INSPIRE 309: HOUSING IN KANSAS

(upbeat music) - Welcome.

We're so glad you're joining us here on Inspire.

Thank you so much.

We all need a place to call home, but for many, affording a place to live can be a real challenge.

On today's show, we talk to some experts who share resources, which make housing more attainable.

Up next on Inspire.

(soft tune) - [Announcer] Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

- [Announcer] The friends of KTWU, honored to support programs and services that enrich the lives of our viewers.

- [Announcer] And the Raymond C. and Marguerite Gibson Foundation.

(upbeat music) - Hello, welcome to Inspire.

Thank you for watching.

I'm so excited to be here with these wonderful women, Danielle Norwood, Amy Kelly, and you watching.

Thank you so much.

You know, home is where the heart is.

It's where we feel safe, where we create memories and where we enjoy the company of family and friends.

A home is more than just four walls and a roof.

It's a symbol of hope, security, and the American dream.

- But for many, finding a home that is both affordable and suitable can be really a challenge.

And for some, it's not just a matter of finding a place to live, but also keeping a roof over their heads.

The cost of housing, utilities, home repairs, and property taxes can be a real burden, especially for those on a fixed income.

- On today's show, we're discussing housing issues, examining some of the challenges that many face in finding an affordable place to live.

Joining us today is Abigail Panecatl, Tenant Landlord program manager at Housing and Credit Counseling Incorporated.

Welcome to Inspire, Abigail.

- Thank you for having me.

I appreciate the invitation.

- Well, I want to start out by talking about why having a home is so foundational to most people.

- Well, that is, as already mentioned, it's the basics of just that feeling of safety.

Where to start your day, where to come after the end of a crazy, eventful day and simply rest.

Simply be safe.

Simply have a place to be warm.

- So you say that finding a place you know that is safe and secure is very important.

I think we all would agree with that.

Well, what are some of the warning signs that some tenants may look for before they rent a house?

What are the things they should be looking for?

- The most frequent situations that I get to hear is, is simply, you know, not being completely informed of what type of housing they are being delivered.

I think the first item they should be looking for is simply to be informed of what actually they are signing in for.

What actually they are leasing, not you know, commit, of course it's their option if they do want to commit to a rental that they have not seen.

But that's not something that we do recommend.

So the first thing that they should be looking for is to be able to see that place, see what it looks like in that community that they're possibly getting ready to join, what it looks like during the day, what it looks like during the night, what type of resources there are around, is there a grocery store nearby that I'm going to need to have If I don't have transportation?

Is there a specific school district that I need my children to belong to?

All those decisions need to be made before you are stuck in a lease.

- How can housing and credit counseling help?

You have given us so many questions that possibly haven't even been thought about.

What steps could a person come to you for to get your expertise?

- So what we do is we let you know based on Kansas law, what your options are as a tenant, as a landlord, sometimes we even speak to third party advocates, someone who calls on behalf of their brother, their sister, their client, because they're stuck in a tenant landlord situation.

What we do is let them know under Kansas law, if they have a certain dispute with their tenant or the their landlord, what their options might be for responding to that, what their options might be for getting out of that situation with the least financial loss possible and to retain their housing.

- What if someone is having challenges economically?

'Cause I know some people are thinking about their budget and they just think they have to go with, you know, what they have, in terms of their paycheck.

Walk us through some of the steps they can basically get the most bang for their buck.

- The first would be to be informed of their rights.

Just because you are not paying a crazy amount of rent money doesn't mean that you don't have rights.

Kansas has laws in regard to what your housing needs to look like.

So just because the landlord isn't charging, you know, an amount that they believe should be charged for that rental doesn't mean that they get to deny maintenance.

And if this rental is in need of maintenance, that should still be requested.

And sometimes the tenant might be under this feeling or this impression that if I request maintenance, I might be in the risk of losing my housing and then I might not have sufficient money to look for other housing or I'm paying such an inexpensive amount of money that it might not be worth it to ask.

Well, because there is a standard for rentals under Kansas law, they should still be informed of what those standards are and see if Kansas law requires for that certain item to be maintained.

In addition to state laws, there also are city codes to meet and the landlords are bound by those.

So again, not just because the rent is in quotes inexpensive, it doesn't mean that that rental has to be in a poor condition.

So being informed would be that first step.

- And what steps would a person take?

Would they come to you to ask those questions?

Because most people I think would not know what to do.

- We strongly suggest yes, if there is an enforcement agency for your area, we will refer you to them.

We are not an enforcement agency, but we'll let you know of course that you do have options.

You can also visit our website.

