As Kansas City’s Housing Court takes a stand against blight, critics challenge its judge

Four days a week, Kansas City code enforcement officers and the people they’ve ticketed squeeze into a shoebox of a courtroom across from City Hall.

“All rise, the Honorable Todd Wilcher presiding,” a beefy bailiff barks as a slim, bald figure strides to the bench with what look like combat boots peeking out below his dark robe.

This is where the 50-year-old Wilcher holds Housing Court, meting out justice to people accused of letting their properties fall into disrepair.

Landlords cited for peeling paint and sagging gutters. Homeowners and renters who failed to heed the city’s warnings to clean up the trash in their yard and have junk cars towed away.

Many city officials and neighborhood leaders see Housing Court as a vital tool in the city’s never-ending battle against the sorts of code violations that can send a block or an entire neighborhood into a death spiral.

But to critics, Courtroom I in the Municipal Court building is a temple of misery ruled by a harsh judge who imposes hefty fines on people who can least afford to pay them.

That’s the opinion of the African-American political club Freedom Inc., which has targeted Wilcher, a former Housing Court prosecutor, for removal from the bench in the June 23 city election.

Of the six municipal judges up for retention, Wilcher is the only one for which Freedom is urging a “no” vote.

“Generally the judge has a track record of being very, very strident and insensitive with poor and elderly people,” said Gwen Grant, a member of Freedom’s office of the president.

Freedom has no stats to back up that claim, only anecdotes from folks like 77-year-old homeowner Elvis “Sonny” Gibson, who owes over $2,000 in fines for a variety of infractions.

“The judge is insensitive to me and everybody else who comes through that door,” he said before his Thursday court date.

Wilcher bristles at the charges as he faces his first retention election since the Kansas City Council appointed him to the bench in 2012.

Freedom’s condemnation came as a surprise, said Wilcher, who considers himself a fair and compassionate judge who is “highly sensitive to the needs of the poor.”

Wilcher said he takes people’s financial circumstances into account before imposing fines, gives them ample time to pay those fines and will suggest ways they can bring their properties into code compliance at the lowest possible cost.

But at the same time, Wilcher said he also has an obligation to all the people who live next door to run-down houses and littered lots choked with tall weeds. Just because someone is poor, he said, does not mean the owner should be absolved of responsibility for keeping up his home.

As a judge, Wilcher said, he has to be firm as well as fair.

“There’s going to be accountability,” he said. “And if you don’t hold people accountable, then we fail at our job.”

And in Housing Court before Judge Wilcher, accountability almost always means writing a check on your way out the door. Last year, those payments amounted to just over $652,000.

Special court

Housing Court was created three decades ago because renters and property owners weren’t being held accountable for code violations.

Back then, Kansas City Municipal Court judges took turns deciding housing cases one day a week. The four other days they focused on traffic cases and other municipal charges.

City officials complained about uneven treatment of code violators. Some judges levied such low fines that some property owners felt it was cheaper to pay multiple tickets rather than fix the underlying problems.

“A lot of landlords just build those fines into the cost of doing business,” one neighborhood leader said at the time.

So Kansas City voters approved a charter change establishing a special Housing Court in 1987 and setting minimum fines aimed at getting the attention of people who have been cited for code violations.

Paired with an aggressive code enforcement staff and a city prosecutor’s office that takes code violations seriously, the system has been effective, neighborhood leader Margaret May said.

“Here in Ivanhoe, we do want our code enforcement officer to do her job,” May said. “If you want the neighborhood to be improved, you have to have a standard.”

It’s the judge’s job to see that those standards are met, but that takes discretion. If someone doesn’t think she has the money to paint the house or replace rotting windows, socking her with a big fine can be counterproductive.

“The punishment of the offenders is not nearly as important as the resolution of the problem,” said Wayne Cagle, the Housing Court judge for 20 of the court’s 28 years.

Wilcher, who replaced Cagle on the bench, says that has been his focus too. While he says he has no patience with people who dump illegally, often issuing them the maximum $1,000 fine, his focus in most property cases is to motivate people to fix their properties.

It’s a theme that ran throughout the six hours a reporter spent observing Wilcher in action this past week on three occasions, once when Wilcher was not aware The Star had someone in the courtroom.

On Tuesday afternoon, dozens of defendants filed before Wilcher between 1:30 and 4 p.m. He ordered many to pay the minimum $85 fine, plus $48.50 court costs, for every violation they were guilty of.

Since many had more than one charge, that meant a bill for hundreds of dollars. However, in each instance, he gave them time to pay — 30 days on average.

A few, like Hughdell Gwinn, he let off without having to write a check.

“He did good. No charges,” said Gwinn, a first-timer who had been cited for a trash violation.

But one woman, a repeat offender with multiple properties, was sentenced to four days in jail.

No apologies

Wilcher rarely locks people up — 12 since 2012 — but doesn’t apologize for doing it.

“I find the only way to send a message,” he said, “the only two forms of sanctions we have available … are the fines and the jail time.”

Those who want him removed from the Housing Court bench, however, say the fines Wilcher levies against older people are too harsh. Many in that group are on fixed incomes and say they can’t afford either fines or repairs.

“There are concerns about the large number of fines that they get,” said the Rev. John Modest Miles, pastor at Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church.

Others complain about his stern manner.

“He treated me very badly,” said Pam Bland, who was cited for multiple violations on a house she said she had given back to the bank. “I was kind of scared and upset when I left there.”

Gibson raised those concerns at the Eggs & Enlightenment Fellowship meetings he convenes most Friday mornings at an inner-city McDonald’s. The group recommended that Wilcher be removed from the bench and the Freedom board joined in.

“If we can’t get him out,” Grant said, “we at least wanted to bring attention to it.”

Freedom has distributed thousands of campaign pamphlets urging voters to “stop housing court injustice to the elderly and disadvantaged” and calling out Wilcher for “scolding” people coming before him.

The focus on Wilcher and the Housing Court could have something to do with the growing number of code violation cases being filed in recent years. At the urging of the City Council and neighborhood groups, city officials are more aggressively enforcing city codes in urban core neighborhoods where blight has set in.

As a result, cases and the fines they generate for the city nearly tripled between 2010 and 2014.

But while prosecutions are up, city prosecutor Keith Ludwig said, Wilcher is not one to always side with the city.

“He holds our feet to the fire,” Ludwig said. “We have to prove our case.”

Wilcher said he has tools available to him to help low-income people fix their homes rather than continue to rack up fines.

Each year, $150,000 in fine income goes into a fund specifically to help eligible homeowners make repairs. Last year’s dried up in just two months, but the Municipal Court Fund was recently replenished.

Wilcher also refers people who come before him to other city programs that can help.

But with nearly 11,000 violation files coming before him last year, those programs only go so far. Most people, poor or wealthy, must come up with money on their own to bring the properties up to code.

And pay those fines.

On Thursday, Gibson walked into court owing $1,900 and walked out owing an additional $300, although it could have been more had he not completed the thousands of dollars of repairs ordered for his house.

“They’re letting me pay it off $200 a month,” he said.

This story was originally published June 13, 2015 at 5:21 PM with the headline "As Kansas City’s Housing Court takes a stand against blight, critics challenge its judge."