New law makes ‘life just a little bit easier for renters,’ Kansas City mayor says
Cheers rang out from the crowded gallery on the 26th floor of City Hall Thursday as the Kansas City Council passed an ordinance that provides new anti-discrimination safeguards for the half of the city’s population that lives in rental housing.
Opposed by landlord groups and supported by tenant and social justice advocates, the ordinance, which takes effect Aug. 1, will require that landlords rent to people who wish to pay the bulk of their rent with federal housing assistance vouchers.
The law also prohibits landlords from discriminating on the basis of a person’s source of income, such as gig work, or deny housing based solely on a person’s credit score or criminal history. Violent or sexual offenses would be an exception, which was among a list of amendments to the original ordinance introduced nearly two months ago.
Most of those who applauded and whooped when the ordinance passed 10-3 were in the yellow T-shirts worn by members of the citywide renter’s union KC Tenants. The group wrote the original version of the ordinance last fall with the help of sponsor Mayor Quinton Lucas and his staff.
The group also worked with council members after the ordinance was held in December so it could be tweaked to reflect the concerns of property owners and members of the council who felt it was too strict.
Many landlords still aren’t happy with what was passed. In written testimony, they said they should have a right to refuse to participate in the voluntary federal Section 8 voucher program, which they argue has too much red tape.
“Making it mandatory that I accept vouchers is wrong,” wrote one of them. “I could possibly have the property rented (and) occupied prior to when the voucher (holder) completes their inspections paperwork and leases losing a couple months of rent.”
And they said the government had no business requiring that they rent to people who don’t have a regular source of income that they question may not be sufficient for them to regularly pay the rent on time, or to those who have a history of evictions.
A series of compromises negotiated by council members privately address some but not all of those issues. Acceptance of vouchers remains mandatory, for instance.
Passage of the ordinance adds Kansas City to a long list of cities nationwide that have adopted source of income anti-discrimination laws.
“The effort is to make life just a little bit easier for renters in our city,” Lucas said. ”This allows for the ban of source-of-income discrimination in Kansas City. That means how you lawfully earn your income or receive income isn’t in some way an impediment to your ability to find rentals.”
Supporters says the protections are matter of social justice and civil rights because many of those who would benefit are disproportionately people of color, women and people with disabilities.
Renters who think a landlord has denied them housing based on how they planned to pay the rent or another factor protected by the new law will be able to submit a complaint with the city’s civil rights office via email, in person or by calling 311 for the city to investigate.
Changes made
In recognition of concerns raised by landlords and their supporters on the council, the final ordinance relaxed some of the restrictions and eased up on some of the proposed enforcement measures. The city will also look to provide incentives for landlords to participate in the voucher program.
The ordinance incorporates a suggestion by 1st District Councilman Nathan Willett that the city adopt a $1 million pilot program similar to one in Johnson County that would encourage landlords to take federal vouchers.
The details for that have not been worked out yet, a Lucas staffer said.
Other changes to the original ordinance, according to Mayor Pro-tem Ryana Parks-Shaw:
It would create a landlord liaison position in the city’s housing department and “clarifies that landlords can deny rental applications based on individualized factors about criminal convictions, credit score, evictions, alleged damages, rent to income ratio, etc.”
That means that landlords will still be allowed to ask about an applicant’s criminal, credit or rental history, but the ordinance prohibits them from denying an application on the basis of that history alone. It requires landlords to consider additional information a tenant provides, such as personal references, evidence of rehabilitation efforts or attempts to resolve past evictions, or records showing good tenant history in the time since a past eviction.
Then landlords will be able to use their discretion to approve or deny an applicant based on those additional details, such as the severity of a criminal offense or how recent a past eviction was.
“Older evictions and alleged damages may be considered holistically,” Parks-Shaw said.
Enforcement of the ordinance, where violations can be subject to fines up to $1,000, has also been eased under the amended ordinance.
”It prevents publication of landlord names, if landlords were the subject of disciplinary action or conciliation agreements,” Parks-Shaw said.
“My colleagues and I worked tirelessly to establish what we feel is a fair piece of legislation that will help us to to prohibit discrimination with the source of income, as well as increasing housing accessibility,” Parks-Shaw said.
Willett and two other other council members from north of the Missouri River, Wes Rogers and Kevin O’Neill, voted against the measure.
Willett said he was glad to see the changes, but thinks the ordinance still went too far. But he and other council member sang praises for the collaborative process that produced the compromise.
“Nobody’s happy, so I think we’ve done a very good job,” Melissa Patterson-Hazley said.
Editor’s note: This story originally contained a sentence saying the ordinance denies the city’s civil rights division the power to conduct systemic audits to see if the landlords are complying with the rules. We removed this sentence while we clarify details around how ordinance addresses audits.
This story was originally published January 25, 2024 at 6:54 PM.
