Independence Towers residents call on new management to fix worsening living conditions
When Diasha White moved into Independence Towers with her daughter in 2018, she was hoping for a fresh start.
She had moved into a duplex after divorcing her husband, then the duplex burned down. The red-brick apartment building at 728 N. Jennings Rd. was her last stop.
“I dreamed about the life I would create with my daughter now that we were safe and in a stable place,” White said.
Six years and 3 property management companies later, White said she has to sleep with the lights on to keep the cockroaches that crawl through the hole in her ceiling at bay.
After building and maintenance issues at Independence Towers have continued under new management, residents — now unionized and working with local nonprofit KC Tenants — are still calling for the building’s landlord to make fixes on their terms. For months, residents have been sounding the alarms on poor living conditions, including rat and cockroach infestations, broken plumbing and nonexistent heating and cooling systems.
White, a leader of the Independence Towers residents’ union, was one of about 25 residents and organizers who gathered Tuesday at St. Mark’s United Methodist Church, down the street from Independence Towers, to publicly ask TriGuild Inc. Vice President Nancy Daniels to return to the bargaining table. TriGild, a property management company based in San Diego, took over management of the building from Kansas City-based FTW Investments in May.
“It’s not right that I should be in a position where I’m expected to hold up my end of the contract, and yet the owner, management, they’re not expected to hold up their end,” White said. “...I feel like they’re pissing on us and telling us it’s raining.”
‘Homes that could kill us’
Maintenance issues have continued or worsened, residents say, even after the building came under new management by Jackson County court order earlier this year. TriGild took over on May 16 after FTW Investments allegedly violated the terms of their loan agreement with Fannie Mae.
The change in management was due in part to tenant advocacy, they say, which was formalized earlier this year. Tenants were inspired to unionize after the hot water system at Independence Towers stopped working the first two weeks of March.
Weeks before TriGild stepped in, a group of about 30 residents gathered in the basement of the troubled building May 2 to discuss their poor living conditions.
TriGild Vice President Nancy Daniels met with unionized tenants on June 20. During the meeting, said she committed to fixing fire alarms in the building, as well as providing portable air conditioning units to each apartment, voluntarily recognizing the union and agreeing not to evict organizers.
In the weeks since, only the air conditioning units have materialized. No one at Independence Towers has been able to contact Daniels since June 20, according to tenant union leader Elliot West.
“We need Ms. Daniels to come meet with us again and take responsibility for how she has treated our homes, and take us seriously, as we take our homes seriously,” West said.
Meanwhile, each portable window unit only cools one room of the house, while making residents’ electric bills unrealistically high, White said. After paying around $42 a month most summers, her own energy bill shot up to $170 with the use of the portable air conditioner.
The West family’s electricity bill came to $270 last month, forcing everyone to sleep in the living room if they want to stay in range of the cold air, Steve West, Elliot West’s father, said Tuesday.
Residents are still demanding permanent fixes to the building’s plumbing and HVAC systems, along with more maintenance staff and the reopening of a functional parking garage.
The building’s main parking garage has been closed for two months due to structural issues, with no word on a timeline for reopening, Elliot West said Tuesday. Remaining parking in the building’s lower lot is not enough to meet residents’ needs.
West also said that the building is down to one working elevator, and White said the 10th and ground floors of the building have been blocked off for months.
Earlier this month, hot water in the buildings shut off again, this time for eight days, West said.
Krystal Crawford, another tenants’ union leader, described the building as “a big mess.”
Crawford moved there a year ago with her husband. Since then, she’s faced mold issues in her apartment, which she told The Star building maintenance workers refuse to address. Hot water shutoffs in the building come with drainage issues, with sewage backing up into Crawford’s sinks and tubs, she said.
“Our homes are not maintained in a way that is safe for people living here,” Crawford said. “...They take our rent and force us to live in homes that could kill us.”
Management turnover, then tragedy strikes
Between 2020 and this May, Independence Towers was managed by Tango Management, owned by FTW Investments, an LLC managed by CEO Parker Webb.
Tenants had found the property owners before FTW significantly more responsible and responsive, White said.
“This was a beautiful place when I moved into it,” White said. “Management, owners, they were reliable. They took care of the property. They cared.”
Though TriGild has taken over daily operations at Independence Towers, Webb is still listed as the building’s owner. An attorney for Webb said earlier this month that FTW is no longer able to exercise any leadership or legal rights over the property.
White and other tenants described Webb Tuesday as a repeat offender of poor building management. In January 2023, The Star reported another complex managed by FTW in northeast Kansas City was left without heat for days, while suffering frequent break-ins and unsafe construction.
Later that year, Webb and FTW colleague Logan Freeman were asked to step down from the board of reStart, a housing nonprofit serving people experiencing homelessness. KC Tenants advocated for their removal at the time in a strongly worded letter calling the pair “slumlords”. The letter was accompanied by a petition with over 430 signatures.
Meanwhile, as tenants continue to call for more open communication with management, the Independence Towers community is also reeling from a summer of high-profile tragedy.
On June 17, residents of 27 apartments, including everyone on the first and second floor of the building, were displaced by an act of alleged arson.
Destiny R. Kley, a 22-year-old second floor resident, later allegedly admitted to setting the fire in her kitchen after a domestic dispute. While the fire was contained to Kley’s apartment, smoke and fire damage impacted 3 floors of the building.
Fire alarms in the building did not go off while Kley’s apartment burned, as they have not been functioning properly for weeks, Crawford said.
Then, on July 29, a child died after allegedly falling from an eighth-floor window.
Moses Bass — the father of the boy, identified by family as 3-year-old Tidus — has been charged with felony child endangerment, along with his girlfriend, Destiny Lee Randle.
Multiple tenants told The Star it’s common for Independence Towers residents to keep their windows open all summer while enduring weeks without air conditioning.
Eighteen days before the child’s death, Trigild Inc. and Daniels reportedly failed to meet unionized tenants’ demands to turn the building’s air conditioning back on by June 11. Residents also reported faulty windows in the building, including the one Tidus fell from, which have gone unaddressed by management despite repeated requests.
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Organizing and escalating
Tenants are hoping to meet with Trigild to collectively bargain the terms of a new lease agreement, without management evicting any current residents or declining to renew any leases. About 60% of Independence Tower residents have unionized. West told The Star that Daniels has made verbal threats to evict union organizers.
Depending on how far the situation escalates, West said, residents withholding rent payments could become a reality.
Some tenants, led by Anna Heetmann, have also been in contact with Fannie Mae and hope to become a formal party to a pending lawsuit between Fannie Mae and the building, filed in response to the original lawsuit that saw Webb lose the property.
Meanwhile, residents say their apartments are falling down around them, with holes in the ceiling and floors going unpatched for years. White said her shower was missing a wall for two years while she waited on promised repairs. When the wall was reinstalled, it was held together by duct tape, she said. Meanwhile, cockroaches and rats crawl out of a hole in her ceiling to this day.
“The more and more they neglect to fix our homes and do what’s right for us, the more people are agitated in our building,” West said. “Generally, it has just been hell here.”
Reporting by Noelle Alviz-Gransee was used in this article.
This story was originally published August 13, 2024 at 10:02 PM.
