Co-Living Banned in Shawnee, Kansas

Don't get caught living with roommates in Shawnee, Kansas. The city council the city in Johnson County unanimously approved an ordinance that bans co-living arrangements throughout the city.

Aarón Torres reports on the council’s decision in an article for the Kansas City Star, explaining that the ordinance “defines a co-living group as a group of at least four unrelated adults living together in a dwelling unit. The ordinance stated that if one adult is unrelated to another adult, then the entire group will be classified as unrelated.”

According to Torres, the council supported even after hearing data about the rising cost of housing in the county, and the growing popularity of co-living as a response to high housing costs. Kristy Baughman, director of education and planning for United Community Services of Johnson County, is quoted in the arguing that the cost of housing is a “health equity issue.”

According to a separate article by Betsy Webster and Nathan Vickers for KCTV, the controversy over co-living housing has been simmering since co-living first came to the metropolitan area in 2018, but a large home on Hallet Street is inspiring recent controversy.

“A large home on Hallet Street has been getting the stink eye from neighbors for months. They remember when it went into foreclosure as a 4-bedroom, 3-bath home. Then they started seeing workers. They said the workers told them they were reconfiguring it to 7 bedrooms, which led them to start asking more questions,” according to Webster and Vickers.

“The concerns have been raised at city meetings for months, beginning with the planning commission, then with the city council. The council tweaked the charges recommended by the planning commission. One such change was to include the phrase co-living in the zoning rules rather than change a previously defined category to include the circumstances of co-living. Monday, the council voted unanimously to pass the revised changes,” add Webster and Vickers.