Drastically fewer KC tenants are being evicted from their homes. What’s changed
Kansas City eviction filings have, in recent years, been at their highest point in some time. But the number of people actually getting kicked out of their homes is dropping, in large part due to a free tenant legal representation initiative launched several years ago, according to the 2024 Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom’s eviction report.
In 2019, Kansas City created the Tenant Bill of Rights, which ensured the rights of all tenants in city limits. A few years later, in 2021, the city passed the law that created Right to Counsel, a free legal service for tenants facing eviction. It went into effect in 2022.
Since the installment of Right to Counsel (RTC), eviction rates have dropped 21% and 3,117 people have been saved from eviction, according to the 2024 eviction report.
RTC is funded by the city and is part of the Housing and Community Development Department. Tenant lawyers with the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, Legal Aid and the UMKC Fellows program are contracted with the city to assist tenants.
According to the same report, tenant victories in court went from less than 2% to nearly 45%. Having a lawyer in tenant court is crucial, according to Jaden Powell, a tenant attorney with RTC, who said eviction court is otherwise nearly impossible to successfully navigate for a tenant.
“A lot of these tenants show up to their trial date, and they’re like, ‘I’m ready to fight, I’ve got my documents’, and it’s like well the court can not hear your defense if it wasn’t filed in writing,” Powell said. “...the biggest thing is getting those affirmative defenses on file in court cases is very difficult by yourself.”
For Kansas City residents like Dominique Jones — fighting eviction proceedings while being faced with substandard living conditions — the program has become a lifeline.
“I fought to not have that eviction on my record because I knew I was being treated unfairly, and I knew that I was just a number to them,” Jones said.
‘I was at my wit’s end’
Jones, a 37-year-old disabled Marine veteran, was facing an eviction earlier this year. After getting representation from RTC, she said she was able to scrub an earlier eviction from her record and win her case out of court.
Jones moved into a Kansas City property in 2020 with an eviction from 2016 on her record. Over four years, she watched the conditions of her home worsen. An eviction stays on a tenant’s record for up to seven years, she said, so she felt like she had to endure more to avoid possibly worse housing.
Issues with the property ranged from frozen pipes, lack of running water, electricity issues, to pest infestations. At one point, she remembered bed bugs coming up her floorboards. After reaching out to Healthy Homes for help, she said her treatment and conditions worsened.
“I was at my wit’s end,” she said.
In 2024, Jones reached her breaking point. She began withholding some of the rent due to unaddressed maintenance and not getting reimbursed for hiring pest control.
“I decided to abate my rent specifically because of the neglect,” she said. “The roaches got worse, the mice got worse. Eventually, I had to deal with bed bugs, all while raising a child, being a full-time parent (and) being a disabled veteran.”
That same year, the property management company in her building changed hands and the new company said she owed them money. In January, Jones heard about RTC on the radio and reached out for aid.
Jones left the property on March 31 after obtaining representation. At her first court hearing, Jones was given a continuance. After that, the opposing attorney chose to settle out of court and paid her $1,500. A huge reason for this was the copious amount of evidence she collected of her housing conditions over the years.
“I’m no less deserving than anybody else of having a habitable space and safe space to raise my child,” Jones said.
She now has a clean tenant record and a better place for her and her daughter to live.
“Right to Counsel is truly a gem,” she said. “They will aid in making sure you know your rights as a tenant. They will educate you on what alternatives you have, what resources you have available.”
Creating Right to Counsel in Kansas City
Even after the legislation to create the program went into effect in 2022, it took time for the free legal assistance program to become effective, according to Jesi Stanley, a tenant attorney with RTC. She was on the ground floor of the initiative, and said courtrooms were entirely different before the initiative.
The first year-and-a-half, Stanley said, was about educating the courts on what was in the statutes, like the difference between rent and possession and an unlawful detainer, or case procedure. Before then, there was no one speaking on behalf of the tenants bringing these issues to the judges.
“It was really astounding to see that the judges themselves really didn’t understand housing cases, and of course the plaintiff’s attorneys are benefiting from that,” Stanley said.
