Kansas City's First Certified Passive House Designed Specifically for Affordable, Infill Development
Kala and
The Way Home, a local non-profit that facilitates affordable homeownership opportunities, and ReNew KC Neighborhoods, an organization working to relieve the housing crisis, have partnered to design and construct high-performance, attainable housing. Together, this project will produce quality, single-family homes that are affordable up-front and sustainable long term due to low monthly maintenance and utility bills.
Building community, one vacant lot at a time.
The first home in this collaboration is certified through Passive House Institute of the US (Phius) and satisfies the Phius CORE 2024 requirements – the most demanding green building standard in the world. Building to the passive house standard reshapes the future of any building and its neighborhood. The durability and resilience of a passive structure is unmatched and it will grace the Ivanhoe neighborhood for decades to come with minimal maintenance costs due to passive house design requirements.
The home is a 1,200-square-foot residence that requires minimal energy to heat and cool year-round, lowering energy costs by up to 80% compared to traditional housing and allowing homeowners to allocate their resources elsewhere. The design will also deliver the health and comfort benefits that are part of every passive house building.
Despite its compact size, this home offers three bedrooms, including a formal primary suite that serves as a true sanctuary for the parents/primary homeowner. While built slab-on-grade, the home is equipped with a storm shelter, ensuring safety for the entire family during tornados or other major storms. This house proves you don't need to build bigger to live better.
“Ensuring high-efficiency homes is not only the right thing to do in a climate-extreme region like KC – it’s also how we support long-term housing affordability,” said Anna White, Director of Strategic Partnerships of The Way Home.
“The energy burden is a reality that must be factored into what providers consider sustainable, responsible housing options for our community. We are grateful to be partnering with Kala in a single-family, urban infill project that will ensure a healthy home and extremely low utility costs – allowing households to invest their limited resources in other priorities.”
The Way Home
The Way Home's mission is to increase access and decrease barriers for low-income households seeking affordable, sustainable homeownership. To do that, they are supporting innovative models for household support and home construction that meet the reality of today’s challenges. Whether that means simultaneously pursuing workforce, health, sustainability or neighborhood investment goals - the purpose of each home is to benefit the entire community while also supporting the individual household for generations to come.
The Way Home x Kala collaboration will provide several economic advantages:
FUTURE AFFORDABILITY
The home will go into the Community Land Trust to ensure long-term affordability for lower income households into the future
BUILD COMMUNITY
This project will enable households that have been local renters in the Ivanhoe neighborhood to become local owners, building community
TAX BENEFITS
The property will have a 10-year tax abatement
