‘We deserve to stay here’: Rally organized for Kansas City renters facing displacement
Ngarthoet m swarr bhuu. Nou pap ale. No nos iremos.
We won’t go.
Those were the rallying cries shared Monday — in Burmese, Creole, Spanish and English — from the front lawn of an apartment building in the North Indian Mound neighborhood as tenants there say they face being forced from their homes.
Through a loudspeaker, tenants, activists and local leaders said they want to ensure those who live there are not displaced from the area by inflated rent. An assembly of roughly 75 people gathered to demonstrate, carrying yellow signs with slogans including: “People over profits,” “Displacement is violence” and “Stronger together.”
“I feel worried for my family and for my neighbors. This is my home. This is my community,” Sofia Be, one speaker who has lived in the 100 block of North Lawn Avenue for eight years, said as she stood flanked by neighbors, local leaders and organizers with activist group KC Tenants. “We are not trash. … We deserve to stay here.”
Be has been raising public concern over the apartment buildings that reached a highpoint in January as several lost heat during one of the coldest winter weekends this year.
On both sides of Lawn Avenue, apartment buildings there sit in major disrepair. Broken windows are covered by particle board and graffiti. Some units have severe water damage and other signs of major neglect on their interior.
A January fire in one building prompted a safety concern from the fire department that led to the gas being shut off. Residents were left without heat for nearly two days until city inspectors and fire department personnel went door to door offering to put them up in a hotel.
Until recently, Be’s building was owned by Kansas City-based FTW Investments, a hedge fund that has invested heavily in local real estate. Facing recent public criticism, largely driven by KC Tenants, former owners Parker Webb and Logan Freeman of FTW were removed last week from the housing board of reStart, a local nonprofit that aims to end homelessness.
Ownership of the buildings also changed since then. And now, tenants there say they fear being forced out of homes they have lived in for years as the buildings are to be rehabbed and rents raised by double — from around $500 per month to $1,000. Notices of non-renewal of lease and to vacate the premises within 30 days were recently sent to the remaining tenants there.
The building’s new property manager, Shawn Johnson, recently told The Star renovations are immediately necessary because some units are uninhabitable. Some of the needed upgrades are so extensive they aren’t possible while the tenants are inside, he said. Repairs will ultimately bring the units to $1,000 per month, what he says is a proper market price.
On Monday, ralliers pointed to low rents, the diverse neighborhood and the proximity to Gladstone Elementary School as benefits the tenants have long enjoyed. And they said those who live there, many of them immigrants and whose first languages are not English, should have a real opportunity to stay.
Others expressing support for the tenants on Monday included Jackson County Legislator Manny Abarca, 1st District, who said he would send a letter to the new owners reminding them what the expectations are from the county. Of former owners Webb and Freeman, Abarca noted they have other properties in Kansas City and “you better be damned (if) this is going to happen again.”
The demonstration was emceed by Tara Raghuveer, one of the founders of KC Tenants, an activist group focused on housing issues that has become a political force in Kansas City.
Raghuveer called on city leaders to step up against owners of buildings standing in violation of health codes and standards. She also called for landlords currently managing the properties to handle them properly or transfer ownership to a local steward who will keep rents at the current rate and ensure the current tenants can stay there.
“We don’t know exactly what the next steps are,” Raghuveer said. “But we know that properties like this have been passed from slumlord to slumlord for far too long.”
The Star’s Jenna Thompson contributed to this report.
