality market-rate housing in the urban core constructed by local workers.
“Unions say they can’t find trained workers in the urban core,” Kimble says. “We’re going to change that.”
A component of the Restore campaign is to help fill a critical shortage of skilled laborers in the urban core. Kimble is working with the Full Employment Council to develop an apprenticeship program.
“We’ll train them in construction, and unions will be able to handpick workers from our ranks,” he says.
Restore houses will be designed for the potential tenant. Kimble says he’s using universal design, which involves creating functional space that meets the accessibility needs of anyone with mobility or other disability issues. In accord with universal design principles, he considers such features as countertop heights, doorway widths, wide-open spaces, grab bars and railings, ramps, slip-resistant floors and upgrading electrical wiring to accommodate medical equipment.
“We even retrofit homes for quadriplegics,” Kimble says.
He cites the Vineyard neighborhood project as an example. Restore is rehabbing abandoned duplexes in a four-block radius on Kansas City’s east side, south of downtown.
“The houses are one-level, ranch style,” Kimble says. “They’re perfect for wheelchairs.”
Restore is selling the rehabbed energy efficient duplexes.
“Homeownership is a major key,” Kimble says. “Out of 10 houses we’ll sell six and rent four. Most of the people we rent to don’t have large incomes; we don’t want to concentrate poor people in one area.”
Monthly rent in rehabbed Restore houses runs about $600 and doesn’t currently include utilities. Kimble says the government subsidizes most of Restore’s renter pool.
He’s laying the groundwork to extend Restore, which includes landscaping and rehabbing exterior features, to blighted neighborhoods in Independence, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan.
“This is a bi-state campaign,” Kimble says.
He’s been a general contractor for 15 years and represents Jackson County’s 16th Ward as a committeeman.
Neighborhoods United is partnering on Restore with a number of organizations, including the Economic Development Corporation and Mid America Regional Council.
“Restore the Core is a public-private partnership,” Kimble says. “A number of organizations are putting our heads together to solve problems. Scott Wagner (1st District at-large councilman and mayor pro tem) has been very helpful suggesting how Kansas City can be part of what we’re doing.”
As homes are rehabbed and occupied, Neighborhoods United will use “project identifiers” to track how the project is impacting neighborhood urban living standards, such as life expectancy, adult obesity, registered voters, teen pregnancies and murder and unemployment rates.
“Projects like Restore the Core go a long way in helping to revitalize distressed areas of town,” Kimble says.
