What Kansas City Residents REALLY Think About Living Here

Kansas City just asked more than 3,700 residents what they actually think about living here. And depending on which number you look at, Kansas City is either improving pretty dramatically, or residents are still frustrated with some of the most basic things a city is supposed to get right.

About two-thirds of residents say Kansas City is a good place to live. Satisfaction improved in 13 major city-service categories compared to last year. Police services saw a huge jump. Public transportation improved. Housing improved. City communication improved.

But then you get to the thing Kansas City residents say matters most: roads.

More than 61 percent of respondents said streets, sidewalks and infrastructure should be one of the City's biggest priorities. And only about 25 percent are actually satisfied with them.

Then there's KCI, which was just ranked fourth among large airports in North America by J.D. Power. Residents still rate it as one of the best services Kansas City provides. But satisfaction with cleanliness, parking, seating and concessions all fell this year.

So are Kansas City residents actually happier?

I'm Kyle, a local Realtor here in Kansas City, and my team and I help people move to, from and around the metro every day. I went through this 248-page resident survey because I think it gives us a pretty interesting look at what it actually feels like to live in Kansas City. Especially if you're thinking about moving here and trying to decide not only whether Kansas City is right for you, but which side of the state line might make the most sense.

Do Kansas City Residents Like Living Here?

So let's start with the big number.

The City hired ETC Institute to survey a random sample of Kansas City, Missouri households. They collected 3,725 responses across all six City Council districts, with more than 600 responses in each district, and the survey has a reported precision of at least plus or minus 1.6 percent.

And broadly speaking, Kansas Citians still like Kansas City.

• About 67 percent rated Kansas City positively as a place to live. That's up from 64 percent last year.
• About 61 percent rated it positively as a place to work.
• One of the biggest improvements was Kansas City as a place to raise children. That went from about 46 percent two years ago to nearly 53 percent today.

So if you stopped there, the story would be pretty simple. Residents like living here, and they're feeling a little better about the city than they did a year ago.

But liking Kansas City and liking how Kansas City operates are two different things. Because once you start looking at actual city services, the picture gets a lot more mixed.

Kansas City Services: Improving Isn't the Same as Good

The City tracks 17 major service categories. Compared with last year, satisfaction significantly improved in 13 of them.

The biggest jump by far was police services. Satisfaction went from 32.8 percent to 49.6 percent in one year.

• City communication improved more than 9 points.
• Housing services improved 9 points.
• Public transportation improved almost 9.
• Health Department services improved 8.
• Fire and ambulance improved almost 8.

That is a lot of improvement in one year. But now look at the actual satisfaction levels.

• Fire and ambulance services were number one at just over 74 percent.
• Airport facilities were right behind them at about 73 percent.
• Solid waste was 67 percent.
• Parks and recreation were about 61.
• 311 was about 59.

Then you start sliding down the list.

• Police services, even after that huge jump, are still under 50 percent.
• Public transportation is around 46.
• Planning and development is 34.
• Housing services are about 32.
• And streets, sidewalks and infrastructure are dead last at 25.5 percent.

So yes, Kansas City is improving. But improving and being good are not always the same thing. And nowhere is that more obvious than the roads.

Kansas Citians Want the Roads Fixed

If you've ever opened the comments on basically any Kansas City post involving development, taxes, infrastructure, the streetcar, whatever it is, this probably will not surprise you.

Kansas Citians want the roads fixed. By a huge margin.

When residents were asked which major city services should receive the most emphasis over the next two years, 61.1 percent selected streets, sidewalks and infrastructure as one of their top three. Police was second at 43.2 percent. Nothing else was particularly close.

And within the infrastructure category, the number-one priority was just plain old maintenance of city streets. More than half of respondents selected that. Neighborhood street maintenance was second. Then the condition of sidewalks.

This is where the numbers get kind of funny. Satisfaction with maintenance of city streets has actually more than doubled in two years. It was 11.9 percent. Then 18.5. Now it's 25.9 percent.

So people are noticing improvement. Kansas City has more than doubled satisfaction with street maintenance in two years, and about three out of four residents are still not satisfied.

That tells you how deep the frustration is.

Why Kansas City Has So Much Infrastructure to Maintain

And I don't think you can talk about Kansas City's infrastructure problem without talking about how Kansas City grew. Because Kansas City, Missouri is enormous. Not population-wise. Geographically.

