Photo source: James Woolridge, The Kansas City Star

As the Kansas City Council committee voted on a new housing ordinance from Mayor Quinton Lucas (‘02), an organization called the Kansas City Tenants (KC Tenants) opposed its approval. KC Tenants claims that Lucas’s proposal is unacceptable and that he ignored input from people who are most affected by the housing crisis. On October 13, about 30 KC Tenants and allies gathered at City Hall to urge the council to vote no on the mayor’s ordinance and talk to Lucas himself.

Arlene Jacob, a Kansas City citizen, attended the rally and told the mayor, “When you give somebody the safe space of a home, you will create a safe space in the community. My community needs safe homes now more than ever before. Your ordinance won’t do that for me and my neighbors. If anything, it would just push me out.”

KC Tenants is an organization that fights for housing justice and is led by a diverse group of poor and working-class house owners. Because KC Tenants consists of people directly affected by the housing problems, the group believes that the people closest to the solution are the closest to the problem.

Lucas’s ordinance lays out how the Kansas City Housing Trust Fund will be governed. This trust fund was established in December 2018 with the goal of further developing housing and making neighborhoods in KC more affordable. His proposal places the Housing and Community Development Department in control of the trust fund, requires efforts to promote the use of the fund, and outlines detailed criteria for projects funded through the trust fund. Developers who use this fund would also have to make projects affordable for at least 20 years.

What it leaves out (and what the KC Tenants is especially concerned with) is a board that includes actual tenants. The board KC Tenants has proposed would consist of two people from KC Tenants, other tenants, a mayor-appointed council person, and a Kansas City Public School Board member. It would reject anyone with a profit motive like bank representatives or developers. This representation is important, as this fund could be misused by developers if there is no one advocating for the tenants.

In June, KC Tenants proposed their own affordable housing trust fund of $30 million. $22 million would come from the Kansas City Police Department’s $272.9 million budget. The rest would come from taxes on developers. This would establish a recurring funding source, which the current trust fund does not have; the current trust fund is supplied by single infusions of federal cash. However, in early October, a Jackson County judge ruled that KC Tenant’s funding plan violated state law. The police department’s budget had already been set and could not be reallocated.

Lucas also examined the plan and subsequently asked KC Tenants to draft an ordinance. However, the group claims that Lucas did not adequately consider their proposal. The absence of a representative board from his own proposal is indicative to KC Tenants that Lucas has failed to represent tenants. 

It is disappointing that Lucas did not include a representative board in his ordinance. Additionally, in 2019 when Lucas was running for mayor, Lucas actually said in a KC Tenants questionnaire that the board should include “residents within affordable housing, those from different backgrounds that just the development or government administration side.” Although Lucas claims that he is willing to implement representative boards, it seems like an empty pledge.

A week after the rally, the council approved changes to Lucas’s ordinance that would have City Manager Brian Platt establish an advisory board for the fund and take social housing into account when authorizing projects.”

It is not clear whether this board will have tenant members on it though. Hopefully the council and Platt will collaborate with KC Tenants on this fund. It has the potential to help KC residents as eviction and housing problems rise. With the inadequacies of KC eviction prevention programs and the financial hurt of the pandemic, it is crucial that this plan benefits residents rather than developers.

The current proposal does not ensure the creation of more affordable units for KC, but with the addition of a representative board, it possibly could. Jenay Manley, a member of KC Tenants, stated that “I think without those voices in the room, without us telling our stories, that wouldn’t have happened.”