Jennifer has struggled for years to find a stable place to call home.

Originally from central Illinois, she moved to Kansas City in her 20s – a little over 20 years ago – to reconnect with family. That was back when it was still possible to find a basic apartment for under $400 a month.

These days, though, even a studio would be tough to come by for close to that price.

Jennifer has lived in communal punk houses in the past, and in recent years, she’s bounced from place to place in the wake of a divorce while searching for somewhere to live in the long term. The Star agreed to use only Jennifer’s first name due to safety concerns she has as a survivor of violence.

After years of working 60 hours a week in the food service industry, Jennifer’s main source of income now is financial assistance she receives for people living with disabilities. A typical market-rate apartment could soak up all of her income, leaving nothing for bills or anything else.

She’s not alone — there’s a gap of 64,000 affordable rental units for households with lower incomes in the KC region, according to data from the Mid-America Regional Council. The median gross rent in Kansas City is around $1,200 with utilities, according to the most recent census data.

Eventually, last summer, Jennifer made it to the top of the waiting list for a unit at the Mayfair Apartments, 1224 E. Linwood Blvd. Tenants in the historic, eight-story building pay 30% of their income on rent and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) covers the rest, according to HUD records.

Jennifer pays about $350 a month for her unit.

She noticed some red flags with the building right from the start, but her priority was to get into her own apartment as soon as possible.

“I was so excited to just have a spot where I could just be and not have to be living out of my car with my 40-pound dog,” she said. “So I signed it.”

But Jennifer quickly realized she’d be dealing with ongoing infestations and numerous health and safety concerns in her new home, she told The Star.

Records obtained by The Star show that several tenants, including Jennifer, placed 30 complaints to the city about the Mayfair Apartments in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The rest echo her issues with infestations, maintenance problems, appliances not working and other issues.

After years of neglect and mismanagement that allowed the building to fall into disrepair, the Mayfair’s new owner has invested or raised millions of dollars to make improvements in the building. The company has plans to rehabilitate it with overhauled units for residents. And a new management company stepped in earlier this year, which has led to an improvement in conditions.

The city has also gotten involved — taking steps to enforce its health code and intervening this winter to suspend the building’s rental permit before concerns were addressed.

Those working to transform the building say investments to date have kept the building habitable while they work on getting the money needed for deeper renovation work.

But in the meantime, those who live in the Mayfair have been left in unsanitary and unsafe conditions that have persisted for years.

Tenants and local housing advocates say the building’s challenges are symptoms of a broader difficulty in Kansas City — how hard it is to finding a safe and comfortable place to live when you’re on the edge of homelessness, and how costly it is to make buildings that are falling apart more livable for those who need them.

Mayfair Apartments

Jennifer was with a friend when she went into her apartment for the first time.

“Both of us walked into the apartment, and we’re just like, ‘Oh …’” she said.

The walls and windows were stained with tobacco. It smelled like decades of smoking with the windows shut. The fridge was smelly and disgusting before it was replaced about a week later. One bedroom window had tape over cracks, while the other was spray-painted over and sealed shut. The windows did not have screens.

Jennifer had to spend days scrubbing the place down. That’s when the roaches started appearing. Pest control would come in, but it didn’t seem to be enough, and the problem persisted. She started finding roach skeletons and excrement littered around.

“It’s just everywhere. It’s so bad in there,” she said. “During the day, when I’m prepping food, I’ll have to shoo them away from my cutting board.”

An apparent mouse infestation later appeared where she keeps the dog food.

The common areas of the building have been filthy, too: trash all around the grounds and dirty stairwells. One time, it appeared that someone had diarrhea on the stairs. Another time, there was blood smeared on the wall from a fight. It was spray-painted over after a health department inspection, but the outline of the smear was still visible, Jennifer said.

Jennifer first spoke with The Star about her experience living in the Mayfair in December and has provided regular updates as she continued reporting the conditions to the city. A Star reporter visited the building and her unit, seeing cockroaches, the broken windows, the dirty common areas and other issues.

The elevator has also been broken on multiple occasions, she said, and the access to the building is not secure. There have been issues with break-ins, she said.

Seattle-based firm LEDG Capital has owned the building since fall 2021. WinnResidential of Boston took over its day-to-day management in February from a Houston-based company that had been there since 2022. Tenants have reported issues under both current and prior ownership and management.