There's resources, forms that you can always download and use to communicate to your landlord that you have been informed or have just, run across information under Kansas law.

Even if you have not spoken to us recently, but you know that Kansas law requires for them to provide, for example, heat during this weather.

You can down download a maintenance request form and have that to communicate to them that you are requesting for them to maintain that furnace, which is very important and ordered by Kansas law.

So that is one resource.

Again, getting informed by one of our counselors is one way to start and then we'll let you know all of the other options that you would have from there.

- Can you just expand just briefly on some other things that a renter should expect when they're coming in to rent a property?

Besides heat, running water, what's something else that they need to expect?

- Based on Kansas law as a state and the state law is very general.

I'm just going off of the Kansas Residential Landlord and Tenant Act.

It's not going on too many details, which again, it's going to differ a little bit depending on the city and the city ordinances for that specific city.

How specific it gets for what ordinances there are.

But as a state, landlords are responsible to maintain the electric, plumbing, heat, ventilation, sanitary, common areas, making sure that the appliances that they supplied are maintained unless that this is a a lease, where they specified they wouldn't be maintaining appliances.

If they provided air conditioning, they have to maintain the air conditioning.

Kansas law does not say that they have to provide AC.

However, that's one thing that we would be expecting that Kansas law said they would, but it's not included there.

However, if they do provide it, it has to be maintained.

Making sure that there is running water, sufficient amounts of hot water, making sure that they are compliant with city ordinances, making sure that there is trash pickup collection available for that area.

So all of that is the landlord's responsibility, aside from again, making sure that they are compliant with what the city requires.

- Wonderful information, Abigail, thank you so much.

And if you would like to know more about it, Housing and Credit Counseling is a place to go.

After the break, we discuss programs and resources for first time home buyers.

Please stay with us.

(upbeat tune plays) - We're back.

Our next guest helps new home buyers get into their first home.

Ginger Ellsperman is a program manager and certified financial and HUD housing counselor at Housing and Credit Counseling Incorporated.

Thanks for joining us today on Inspire, Ginger.

- Well thank you for having me.

I truly appreciate the opportunity.

- So tell us the journey that a first time home buyer goes on in order to get their first house.

- Well it really just depends their financial situation and where they're starting off from.

But typically the first step is that you're gonna wanna evaluate your budget.

You're gonna wanna make sure that you're leaving room in the budget for increases in property taxes and homeowner's insurance.

Also home maintenance.

As a renter, the landlord usually takes care of those maintenance issues that you have.

But as a home buyer, you are gonna be the one that needs to pay the plumbing bill when the pipe bursts in the middle of the night.

So making sure that you're reviewing the budget and have a healthy savings is a big step of it.

The next step would be to make sure that you review your credit and review where your credit is at, trade lines for qualifying purposes, things like that.

Once you know where you're at overall, then the next step would go in to seek pre-approval from the lender that you're wanting to work with to see about getting pre-approved for that home loan.

And then, you know, you get the fun of shopping for the home, working with a realtor to do that and then you have closing day and you become a new homeowner.

So, you know, that's kind of the general steps of the home buying process, but there's a lot of details that go into the middle of it.

- So you've mentioned budget and credit and taxes and closing costs and shopping for a house.

I mean this is all very, very financial.

For people who might, when they start thinking about money, they get kind of freaked out and they don't really know what to do and they don't know what, is this a proper budget?

Is this too much, is this not enough?

Are there programs available for those people to help them answer those questions?

- There are programs that are available.

You can also schedule a free one-on-one counseling session with one of our home buying counselors here and we would be happy to review a budget with you and discuss that with you.

- It's just amazing that the services that you offer and how many people don't realize that they are available.

How can we get in touch with you?

- Well it's very easy.

You can give us a call at 1-800-383-0217.

You can also visit our website www.housingandcredit.org.

You can find a lot of information on our website.

There's a direct chat where you can chat and schedule an appointment through email, text messaging.

And so we offer various ways to get ahold of our agency.

- Can you repeat that number again?

- 1-800-383-0217 - Thank you.

Excellent.

- I know as soon as you mentioned a credit score, some of our viewers said dun, dun, dun, because talk about overwhelming.

What can a person do if they've had credit challenges in the past?

Are they basically thinking, you know, that they can't ever think about getting a house at some particular time?

Are there ways to repair credit so they can have that dream of owning a house in the future?

- There are ways, and we've seen it numerous times through the clients that come through our agency.

You know, it is very overwhelming at first, but the first step is to clean up any damage, so to say.

So any negative collection accounts, any negative accounts, take care of those first.