There's a really good Strong Towns series that digs into this using research from Urban3. Their argument is that one of Kansas City's biggest long-term problems is that the city expanded outward much faster than the population grew.

Back in 1946, Kansas City had around 434,000 residents living within roughly 60 square miles. By 1964, the population had grown only about 12 percent, to around 486,000. But the land area of the city exploded from 60 square miles to 314 square miles.

That is a 423 percent increase in land area for 12 percent population growth.

And once you add all that land, you add roads. Sewers. Water lines. Sidewalks. Streetlights. Infrastructure that has to be maintained forever.

Strong Towns points out that Kansas City had about 12 feet of road per resident in 1946. Since then, for every additional resident the city added, it added roughly 148 feet of road. That is an insane number when you think about it.

And this is not just a Kansas City problem. Postwar suburban growth happened all over the country. But KCMO is a pretty extreme example because the city itself annexed huge amounts of land while the suburbs around it were also expanding.

Strong Towns' broader argument is that a lot of Kansas City's highest-value land per acre remains concentrated in the older parts of the city, while many of the newer outer areas require a ton of infrastructure per resident to maintain.

You can agree or disagree with all of their conclusions. But when you look at this resident survey and see that infrastructure is both the City's lowest-rated service and by far the thing people want fixed most, it's hard not to connect those dots.

Kansas City has a lot of city to maintain.

Public Safety: Big Gains, Low Levels

Now, public safety is another area where the report gets really interesting. Because on paper, this was one of the biggest success stories.

Overall satisfaction with police services jumped almost 17 percentage points in a single year. And when you break down individual police services, every category that was measured both years improved.

• Emergency response times improved almost 10 points.
• The relationship between neighborhoods and police improved 6.
• Effectiveness in preventing and dealing with crime improved almost 6.
• Traffic law enforcement improved more than 5.

Residents also reported feeling better about safety in the city overall. Satisfaction with the overall feeling of safety in Kansas City increased 6.6 points in one year and 12.6 points in two years.

But again, look at the level, not just the improvement.

Only about 34 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the overall feeling of safety in the city. At the neighborhood level, the number was much better. About 58 percent said they were satisfied with how safe they feel in their own neighborhood.

That difference matters. Because Kansas City is huge. Your experience living in Brookside, the Northland, downtown, the East Side or far south Kansas City can be very different even though all of those addresses say Kansas City, Missouri.

And we'll come back to that, because I think it's especially important if you're comparing Missouri with Johnson County.

KCI: Still Loved, But the Honeymoon Is Wearing Off

But first, KCI. Because this might be my favorite contradiction in the entire survey.

Kansas City International Airport is still one of the highest-rated things the City operates. Overall satisfaction with airport facilities is about 73 percent. That's second only to fire and ambulance services. Not only that, but a recent J.D. Power study ranked KCI fourth among large airports in North America.

So by basically every measure, people like the new airport.

But compared with last year, residents liked almost every individual part of it less.

• Cleanliness dropped from 82.3 percent to 75.4.
• Seating near departure gates fell from 76.5 to 71.9.
• Concessions dropped from 67 to about 64.
• Parking went from 67.2 to 62.3.

And when residents were asked what airport issue deserves the most attention, the number-one answer wasn't food. It wasn't cleanliness. It wasn't seating. It was the traffic flow at pickup and drop-off. More than 54 percent selected it as one of the top two priorities. Parking was second at nearly 39 percent.

Which, if you've ever tried to pick somebody up at KCI while six cars are parked three-deep in front of the terminal, probably checks out.

So I don't think the story is that Kansas Citians suddenly dislike KCI. They clearly don't. It's still one of the highest-rated city services. It looks more like the honeymoon period is wearing off a little bit and residents are getting more specific about the things that annoy them.

Public Transportation: The Streetcar Leads

Public transportation tells almost the opposite story. It's not one of the City's highest-rated services, but it is improving pretty quickly. Overall satisfaction increased almost 9 points in a year.

And when you split the different systems apart, the streetcar is by far the highest-rated.

• About 65 percent of residents who had an opinion were satisfied with the Kansas City Streetcar.
• RideKC buses were around 46 percent.
• IRIS on-demand transit was about 39 percent.

So when somebody tells you Kansas City has good public transportation or bad public transportation, the answer is kind of: which part? The streetcar has been received pretty well. The rest of the system is still a much tougher sell.

Housing: Improving, But Satisfaction Is Still Low

Housing is similar. This is one of the areas that improved the most year over year, but satisfaction is still low.