Jennifer has been vigilant in reporting the issues with the building to both Mayfair management and Kansas City’s Healthy Homes rental inspection program, which started in 2018 and sends out inspectors to investigate issues and help tenants who report unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

The city inspectors give landlords timelines to fix problems and can issue re-inspections, fines, penalties or even loss of rental permits. Healthy Homes reports ask landlords to provide proof of repairs or face a $150 re-inspection.

Jennifer remains stuck on the waiting lists for other income-assisted apartments, and would struggle to afford moving costs if one did open up.

“I feel like I’m trapped there,” she said. “I feel like I don’t know what it’s going to be like to have stable housing ever again.”

But she said she won’t give up.

“Instead of just swallowing that and being like, ‘Well I guess this is my life,’ I’ve decided to try and fight for better circumstances.”

Ed Cafasso, a spokesperson for LEDG Capital, said that addressing the issues the residents face is exactly why the ownership group acquired the building and has invested $775,000 to fix safety issues, repair and upgrade heating and cooling systems, and repair badly damaged apartments in the past three years.

“The company understands and appreciates the concerns of Mayfair residents and works hard to be responsive to their needs,” Cafasso said. “The community would be uninhabitable today had ownership not invested its own resources to address the urgent issues it inherited.”

Health inspections at 1224 E. Linwood Boulevard

Another tenant, Michele Ellis, told The Star that she noticed roaches almost immediately when she moved into the building in 2019.

She has lived in the Mayfair through multiple owners and property management companies. Like Jennifer, she remains on the waiting list for other income-assisted apartments that she can afford.

Ellis stopped using her coffee pot and switched to instant because there would be roaches inside every time she went to clean it out, she said.

She said the mice started showing up in 2020. Then, in 2021, the bedbugs arrived.

“They bite me every night,” Ellis said.

She said she’d gone without heat and air conditioning for stretches. A four-day period without water service caused the nearby Family Dollar to run out of water after tenants bought it up.

Ellis also has concerns about drug dealing and people who are not tenants coming in to use the stairway as a toilet.

She uses a wheelchair and cannot get down the steps, and she’s missed health appointments when the elevator is out of order. Ellis’ case manager once came with a supervisor to speak to the building management about the elevator, she said, and it was fixed a few days later. But then it broke down again later the same day.

Another time, Ellis returned to the building and could not get into her apartment for weeks because the elevator was down again. She had to stay with a cousin before the management offered her a hotel after she contacted the fire department.

A different day, she was trapped in her apartment for 20 minutes while firefighters contained a fire on another floor, she said.

Like Jennifer, Ellis feels that building management has been largely unresponsive to her complaints over the years.

“They’ll fix something, and then you ask them to fix it again, and they won’t do anything,” Ellis said.

Like Jennifer, she has contacted Healthy Homes multiple times, and said that’s the only time something is done.

Jennifer said city health department inspectors with Healthy Homes have shown up quickly and documented the problems. She said they’ve been responsive and thorough while offering regular updates, but little to no maintenance work was actually done at times, and it seemed like the city’s hands might have been tied to enforce actual change.

“It’s disappointing, what they have the power to do when it comes to a place where I have to live, store, cook and eat my food,” Jennifer said. “If it was a restaurant, it would be condemned.”

The health department investigated and resolved over 2,500 health and safety complaints under Healthy Homes in 2024, according to city data. There have been over 10,000 inspections since the program began in 2018.

The city issued 327 re-inspection fees last year to property owners for not complying with life and safety standards required under Healthy Homes, according to city data, while eight property owners had their licenses suspended for failing to meet the standards.

Renovation plan moving forward

Behind the scenes of Jennifer’s nightmare living conditions, developers have been advancing plans to fix the aging building, which is roughly a century old.

Those plans could be costly.

Jennifer provided The Star with a copy of a letter from August 2024 detailing the owners’ plans to apply for a state housing grant and tax credits to rehabilitate the Mayfair, improve the property and keep the units affordable.

If the project were to move forward, the letter says, Jennifer would not be displaced and would be provided with temporary housing, with moving costs reimbursed.

Once the project is finished, Jennifer will be able to “lease and occupy a suitable, decent, safe and sanitary apartment” in the building “under reasonable terms and conditions,” the letter says.

State records show that an application was approved for 2025: about $1.5 million in tax credits and $2 million in federal grant funds administered by the state to help cover the costs of the renovation project.

The Mayfair has also been listed on the National Register of Historic Places as of January, which could unlock access to grants and tax incentives for rehab and development.

The project snagged Kansas City Council approval for another $600,000 in September from the city’s Housing Trust Fund for the rehab project.

