Politicians love ‘affordability’ rhetoric. But it hasn’t offered path to urban prosperity in Kansas.

While Wichita has seen much recent home construction, writes our columnist, the cheap structures look depressingly similar. (Dan Reynolds Photography/Getty Images)

Over the past several years, “affordability” has become a leading priority in American electoral politics. Sustained inflation during the Biden administration was a key issue during the 2024 presidential campaign, contributing to the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris and the return to the presidency of Donald Trump.

As many economists predicted, however, Trump’s tariffs have helped to keep prices high, and the war in Iran has further boosted prices for gasoline and a wide range of other consumer products.

In that context, it’s no surprise that Americans continue to voice concerns about affordability, and it stands to reason that those concerns would translate into consumer preferences on everything from laundry detergent to housing.

When it comes to the latter commodity, Wichita, where I live and work, gained sustained attention in May from a widely shared article in the Wall Street Journal featuring a provocative headline that might just as easily have been written by the local chamber of commerce: “Wichita Is a Rare Mecca of Affordability.”

With a premise drawn from a report by the real estate marketing firm RentCafe, the article led off with the bold proclamation that “Wichita is that rare American city betting its future on the middle class.”

The evidence used to support that claim consisted of some brief statistics on the low average rents in the city, an assertion by Wichita mayor Lily Wu that the city wants young people to relocate there and a clipped quotation from me.

“City leaders and business leaders have tried to capitalize on that inexpensive housing to try to lure new people to come here,” I remarked.

Not included in the article was what I said immediately afterward — that affordability strategy really hasn’t paid off well over the past half century.

In my new book, I examine several decades of failed aspirations, unfulfilled promises, and stagnant growth in Wichita. On a range of key economic and demographic indicators, the region has consistently fallen behind in its growth ambitions, trailing not just the major Sunbelt destinations that witnessed monumental growth in the late 20th Century, but also the smaller neighboring metropolitan regions of the Midwest and Great Plains, cities that serve as the peers against which Wichita often compares itself.

This trend was illustrated clearly in a 2020 Los Angeles Times examination that juxtaposed the diverging fortunes of Wichita and its nearby competitor, Omaha.

Those indicators include population growth, job growth, wage growth, and downtown commercial construction. But they also include trends in home price and rent appreciation, where growth in Wichita has been significantly slower in recent decades than in metropolitan Des Moines, Oklahoma City, Omaha and other regional competitors. In other words, even within this comparatively low-cost part of the country, Wichita stands out from other cities in terms of how cheap it is to own or rent a home.

It is true, then, that Wichita remains one of the most “affordable” regions to inhabit in the U.S. today, as it has for decades, but that affordability has not served as the demographic and economic boon suggested in the Journal article. Instead, it reflects the impact of sluggish housing demand and persistently low prevailing wages.

The troubling result of prioritizing “affordability” above all else can be seen most clearly in Wichita’s truly bizarre home building trends. The Journal alluded to this dynamic, stating that “rows of affordable duplexes are sprouting up for young families, retirees, and empty nesters.” That statement grossly understates the scope of duplex construction in this region.

Among all metropolitan areas where housing permits are currently tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau Building Permits Survey, the Wichita region was the 90th largest in terms of population in the year 2025. Given that, you might expect that Wichita would be ranked around #90 in issuing building permits for new housing units. But you would be wrong.

In terms of all units permitted, out of all urban areas, Wichita was ranked #94 in 2025. And for single-family homes, as well as units in large apartment buildings, Wichita’s ranking was far lower.

But on duplexes, the story was reversed. In the year 2025, across all U.S. urban areas, Wichita was ranked fourth in terms of the number of units permitted in two-unit structures. There were 1,428 such permits issued that year. In absolute numbers that placed the Wichita region behind only Houston, New York City, and Los Angeles, three of the five largest metropolitan areas in the country.

As a proportion of all units permitted in 2025, in the Wichita region duplexes made up 45.8% of the permits in 2025. There was no other urban area that even came close to that proportion. Among regions that permitted more than 1,000 total units in 2025, Wichita was the only one where more than 40% of the units permitted were duplexes.

Indeed, there were only six other regions nationwide in which more than 10% of units permitted were duplexes.

What are these structures? They are not the stately townhomes that the word “duplex” might convey. Their distinguishing aesthetic characteristic is that from the street you can’t really even see a dwelling at all — just a pair of oversized garage doors jutting out into adjacent driveways. The actual living quarters are tucked behind the garages, suggesting that vehicles are the primary occupants of these homes, not human beings.

They are hastily assembled slab-on-grade homes with no basements in the heart of Tornado Alley, set in monolithic rows stretching along isolated cul-de-sacs at the fringe of the metro area. They are so uniform that, as you drive down the street, you’ll have to count the number of driveways you pass in order to remember where you live.

Responding to this spree of cheap, lifeless construction, several local communities have begun eying potential regulations to make these structures more aesthetically appealing, including such onerous requirements as the mandate that they feature street-facing windows.

In response, the president of the politically influential Wichita Area Builders Association recently warned the city manager of Goddard that these duplexes are “the only ‘affordable’ housing options for those entering the market with the wages we have here” and that placing additional strictures on builders “will certainly increase costs on builders/developers, which will be passed on to the end user.”

In practice, then, ensuring that Wichita remains a “mecca of affordability” often means catering to the demands of developers to keep their own costs low, while offering renters few options other than depressing, low-quality homes in far-flung, amenity-starved parts of the region.

As Matthew Yglesias recently observed, a relentless focus on “affordability” drives down egalitarian ambitions, furthering an agenda of doing less in order to stretch each public dollar, rather than promoting robust growth and prosperity. A true “affordability agenda,” he asserts, is “an agenda for more economic growth and higher incomes.”

He’s right. This region’s lackluster economic performance vis-à-vis peer cities suggests that the Wichita model of affordability — low average incomes, slow growth, and monotonous cheap housing — isn’t very inspiring. Wichita is a “mecca of affordability for the middle class” only if we dial down our expectations for what we think a middle-class lifestyle should afford.

We can, and should, aim higher.