‘It doesn’t have to be this way’: Kansas City mayor, tenants demand halt in evictions
Mayor Quinton Lucas has joined a public push asking the Jackson County Circuit Court to halt eviction proceedings with just weeks until federal tenant protections expire.
On Tuesday, Lucas wrote to the circuit court’s new presiding judge, J. Dale Youngs, urging him to reinstate a moratorium on evictions in the county as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. Already, Lucas said, evictions are traumatic and “both a cause and a condition of poverty.”
“The pandemic only adds more anguish,” Lucas said.
“The COVID crisis hit Jackson County hard,” Lucas wrote. “Evictions cause serious health and economic crises, exacerbating harms from the pandemic itself. Homelessness and relocation stress add another barrier for the unemployed and working class as they strive to enter the workforce.”
Lucas joins KC Tenants, a group advocating for renters, in calling for the halt to evictions through at least June 2021.
“Public health experts and elected officials told us to stay healthy by staying at home, but now court-ordered evictions are forcing us from our homes,” said Jenay Manley, a leader with KC Tenants. “It doesn’t have to be this way. The courts can and should end evictions to save lives.”
This spring, the circuit court issued an eviction moratorium, but it expired over the summer.
Later in the summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a moratorium, preventing landlords from removing tenants from their homes. But even as COVID-19 case numbers continue to soar and the weather grows colder, the moratorium will expire at the end of the year.
And those protections aren’t automatic. Tenants have to apply for the federal protections, meaning they can still be removed from their homes if they don’t.
Lucas noted the CDC order was issued to help reduce the spread of COVID-19. A recent study found that states that lifted eviction moratoriums this summer had higher rates of cases and deaths.
Though it previously issued and extended an eviction moratorium this spring, the circuit court said in a statement that the legislative and executive branches of government create laws and policies, which the judicial branch enforces.
“The Court cannot selectively choose which laws and statutes are to be enforced and which laws and statutes can be ignored,” the statement said, adding that the court is following Missouri law and complying with the CDC order.
Missouri’s unemployment rate sat at 4.6% — Jackson County’s was 5% — in October. Those numbers don’t account for the renewed pandemic restrictions issued in Kansas City and surrounding counties limiting large gatherings and restaurant capacity. And while those unemployment numbers declined since this spring, they are still higher than they were in February, the last full month before the pandemic hit.
Landlord groups have consistently opposed halting evictions, saying they leave landlords to bear the costs of assisting tenants. They also note that an eviction moratorium does not cancel rent, meaning that when it ends, tenants who fell behind on payments but weren’t evicted will have to pay that back rent.
“They’re going to have that hanging over their head. Thousands of dollars and months’ worth of debt will come due at that point, and they’re not going to have it,” said Stacey Johnson-Cosby, a landlord and president of the KC Regional Housing Alliance.
A better solution, they believe, is rental assistance to help tenants stay secure in their homes without accumulating debt to the landlord.
For months, KC Tenants has been demanding the circuit court keep people in their homes. Protesters have disrupted eviction proceedings, saying no one should be evicted in a pandemic. They’ve successfully delayed cases by overwhelming conference calls meant for remote proceedings. And they’ve pushed circuit court judges to stop processing cases.
In September, the group, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, sued Jackson County Circuit Judge David M. Byrn, the court’s then-presiding judge, saying eviction cases were proceeding in violation of the eviction moratorium issued by the CDC.
The group was denied a preliminary injunction to immediately halt the circuit court’s eviction proceedings, but the case is still moving forward.
In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Howard Sachs wrote that the federal moratorium on tenant evictions does not stop landlords from filing civil action against tenants, only from removing them from their properties. He wrote that KC Tenants’ interpretation of the order was overly broad.
The Jackson County Circuit Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 1:37 PM.
