Give us your feedback on improving HOMES & BUILDINGS
🌎 How to give feedback:
🌻 Click the button "Submit your idea". You can leave comments, photos, and specific locations about your comments.
We spend nearly 90 percent of our time indoors. However, many of our homes, workplaces, and community spaces need improvements to eliminate indoor air pollutants, shield us from extreme weather, and save us money on our utility bills. Additionally, the rising cost of housing is displacing lower-income residents and pushing people farther out from transit, jobs, and amenities. This Climate Action Section focuses on retrofitting existing buildings and constructing new buildings that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve our community resilience, support our health and wellbeing, and support efforts to address the housing affordability crisis.
Climate Protection and Resiliency Plan
Strategies to Improve Homes & Buildings
B-1: Increase building efficiency and health for commercial and public buildings
B-2: Improve the efficiency, affordability, and durability of homes
B-3: Ensure climate-ready, efficient construction
B-4: Promote equitable building decarbonization
To ask specific questions about the Climate Protection and Resiliency Plan, please contact the Office of Environmental Quality by phone at (816) 513-3452 or by Email to OEQ.
Phases
Summarize the Feedback Received
During this phase, a comprehensive summary of the feedback will be shared with residents and City staff across multiple departments. This process ensures that community input remains central to decision-making, allowing the City to make well-informed choices that reflect the needs and priorities of its residents.
📌 Residents expressed strong concerns about the rapid development of unattractive, low-quality apartment buildings replacing historic structures and well-maintained older buildings. Many lamented the loss of architectural heritage and the lack of long-term planning for sustainable, high-quality construction. There is a call for stricter design standards, including better materials, vibrant aesthetics, and durability, to ensure new developments contribute positively to the city’s character.
📌 Vacant and underutilized properties were another major focus. Respondents criticized out-of-state investors for holding onto empty lots and homes without development, suggesting these properties should be transferred to local land trusts after a period of inactivity. Others proposed taxing unoccupied properties to incentivize their productive use and address housing shortages and homelessness.
📌 Energy efficiency and sustainable building practices were also highlighted. Respondents advocated for stricter energy efficiency requirements for new constructions, including better insulation, windows, and alternative building materials like concrete or earth bricks. They emphasized the need to foster innovation in sustainable housing and reduce reliance on outdated, inefficient methods.
📌 One response diverged from the housing theme, calling for animal control services to be returned to city management.