‘Empowering’ KC Tenants rally at City Hall ends with mayor sit-down, but few results
KC Tenants rallied outside the mayor’s office Wednesday to protest the housing trust fund proposal and demand, as the group said, the voices of the people be represented.
The protest ended with Mayor Quinton Lucas sitting in the Council Chambers listening to leaders within KC Tenants, a local organization that advocates for housing rights, as they shared their stories and called on him to fight for the people. They, however, received no promises or commitments.
“House the people,” leaders with KC Tenants chanted outside Lucas’ office. “Where are you, Mayor Q?”
The mayor’s housing trust fund proposal, which would make the Housing and Community Development Department responsible for the fund and require all units using the funds to remain affordable for at least 20 years, was set to be heard in committee Wednesday. That meeting of the Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee was canceled due to an “administrative error,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said Tuesday.
KC Tenants, which had planned a pre-committee action, questioned whether it was an error or if it was “fear of accountability.”
KC Tenants leader Jenay Manley told The Star that the people closest to the problem need to be closest to the solution.
Over the summer, KC Tenants proposed a People’s Housing Trust Fund to solve Kansas City’s housing crisis.
The “developer slush fund,” as many KC Tenants members call it, won’t help Nick Woodard stay in his studio apartment, where his rent is expected to up to $950 per month — above the limit for his assistance — he said.
Woodard lives in Armour Flats, a Midtown apartment building, where a group of tenants earlier this week formed a union amid a dispute with their landlord, who they say is pushing them out to renovate the units and double the rent.
The rally on Wednesday was “empowering,” said Javon Swopes, carrying a towel that read, ““The mayor’s ‘housing slush fund’ does not support the people!!!! Vote no!”
“I want to be heard,” Swopes said. “I do not want to be silenced. I want to use my voice for my children and my neighbors.”
When she moved into her home, her sink, toilet and bathtub didn’t work properly. She injured her foot last month when her foot plunged through the rotting wood floor.
The mayor’s proposal won’t help her future or her children’s future, Swopes said. “This slush fund is for developers ... it’s not for the people.”
After about an hour of sharing tenant’s stories, singing and chanting outside the mayor’s office, they met with him three floors below. They filed into the Council Chambers chanting: “No more promises, no more lies; we won’t negotiate with our lives.”
Leaders with KC Tenants called on Lucas to commit to establishing a governing board of poor and working class tenants, creating social housing, and defunding the police and taxing gentrifiers to provide continued funding for a housing trust fund as opposed to one-time investments from developers.
The group also called on the mayor to pull his proposed ordinance.
Lucas did not make any commitments during the Wednesday meeting.
He said he would be happy to talk about a governing board, but added that he couldn’t promise a board that didn’t include certain organizations that have been involved with housing.
To a brief laugh from someone in the crowd, Lucas said he wasn’t committing to any changes with police funding, citing “recent trouble.” The crowd of nearly 50 people then booed him.
After Manley lead the group in a few more chants, she said: “It seems like this conversation is over.”
Outside the Council Chambers, the group chanted: “I believe that we will win.”
What is the housing trust fund?
The city established its housing trust fund in December 2018 to help revitalize neighborhoods, develop housing and implement preservation projects.
The city’s Five-Year Housing Policy, adopted in June 2019, calls on the city to create and preserve 5,000 additional housing units by December 2023 and to establish a $75 million housing trust fund.
In May, the city allocated $12.5 million issued through federal COVID relief package to the fund.
The issue at hand is who oversees distribution of money from the housing trust fund. KC tenants has demanded a seat at the table to ensure the fund benefits those most in need.
Already, a third of that $12.5 million has been allocated to developments.
Last month, the City Council approved giving $1.5 million out of the fund to developers to help create 52 affordable units in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. Another ordinance approved by the council gave almost $2.7 million from the housing trust fund to developers to build 100 affordable units in the Ivanhoe neighborhood.
KC Tenants leaders, in a neighborhood committee meeting last month, spoke out against the ordinances.
“Me and several other KC Tenants leaders told you that if you put this money in the housing trust fund without governance structure ... people would try to get a hold of these funds without ensuring structural change,” Diane Charity, a leader in KC Tenants, said at the time.
Neighborhood leader and developers in turn called on city officials to approve the developments, both of which passed out of council unanimously.
“There’s a lot of individuals who are desperate for housing right now,” Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, District 3, said last month. “We are in a housing crises.”
A development agreement and a funding agreement for the projects will be back before the council later, Robinson said.
The KC Tenants proposal
KC Tenants’ proposal to solve Kansas City’s housing crisis demands oversight from tenants, dedicated revenue and innovative programs. Under the proposal, tenants would have power and oversight over the Housing Trust Fund, meant to encourage developers to build more affordable housing or simply rehabilitate low-income housing already in existence.
Funding for the People’s Housing Trust Fund would be divested from sources including the police department and developers. And the proposed programs would protect tenants’ rights, keep them housed and build power.
“We keep it affordable by ensuring that it’s in the people’s hands,” Manley told The Star, “to ensure they have safe, accessible, permanently affordable housing.”