Overall housing services jumped 9 percentage points. Yet only about 31.5 percent of residents are satisfied overall.

• Satisfaction with efforts to increase affordable housing options jumped more than 10 points, but it's still only about 31.5 percent.
• Legal protections for renters are around 31 percent.
• Efforts to maintain and improve housing quality are just under 30.
• Support for people facing housing instability or homelessness is around 23 percent.

Housing is also one of the top three things residents say the City should focus on, behind infrastructure and police.

And as a Realtor, this is the part of the survey where I think context matters a lot. Because "Kansas City housing" can mean completely different things depending on where you are. Apartments in the urban core. Historic neighborhoods with hundred-year-old homes. Brand-new subdivisions in the Northland. Condos downtown. Mid-century homes in south Kansas City.

And then if you cross State Line into Johnson County, you're dealing with an entirely different set of cities, school districts, tax structures and housing markets.

Kansas or Missouri?

Which brings us to probably the most useful part of this if you're thinking about moving here. Kansas or Missouri?

We get asked this constantly. And I'm not going to tell you one side is better. That would be way too simplistic.

My own family lives in Kansas City, Missouri. We love a lot about living here. We're in Brookside. We love the neighborhood. We love being close to the Plaza. We love the older homes, the trees, the architecture and being close to everything.

But we also currently pay for private school. And we've had the same conversation a lot of families have when they move here. Do we stay in KCMO? Do we eventually move to the Kansas side? Is Johnson County a better fit for our family as our kids get older?

So I understand why people wrestle with it. And I see families make both decisions all the time.

Schools

Schools are usually one of the first things people ask about.

On the Kansas side, you've got districts like Blue Valley, Shawnee Mission, Olathe and others. On the Missouri side, you've got Kansas City Public Schools, charter schools, private-school options, and then suburban districts outside KCMO like Lee's Summit, Park Hill, Liberty and North Kansas City.

That is why I would never reduce this conversation to Kansas schools versus Missouri schools. It depends on the actual district and the actual school.

Safety

Same with safety. You have to look at the specific city, neighborhood and available crime data.

The resident survey itself makes that point pretty well. Residents feel significantly better about safety in their own neighborhoods than they do about safety across Kansas City as a whole. That alone should tell you how much location matters inside the same city.

One Big City vs. Many Smaller Ones

And there's another major structural difference between the two sides.

Johnson County has plenty of sprawl. Drive through south Overland Park or western Olathe and that is pretty obvious. But instead of one city government trying to serve an enormous geographic footprint, Johnson County is divided among cities like Overland Park, Leawood, Lenexa, Shawnee, Olathe, Prairie Village, Mission and others.

KCMO is one giant municipality spread across more than 300 square miles.

That doesn't automatically make one system better. But it creates very different challenges. And those challenges can show up in roads, infrastructure, policing, development and neighborhood services.

Get More Specific

So if you're moving here and you're trying to decide Kansas versus Missouri, I would not look at this survey and say, "Well, Kansas City residents are unhappy with roads, so I should move to Kansas." That's not what the data tells us.

I'd use it as one more reminder that you need to get more specific.

• What school district are you actually considering?
• What city?
• What neighborhood?
• How old is the housing stock?
• What are the property taxes?
• What kind of commute are you signing up for?
• Do you want walkability and older neighborhoods? Or newer construction and a more suburban setup?
• Do you care about being ten minutes from downtown? Or would you rather have a bigger house, newer infrastructure and more space farther out?

Those decisions are going to shape your experience a lot more than whether your mailing address says Kansas or Missouri.

The Biggest Takeaway

And that might be the biggest takeaway from this entire report.

Kansas Citians tend to feel better about their neighborhoods. They see real improvement in things like police services, transportation and infrastructure. And they are also extremely clear about where they think the City still has work to do. Especially roads.

So I don't look at this report and think Kansas City is either doing great or doing terrible. I think it shows something a lot more realistic.

People like living here. They also complain about living here. And sometimes both of those things are true at exactly the same time.

Thinking About Moving to Kansas City?

If you're thinking about making a move to Kansas City and you're trying to figure out which part of the metro actually fits your family, your budget and the lifestyle you want, this is what my team and I do every day.

Reach out at movingtokc.net or shoot us an email at info@movingtokc.net.

And if you want to keep digging into what it's actually like to live here, I've got another video where I break down how much money you really need to live comfortably in Kansas City. Go watch that one next.