Shawnee's Council Committee has told city staff to redraft the 2022 co-living ordinance, raising the cap on unrelated people in one dwelling from three to four and striking a rule that branded an entire household unrelated if even one unrelated adult lived there. The City Council has not approved the change. Staff has been sent to write it.
The push follows the end of the federal case over the ban. A federal appeals court affirmed the district court’s dismissal earlier this year, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take it up. The lawsuit is over, and the city is considering changes.
Defended in Court, Then Nudged by One
Shawnee enacted the ban in April 2022. KCUR reported a unanimous council vote on April 25. Two or three unrelated roommates stayed legal. Four or more did not. In a companion explainer, KCUR described the co-living model in the crosshairs as rooms rented individually to people who may or may not already know one another.
Concerns about investor-owned homes and room rentals were part of the debate.
City spokesperson Doug Donahoo told the Post the city has no documented complaints about residents breaking the co-living law. Smith put the bill for fighting the lawsuit at about $27,000. The city spent that money defending a three-person cap. The committee's answer, now that the courts are done, is to ask staff for four.
The Household Rule, and the Golden Girls
The quieter piece of the draft may matter more than the extra housemate. The proposed amendments would remove the rule that classifies an entire household as unrelated if even one unrelated adult was living there. Four would be the new ceiling, not an open door. A co-living group past that number would still sit outside the limit staff has been told to write.
The proposed change would ease restrictions on who may live together while retaining a limit on unrelated residents.
The direction to staff splits the difference on paper: keep an unrelated-person limit, move it by one, and delete the rule that could turn a mostly related house into a violation.
Who Sued, and What the Rent Looked Like
Shawnee resident Val French and Prairie Village-based property manager HomeRoom, Inc. filed the federal lawsuit in May 2023. Pacific Legal Foundation represented them. A Tenth Circuit opinion describes the plaintiffs as alleging that the ordinance violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
The foundation argued that high housing costs were pushing people to share homes and that the ban took that option away. Critics were already organized before the lawsuit: before the May 9, 2022, council meeting, a Change.org petition opposing the ordinance had more than 350 signatures, KCUR reported.
Johnson County's housing snapshot for 2019 through 2023 is a county figure, not a Shawnee ledger, and it is several years old. It is still the price environment sitting behind the argument. Johnson County reported fair market rent for a one-bedroom rising from $786 to $1,002, a 22% increase, and the average appraised value of a single-family home jumping from $330,000 to $451,000, up 27%. The county also said 40% of renters and 18% of homeowners were housing-cost burdened.
A Commission Stop, Not a New Law
None of this is on the books. The committee has asked staff to draft changes, but the City Council has not approved them.
For now, the April 2022 rule is the one that counts: three unrelated people, and a household classification that can turn on a single adult. The committee has asked for a looser draft. Shawnee has not yet decided to live with it.