And then once those are taken care of, then we can rebuild the credit back up to where it needs to be to qualify.

It does take a little bit of time, but if there's effort put into it, we can help you reach that goal of having a high, having a good credit score and the higher that you have, the better it's gonna be for interest rates.

And so we always, you know, wanna make on-time payments on any debt that is being reported on our credit report.

That's the number one, is on-time payments.

That's 35% of our credit score.

30% of our credit score is our balances that we carry.

If we can keep those balances low, we're gonna get the most points to build it up.

And then the length of history, we don't need to have a bunch of credit cards or a bunch of loans, we just need to use what we have wisely.

And so the longer that we have those accounts open, the more points we're gonna get towards our credit score.

And so these are all the things that we discussed during the counseling session and we do what's called an action plan with our clients, where we help them and tell them step by step what to do to achieve the goals that they want to accomplish.

- So the bottom line is that there is hope.

(laughs) - Absolutely, yes.

- So I understand there's a local program called Topeka Opportunity To Own?

- Yes.

- Can you speak to that at all?

- So yes.

Topeka Opportunity To Own it also goes by TOTO because we're in Kansas.

(group laughs) - Kansas, yes!

- Cute, very cute!

- And so that is geared for low to moderate income families.

So there is an income requirement to be met that cannot be exceeded.

But what's really great about this program is it only requires the buyer to come up with $500 down payment out of their own pocket.

And then, we partner with the city of Topeka, they contribute up currently right now up to $10,000 for down payment and closing costs.

Outside of that, the city also contributes up to $30,000 for rehabilitation on the loan.

And we partner with Capitol Federal to write the loan.

Another interesting part of our TOTO program is typically lenders for let's say regular home loans, conventional FHA, they wanna see four positive trade lines being reported on a credit report.

With the TOTO program, we can use the combination of what is the traditional trade lines, the ones that get reported on the credit report with what's considered non-traditional trade lines.

So your rent payment that you have been making on time for the last three years, that would count as a non-traditional trade line that we could use to qualify you.

- And what about where to live?

Somebody coming into the city, they have no idea where to live.

Are you able to give any kind of guidance or?

- With that we cannot give guidance, that would actually be against FHA laws and regulations on steering them to certain areas.

- Good to know.

- We can give advice or you know, offer, if they tell us what they're looking for, we could definitely help them.

But we can't direct them where they want to purchase.

The TOTO program that is available anywhere within the city limits of Topeka.

- Well thank you Ginger, very, very much for talking with us today and providing some really excellent tips and resources for new home buyers.

Now, coming up next, a master gardener explains the joys of sensory gardens in your own home.

So stay with us.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Maureen Hillis and I'm with the Shawnee County Extension Master Gardeners.

And today I'm gonna talk about sensory gardens.

A sensory garden is basically an interactive garden, where you plant things that are specifically to be touched or smelled or to listen to some things.

What does that mean interactive?

Well it means taking a thing from a garden.

This was reed grass that was growing in my backyard.

And in examining it in a different way, for instance the feel of this, how the different pieces, if we were outside with kids, we'd talk about how the wind would blow those seeds around.

But it has a feel to it.

This particular kind of grass, Miscanthus, is the same kind of thing, but you can compare what's the same and what's different.

And then I even brought a couple pieces of wheat.

You really wanna see a difference?

Look at something like this.

But you look at 'em up close, you examine them, you tear 'em apart so that you can see where is the piece of wheat, things like that.

Another thing that we do is talk about textures.

This is known as a Lamb's-ear and a Lamb's-ear is very popular in different kinds of gardens.

But in a sensory garden almost everybody loves to touch it.

It really does feel like a lamb's ear.

And I brought along some things like Dusty Miller, this is another one of those that also has a very soft texture to it.

Looking at things, this has been a great year for leaves, and if you wanna talk about colors and you wanna talk about how things stand out in nature, the leaves have been wonderful.

Another thing that we look at with our sensory gardens is smell.

Catmint is this particular one.

Oh, it has a wonderful smell to it.

This is a type of scented geranium.

And if you rub the leaves, it also has a wonderful smell.

And that's how we have the young people and the adults smell things.

We call that, you know, touch and smell.

It's the easiest way for most people to be able to do that.

This one I brought just 'cause of the feel of it.

You can have plants that are soft like these, but then good old snake plant, I think everybody has one in their house.

It also has just a very interesting texture to it.

One of the things that we also try to do is get sound.

(seeds rattle) Gourds.

The seeds of a lot of different plants have very interesting sounds.

And this was one I decorated, (plant rattles) but you can talk about how musical instruments could be made from something as simple as these.