It’s a niche category, she said, adding that many of the attorneys who joined jumped in, taking on a lot of housing cases without having a lot of prior experience with tenant law.
Now, she said, judges are flagging when the plaintiff’s attorney asks for something beyond the scope of a certain cause of action. They recognize when a tenant was not served properly or know when the plaintiffs are asking to receive damages not allowed by the state.
“The judges now have enough information and knowledge to make sure that their rights are protected in some regards…,” Stanley said.
“That was a huge victory.”
Eviction rates, who’s being targeted
Eviction filings have been rising steadily in Kansas City for years.
In 2023, there were 8,742 evictions, the highest recorded by the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom since they began collecting data in 2018. Most of the people seen in the courtroom are low income and most often are people of color, single moms or women, according to several attorneys with RTC.
Most eviction filings are done by corporate owners who are often out-of-state. According to Stanley, many of these apartment buildings are raising the rent after they evict someone, but the conditions inside these buildings continue to deteriorate.
It’s also common for these apartment buildings to not have an office, forcing these lower income tenants to travel to an office if they can’t communicate with someone over the phone.
“It is very rare, I mean exceedingly rare that we have any cases filed on behalf of a person instead of a corporation or an LLC,” Stanley said.
Many tenants without lawyers end up self-evicting, which is when their landlord says they are being evicted, but they haven’t actually filed a court case.
“People just leave even though they might have protections, they might have defenses, they might have a right to stay there,” Powell said about why legal representation is so important. “… having any legal resources to literally ask ‘is what my landlord’s doing legal’.”
Most common cases, where to get help
The most common eviction case is rent and possession, which is when the tenant is behind on rent. Tenants have the option to pay before they go to court for case dismissal or have 10 days to pay if the court rules against them to avoid eviction.
When the case is taken up by RTC, they set the court date out with a continuance for the first appearance, giving the tenant time to get rental assistance or find other means to help cover the rent. During this time, they cannot be evicted, according to Stanley.
“It’s really complex. It’s complicated, and without an attorney, tenants really don’t stand a chance in court,” said Jesi Stanley, tenant lawyer with Right to Counsel
Defenses for the tenants have to be written beforehand. If a tenant is withholding rent because of an unaddressed bed bug issue and are being sued for rent and possession but wait until the court date to plead their case to the judge, their argument can’t be heard. That is often what happens, Stanley said, when someone goes to eviction court without representation.
“Tenants are not gonna walk to the third floor and know how to file affirmative defenses or counterclaims,” she said.
In the example of someone withholding rent because of an unaddressed bedbug issue, a lawyer can file a counterclaim where the judge sees the evidence and decides if the poor conditions in the apartment are worth what the landlord or plaintiff is suing for, Stanley said.
“Oftentimes we will walk out of that case and with our client having money in their pocket, so there’s a good way to hold landlords accountable for poor conditions if they file a rent (and) possession,” she said.
Some tenants face unlawful detainer, which is when the landlord isn’t filing a lawsuit because the tenant isn’t paying rent, but they are terminating the tenancy and say the tenant is unlawfully possessing the property and don’t have a right to stay there.
According to Stanley, the procedure is very sticky, and the case law makes it clear that if the procedure isn’t followed exactly, the case is thrown out and can result in the tenant being fined double the rent for all the months they overstayed.
But it’s very rare that a landlord files it correctly, according to Stanley. With an attorney, there is a high success rate of it getting dismissed.
Right to Counsel has expanded to over 20 attorneys defending tenants against evictions and one supervisor, according to Gina Chiala and Jesi Stanley, RTC attorneys. They are staffed to handle 2,600 cases per year.
Tenants in Kansas City seeking legal help with an eviction case can call 816-474-5112. Anyone wanting to address issues with their rental property or landlord can fill out the Rental Property Tenant Complaint Form.
A toolkit form is also available on the RTC website for anyone experiencing a notice to vacate, living in unhealthy conditions or having their rent raised.
This story was originally published November 21, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the number of cases Right to Counsel is staffed to handle, which is 2,600.
