Before the Great Bend Planning Commission Monday night is a request from a Kansas City, Mo., developer to rezone land at 29th and Adams for multi-family homes.
The vision of Ross Vogel, owner of Employer Housing Partners LLC, is to construct six four-plexes. “These would be market-rate apartments,” he said, adding they would be open to anyone.
But, it will take more than zoning for this project happen. “We have to figure out how to make the numbers work,” Vogel said of the narrow profit margins in the housing world.
The City of Great Bend is hoping to help with this by applying to establish a Rural Housing Incentive District.
In short, an RHID is a Kansas Department of Commerce program designed to aid developers like Vogal in building new housing by assisting in the financing via tax credits. RHIDs are available for any city in Kansas with a population less than 40,000 in a county with a population of less than 60,000 or for any county with a population of less than 40,000.
Vogel’s plan is contingent upon the RHID being established.
 On Oct. 21, the Great Bend City Council approved the submission of the city’s RHID application to the commerce department. Partington said it typically takes 45 to 90 days for KDC to make a ruling, so Great Bend should have an answer by year’s end.
After that, there will be more resolutions and a public hearing required before the RHID is finalized. It involves a lot of work and several meetings, “but, it is sure worth it,” Partington said.
Ideally, the district will be in place in time for the spring building season. That is when Vogel hopes to get started.
“In Great Bend, like in other communities, there is a real housing shortage,” Vogel said. This is why he focuses his developments in rural areas.
He is on the same page as local city officials. The council identified housing as its top priority.
The application included an extensive housing study that quantified the need for housing at different levels and types. It also verified the shortage is expected to worsen if no incentives are put in place, and that the shortage is detrimental to the community’s growth.
 According to the study, there are 6,483 total occupied housing units in Great Bend, both owned and rented. There are also 630 vacant homes, empty for various reason.
With over half of the current houses dating back to 1959 and earlier, the housing stock is aging, Partington said. In the past five and a half years, there have been only 22 new single-family homes built and 13 senior-living duplexes. There have been no apartments built for 35 years.
It is recommended, that a community see an increase of 1.7 percent each year in new houses. For Great Bend, that translates to 100 annually.
The need for such a district became evident earlier this year after an effort to build an apartment complex in Great Bend fell through when the developer couldn’t get the federal tax credits they were seeking for the low- to moderate-income housing project.
However, the project developer, Overland Properties of Kansas City, is still interested in taking part in the Great Bend RHID. 
Vogel has been in business for several years and said he has several housing projects in various stages of development.
The 24 Great Bend apartments would be 1,000-square-foot units with two bedrooms and two bathrooms.