(seeds rattle) We also have done wind chimes and a number of things like that.

We had a young man who was deaf and he actually could feel the vibrations of the different things we used.

We had made wind chimes and I gave him a bell.

And when he held it in his hand and shook it, he could feel those vibrations.

And he was really actually very, very interested in that.

If you go and you take your kids out through nature and just look around, like I said, try to interact with those things.

Cattails, cattails are fun.

And then you can see if you wanted to tear 'em apart and see the different seed parts that are in there.

I hope this gives you some ideas about sensory gardens.

The idea that it doesn't have to be full of only things that smell good or feel good.

It's really a matter of looking at all types of different plants, investigating them and using all of your senses.

(upbeat music) - What a great discussion, you guys.

I tell you, you think about the American dream, seems like everybody wants to own a home, used to be a mule and 40 acres, all that kind of stuff.

(laughter) But you kind of took it when in the break we were discussing you don't really want to own a home.

- I had a home and I no longer want to own a home.

- Please expand.

(Amy laughs) - It is a lot of responsibility.

- Yeah.

- As I believe, who was it Ginger was talking about?

- [Betty] Right.

- About all the things that you have to think of, the incidentals and things that you have to put away.

Well if the air conditioning breaks down, this, that and the other.

And I don't want that responsibility.

I'm older now, we've already seen that I've turned 50.

- Yeah.

- And I want somebody else to have to worry about that.

So I'd rather have, a manager, a landlord, have to worry about those things and I'll pay you a little extra to have to deal with that, to deal with the lawn care and the maintenance and all of that.

I just want to give you a monthly check and say, "Here, handle it."

- So yes.

So you're not worried about having an investment?

So to speak.

- No.

- Okay.

- Not at all.

- And see if you're fortunate enough to be able to say, "Here, here, here, fix it."

You know, you can pay for it, that's fantastic.

Otherwise you're at the mercy of a decent landlord.

I mean that's what's so scary if you're a tenant and you're asking for these things and if they're like, "I won't do it," then you have to kind of fight them and back and forth.

And so, there's a trade off to not owning a house in that regard as well.

- I have a good landlord.

- [Amy] Well that's, - I live in a lovely complex, thank you.

(laughter) - You're very fortunate.

Not everyone is so lucky.

- Not everyone is so lucky.

- [Danielle] That's true.

That's true.

But and there's a place they can go.

- Right.

Why do you want to own?

- You know, I guess it's back to, you know Terra, Terra!

You know?

All the stuff that it deals with, yes its a pain in the butt, but sometimes I can fix things and there's a lot of confidence in that.

And you know, we've had some people on Inspire like "This is how you do your own plumbing" and that type of thing.

And I like that and it's, you know, it just, there's just the feeling of, and it's not an investment thing.

A home is actually a liability, not an asset.

- Right.

- But it's just a place that I know it's just mine and I can paint it any color I want and I can knock down any wall I want.

And I like that.

I like that.

- I like the idea of that too.

We kind of talking about how you're looking for homes.

It's just as important when you own a home as when you rent to go buy different times of day, different times of night.

Who are the neighbors?

What are they doing?

Are you gonna like the place?

That type of thing.

Were you surprised to hear that?

- I was, 'cause I never thought of that when I was looking around the area to rent.

But I also knew, actually when I was looking to rent, I didn't have an idea what part of the area to go to.

'Cause I didn't know people to consult 'cause I was just coming here kind of blind, like should I go east?

Should I go west, south?

So it took me a moment to kind of navigate, but then I ended up looking into where I lived and now I absolutely love it 'cause everything is in that area.

- Well and like she was talking, you know you have your grocery store, your school, - Exactly.

- Your church.

- Exactly.

- Everything that's kind of in your area.

- Exactly, and where I worked happened to be seven miles up the road, so it's like, "Oh, this is perfect."

- Yep.

Yep.

- That's very fortunate.

- That sounds good.

That's all the time we have for today.

We do hope you've been inspired by our conversations.

As a reminder, you can watch this program again at watch.ktwu.org - And if you are so inspired to learn more about our guests, find out what's coming up on future shows, and to get access to additional content, be sure to visit our website at www.ktwu.org/inspire - Inspiring women, inspiring homes.

Inspiring you on KTWU.

Thank you for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Inspire is sponsored by Kansas Furniture Mart, using furniture to inspire conversation.

And by the Blanche Bryden Foundation.

- [Announcer] The friends of KTWU honored to support programs and services that enrich the lives of our viewers.

- [Announcer] And the Raymond C. and Marguerite Gibson Foundation.