The application for the city funds makes clear that problems in the building were not a secret to the group behind the rehab project, and tenants could be left without a home if they don’t get fixed.

“While Mayfair has maintained steady occupancy, it is dated and has a multitude of deferred maintenance issues that threaten housing stability for current tenants if issues are not addressed,” the Housing Trust Fund application says.

It also says that the property is at risk of losing its contract to provide low-income housing if the conditions are not improved. That’s because HUD requires a level of habitability in the buildings it subsidizes.

Under the proposed project, all units will be upgraded with new cabinets, flooring, light fixtures, plumbing, fresh paint, new tubs/showers and toilets, doors and hardware. A larger elevator that hasn’t been used for years will be brought back online.

The outside will be upgraded with a key fob system for entrance, and there will be new security cameras placed throughout the building.

The estimated cost to rehabilitate the Mayfair will be $8.5 million. The owners hope to be able to start by the end of the year.

HUD inspection adds pressure

In mid-January, according to a letter provided to The Star, the previous property managers gave notice that HUD would be conducting an inspection on Jan. 30.

That’s when Jennifer said there was a “sudden scramble” to perform maintenance work: painting the stairs, scheduling pest control, fixing empty apartments and coming by to fix the broken windows.

Days before the HUD inspection, Jennifer said the city health department came and posted signs showing that the property is not in compliance while telling management that they would not be allowed to bring in any new tenants.

According to information provided by the city, the notice was posted after the owner was slow to address violations. After the city’s notice, the owner brought out a regional manager and extra maintenance staff to speed repairs.

Property owners receive notices of noncompliance under the Healthy Homes ordinance when they allow their property to fall into a state of disrepair that is not conducive to healthy living conditions or basic safety standards for rental properties, Kansas City Assistant City Manager Melissa Kozakiewicz told The Star.

“This prevents property owners from renting out uninhabitable units to new tenants until the units are in compliance with the basic life safety concerns covered by the Healthy Homes ordinance,” Kozakiewicz said in February. “At this time, the property owner has addressed the unsafe and/or unsanitary conditions causing resident complaints at the Mayfair Apartments.”

There were two open cases for pest control and windows in mid-February ahead of a planned inspection at the request of property management, who believed they had fixed the outstanding issues, the city said.

Shortly before the scheduled HUD inspection, Jennifer said she received a call from the former property management company telling her that they dropped the ball and that things should’ve never gotten this far.

Jennifer said the executive promised imminent changes, including building-wide pest control, and told her that they would be hiring another management group to take over the building and that the renovations have been approved, but wouldn’t go forward for at least six months.

Owners say they want to fix things up

Jennifer said the rapid repairs after the city’s notice and ahead of the HUD inspection showed the improvements could have been made all along. She has troubled trusting that the changes will be maintained.

“When I moved here, I was on my first-ever, in my whole life, serious upswing in my mental health of getting better and starting to be able to manage my mental health better and take care of myself better,” she said. “And since I moved here, it has only gotten worse.”

The Mayfair’s owners say they are working hard to respond to the needs of residents and that the building would be uninhabitable today without the work they’ve done to date.

“By the end of 2025, the group hopes to be in position to begin a multimillion-dollar renovation that will modernize all apartments and common areas, address much-needed exterior capital improvements, and preserve the community as affordable housing for at least the next 30 years,” Cafasso of LEDG Capital said in a statement.

The company hoped to start the renovations sooner, he said, but scarcity of funding following the COVID-19 pandemic has delayed the improvements.

The HVAC systems and elevators were currently working properly, he said in February, and the city had lifted restrictions on daily operations. The management team is working with residents to keep the building as clean and sanitary as possible, and professional pest control is happening on a weekly basis, Cafasso said.

“We appreciate the patience residents have shown and look forward to beginning the effort to significantly improve their quality of life later this year,” Cafasso said.

Can the city do more?

Gina Chiala, executive director and staff attorney for the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, a Kansas City-based workers and tenants’ rights organization, said state law requires landlords to address significant threats to livability and safety, such as pest infestations and plumbing issues — but that law is rarely enforced.

That’s on top of local rules for rental properties, including the city’s Healthy Homes ordinance.

Many low-income tenants live in unsafe and uninhabitable conditions, Chiala said, and up to 50% of the eviction cases that the group handles in court on a weekly basis involve such issues.

“I think what has happened is that there’s been so little enforcement with regard to these laws that it has become a norm that low-income tenants will live with mice, roaches, sometimes bedbugs,” she said. “They will live with mold and moisture and plumbing problems and electrical problems.”

