KCK is cutting minimum lots from 5,000 to 3,000 square feet because the state made it
KCK is cutting minimum lots from 5,000 to 3,000 square feet because the state made it
2026-09-10 · Kansas · Regulation · Pending — not yet law
Wyandotte County is redrafting its residential development code because a state statute has made parts of it void, and the compliance ordinances are not adopted yet. The Unified Government's planning commission was briefed on August 10, 2026, with a Board of Commissioners decision expected later that month and the implementing ordinances to follow.1
Until those ordinances pass, Kansas City, Kansas is in the position every Kansas city is in: operating a code that state law has partly overridden.
The specific number
The Unified Government's current minimum residential lot size is 5,000 square feet. Section 3 of SB 418 requires every political subdivision to allow, for new single-family residences under 2,500 square feet of livable floor area on their own separately described lots, “a minimum residential lot size of 3,000 square feet subject to any reasonable setback requirements that avoid unwarranted hardship yet protect the public welfare and safety.”2
The same section requires jurisdictions to allow single-car garages, only one side of architectural finish, and use of a 2018-edition International Residential Code.
Why the ordinance is a formality rather than a decision
Because SB 418 did not preempt these local rules prospectively. It voided them. Subsection (b) provides that “any part of any building code, ordinance, resolution, regulation or rule of any political subdivision that violates this section shall be null and void as applied to such property.”
The 5,000-square-foot minimum is already unenforceable against a qualifying small home. The ordinance work is housekeeping, bringing the printed code into line with what the law already is.
What is not in the ordinance
Anything about covenants. Nothing in SB 418 obliges a city to consider them, and the act assigns their enforcement elsewhere: “Courts shall recognize and enforce such covenants and regulations in accordance with applicable laws.”
What this does to a Wyandotte County association
Less than it does to uncovenanted land, and that gap is the point. In a platted subdivision with recorded covenants, three things stand between the new state floor and an actual small house on a small lot.
The plat. Recorded lot lines do not move because a city lowered its minimum. A replat is required, and in most Kansas subdivisions a replat inside the community engages the declaration.
Any anti-subdivision provision. Where the declaration forbids further subdivision of a lot, the state floor is irrelevant to that community.
Minimum dwelling size covenants. A declaration requiring a minimum finished area of, say, 1,400 square feet excludes exactly the houses SB 418 was designed to enable. The association's number governs the owner; the state's governs the city.
The architectural-finish point is the one to look at
“Only one side of architectural finish” is the provision most likely to surprise a Wyandotte County board, because it is the requirement architectural committees exist to enforce. Once the compliance ordinance passes, the city can no longer require brick or stone on the sides and rear of a qualifying small home. An association with that requirement in its declaration still can.
That is a legitimate exercise of authority, and it is worth being deliberate about. K.S.A. 58-4617(c) permits an association to adopt and enforce construction and design criteria “if the declaration so provides,” and requires enforcement and approval procedures including a stated response time.3 A committee enforcing a four-sided finish standard should be able to point to the declaration text that authorises it, not to a city code that no longer says so.
Wyandotte County's other pressures
This lands on a county still recovering from the August 18-19 storm, with its state disaster declaration extended to October 4 and an SBA disaster loan deadline of November 2 for physical damage. Boards there have more urgent work than a zoning compliance ordinance, and this item can reasonably wait behind the roof.
But the document review does not need to wait for the ordinance. The plat and the declaration say what they say today.
What to watch next
Watch the ordinance text when it is published. The provision worth reading is the setback standard: Section 3 preserves “reasonable setback requirements that avoid unwarranted hardship yet protect the public welfare and safety,” and setbacks are the one lever a city retains over a 3,000-square-foot lot. A jurisdiction that keeps generous setbacks has substantially reduced what can be built on one.
Watch, too, whether the Unified Government adds any covenant-related condition to a small-lot permit. Nothing in SB 418 requires it, and the state has assigned covenant enforcement to courts rather than to city staff.
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