Please join us at the Center for Architecture and Design on Thursday, August 21 from 8:30am-9:30am for a discussion on the state of housing across the nine-county, bi-state Kansas City metro. MARC research indicates that we need more than 24K additional housing units to meet today's demand. Additionally, more than 64K rental households are cost-burdened: people living in units that cost more than 30% of their income. 

Convened and supported by Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) and LISC Greater Kansas City, the Regional Housing Partnership mission is to foster a thriving housing system that produces and sustains a sufficient supply of quality, diverse housing options. By building relationships and gaining a common understanding of both problems and possible solutions, the Regional Housing Partnership will encourage and support actions from policy and process change to funding and capacity-building.

What is our collective impact as architects and what could we do as a chapter -- representing talent that has reached far beyond our metro -- to address housing supply? We invite you to join us for a presentation on the Regional Housing Partnership and Fund. We will then discuss what steps we might take as AIA Kansas City.

Speakers:

Geoff Jolley, Executive Director, LISC Greater Kansas City: A Kansas City native, Geoff joined the LISC team in September 2019 as the Executive Director.  He is a seasoned policy expert with strong community connections, having spent more than 13 years as the District Director and General Counsel for U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, II, who represents Missouri’s Fifth Congressional District.  In addition to his public policy leadership, Geoff spent more than a decade as a Kansas City firefighter and EMT.  He continues to serve as a Rescue Specialist on a FEMA Urban Search & Rescue team, having responded to multiple natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina and an EF-5 tornado in Joplin, MO.  Geoff’s most unique experience was spending six months in Antarctica as a contract firefighter at McMurdo Station, a U.S. National Science Foundation research hub.  Geoff is married to a Kansas City public school teacher and has two young daughters who both attend Kansas City Public Schools.  Their family resides in a century-old home in the Historic Northeast neighborhood.

Ashley Z. Hand, AIA – MARC Director of Local Government Services: Ashley Z. Hand, AIA is the Director of Local Government Service at the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC), a nonprofit council of governments serving nine counties and 119 cities across the bi-state Kansas City metro. An urbanist at her core, Ashley’s 25-year career has spanned both the public and private sectors in some of the greatest US cities. As an entrepreneur, she co-founded the award-winning practice Cityfi, focused on urban change management during a period of rapid technological innovation. She’s worked with local governments, foundations, tech companies and start-ups to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in our cities through collaboration and co-creation. On the public sector side, Ashley was appointed the first Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Kansas City, MO and Transportation Technology Strategist for the City of Los Angeles where she led a variety of efforts to modernize public policy and processes, foster new business models, and prepare organizations for inevitable change. A registered architect in the states of Missouri and Kansas, Ashley currently serves as the President of the American Institute of Architects, Kansas City Chapter.

Joshua Akers, Ph.D., Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Director in Research, Learning, and Evaluation: Joshua Akers, Ph.D., is a director in Research, Learning, and Evaluation for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, where he provides leadership for developing and improving operations for all research-related initiatives to facilitate research and knowledge generation. Dr. Akers will place special emphasis on actionable and practical research that can inform policy and programmatic strategies for the Foundation and the communities it serves. Prior to joining the Foundation, Dr. Akers served research manager with at the Mid-America Regional Council in Kansas City, Missouri. He received his Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and earned his Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Toronto.