She has worked with tenants who wake up with pests in their ears or children’s beds, or sleep in shifts at night to keep them away.

“It’s a very serious problem, and it’s contributing not only to the physical decline of low-income tenants, but also to the mental decline,” Chiala said.

She said Healthy Homes responds quickly and reliably when they receive complaints, and that inspections can put pressure on the landlord who could receive fines or lose their rental license.

Speaking generally, she said tenants may face hostility from landlords after making a report, and Healthy Homes should do more when following up with tenants to discuss their rights.

“To operate a building like that, no matter who you are, if you can’t afford to make it a safe and sanitary environment for humans to live in, then you don’t get to do it,” Jennifer said. Like Chiala, she said there should be stronger enforcement at the city level to induce owners to fix conditions.

“I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that what’s happening is not fine,” Jennifer said. “Human beings are suffering in conditions that they don’t have the power to get out of and that are physically and emotionally unhealthy.”

The Beacon reported earlier this year that City Council members have been meeting with health officials to discuss making the Healthy Homes ordinance stronger, which could include requiring building-wide inspections when several complaints come in from a single property, using random inspections instead of relying only on resident complaints, and increasing staffing.

In any condition, Kansas City doesn’t have nearly enough apartments available to rent that are affordable to lower-income households, according to the city’s own data.

In its 2022 report about ending homelessness, Kansas City cites the scarcity of affordable places to live as one of the two biggest barriers to eradicating homelessness in the city,

According to the city’s analysis, the metro area is nearly 28,000 housing units short of what it needs for residents in households that are at or below 30% of the area median income, which in 2024 in Kansas City was $21,700 for a single adult or $30,950 for a family of four.

Promised changes

While waiting on the promised renovations, Jennifer is working with a social worker, trying to fight against her living conditions and still looking for alternatives.

Shortly after the HUD inspection in January, the building’s hallways were littered with trash again, Jennifer said: broken glass, sticky liquids, a huge bag of smelly trash in the lobby. She said she didn’t get a chance to speak to someone from HUD during the inspection and hadn’t heard back from the people at HUD she called.

“It looks like we’re going right back to business as usual,” Jennifer said then.

The results of the 2025 inspection are not clear. According to HUD documents, the Mayfair received a good inspection score in 2015, a substandard score in 2019 and a good score in 2022, while noting serious issues that needed to be addressed.

HUD could break its contract with properties that can’t correct failing conditions and move residents to other housing, according to the HUD website.

Later, new building management in February under WinnResidential out of Boston promised “exciting” change, according to a letter to tenants.

“Our goal is to continue to deliver great service to you and your family while adding some convenient enhancements to make your life a little easier!” the letter said.

John Ursino, WinnResidential divisional vice president, told The Star that the company is, along with ownership, committed to making meaningful improvements to enhance the living experience for all Mayfair residents.

Short-term priorities include professional pest control to conduct comprehensive treatments and put long-term prevention strategies in place; prioritizing outstanding maintenance requests with a focus on apartment repairs and critical systems; and having responsive communication with residents about improvements and maintenance requests.

“While we recognize that there is more work to be done, we want residents to know that real progress is underway,” Ursino said. “We share ownership’s goal of creating a safer, cleaner and more comfortable living environment for everyone in the community.”

Issues remained well into March, according to Jennifer: no word on pest control, dirty conditions or building security. She captured footage of an unknown man passed out on the stairwell one night and made another complaint to Healthy Homes over pest control and poorly sealed baseboards.

She saw a continued lack of communication and accountability from the powers that be and a disappointing reality in the powers of officials and advocacy groups.

“This fight has completely wrecked me,” Jennifer said in March.

But by April, she said, the new management company showed a promising shift in its approach to maintenance and cleanliness. Jennifer even made cookies and started growing a succulent for the company’s office to show her appreciation. Staff turnover still makes the situation unclear, however, she said.

A new pest control company came in and fumigated her apartment, and new rat bait seems to be working, but issues with roaches have remained.

While common space cleaning seems to have improved, Jennifer reports there is still a stream of non-tenants coming into the building and leaving trash and waste that remains over weekends.

After months living in the Mayfair, she has begun meeting with friends with a new idea: starting a housing co-operative.

The idea is to get some kind of structure on a piece of land that would serve as stable, affordable housing for as many people who can fit.

“We want to build something that will allow us to stay safe, housed, healthy and fed, whatever may be coming” she said.

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