The other ledger for Kansas: 44 rural hospitals flagged as financially vulnerable — the second-highest count in America — a 48,159-home shortage for the poorest renters, one in seven Kansans food insecure, and $35.5 billion of documented water need in a state whose roads are, by national standards, in decent shape. Every figure is sourced, dated, and labeled — counted, modeled, or assessed.
How to read this page: the class chip on every measure is the honesty label. Counted = an inspection or enumeration record. Modeled = a study's projection or risk score — printed with the modeler's name. Assessed = a structured survey of required investment — needs as documented, not measurements of decay. Figures keep the form their source gave them; years are printed on every measure.
Click any category to expand it — every measure with its figure, what it means in plain language, and its source.
Nine categories, 19 measures. Kansas's needs ledger is a study in contrasts: roads and bridges in comparatively good shape (10% of major roads poor or mediocre, 5% of bridges deficient) set against the nation's second-worst rural-hospital vulnerability count, a $35.5B assessed water need in a state of 2.9 million people, and a housing deficit concentrated entirely at the lowest incomes.
Where sources disagree, both are printed and neither is averaged away. Two rural-hospital screens give different cuts of the same problem — Chartis's 2026 model flags 44 Kansas rural hospitals as vulnerable to closure, the CHQPR reserves screen flags 30 at immediate risk — and both are printed, labeled with their modelers. TRIP and ASCE round Kansas's road condition slightly differently (10% poor-or-mediocre against 13% poor-or-fair); TRIP's analysis is the series used. The water figures are EPA-basis needs assessments, not measurements of decay, and no Ogallala Aquifer number is printed: the aquifer's decline is real and well documented in the state's conversation, but no single sourced statewide measure was verified for this page, and the food category likewise prints no USDA food-desert resident count because no verified statewide figure was published in the sources reviewed.
Metro, regional and utility figures are labeled as what they are. The traffic numbers are TTI's for the Kansas City urban area — a bi-state MO–KS metro measured whole, never presented as Kansas's alone. The power numbers are Evergy's published forecasts and signed agreements for its bi-state service territory, labeled as forecasts. The broadband numbers count eligible locations under Kansas's BEAD final proposal as approved by NTIA in December 2025 — $166.6M against an original $451.7M allocation, a reset printed in full so the smaller number is not mistaken for the whole story.