First and foremost . . .
SPECIAL THANKS TO CITIZEN MEDIA FOR THESE IMAGES OF TODAY'S KC TENANTS RALLY WHICH OFFER A BETTER PERSPECTIVE ON THE EVENT THAN MSM!!!
The press event was earnest and it mostly focused on personal testimony.
Meanwhile the legislative deets might strike some locals as extreme.
Checkit:
KSHB: KC Tenants introduces policy that would create sweeping changes for tenant rights
The basics from a presser put out today:
The legislation would "Create an Office of the Tenant Advocate in City Hall that would receive $1 million from the general fund.
"The office would provide legal support for tenants and education on tenant rights, as well as investigate tenant claims. It would also open a tenant center, create a tenant phone hotline and could even revoke landlord permits.
"It would create a right to counsel for low-income tenants. The city would allocate $650,000 a year to pay for lawyers to handle tenant-landlord legal disputes.
Here's the kicker:
"The Bill of Rights would make it illegal to discriminate against tenants based on rental history. Landlords also would be required to give their tenants a utilities estimate, so they know what they would realistically pay each month. It would also limit how easily landlords can enter an apartment without proper notification and consent."
More on the legislation here as well:
Fox4: ‘Pass our package’: Group introduces KC tenant bill of rights on the steps of City Hall
A question for our blog community . . .
WILL THIS LEGISLATIVE CRACKDOWN DRIVE SO MANY LANDLORDS OUT BIZ THAT IT MIGHT ACTUALLY RAISE THE COST OF KANSAS CITY RENT?!?!
That's certainly not their goal but what is clear is that landlords haven't been represented in this discussion and that might be important to try and gauge the IMPACT AND UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES of this otherwise impressive movement.
Here's the money line:
"While nearly half of Kansas City’s residents rent their homes, the city does not adequately protect tenants from unsafe conditions, abusive landlords and other factors that contribute to housing insecurity and homelessness," said Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants. "This has resulted in a multifaceted crisis of affordability, access, health and accountability, faced hardest by Kansas City’s most vulnerable tenants."
You decide . . .
KC needs reform against slum lords. THIS is how it starts!
ReplyDeleteSo this is literally another slush fund proposed for the residents of KCMO. GIB ME A MILLION DOLLAS WHITE BOI FOR MY BILL OF RITES
ReplyDelete"The Bill of Rights would make it illegal to discriminate against tenants based on rental history"
ReplyDeleteOh lord this is the most retarded thing I've ever heard
I would never own property again in the hood. It’s much easier to own rental property in Joco and rent to civilized people. This is going to make rents in th East side increase drastically.
ReplyDeleteKC has implemented a ton of measures that have only raised the rent over the last few years.
ReplyDeleteWe need a homeowners bill of rights:
You Will not install bike lanes on our street
You will not rezone and destroy our historic neighborhoods for multifamily/tiny house crap
You will not raise property taxes 200 percent
ReplyDeleteDemocrat greedy weasel lawyers and blacks team up to scam taxpayers for .."Mo' Free Stuff" !
5:55 excellent response, maybe these dumbass kids will protest for us who actually own something when they finally realize the 200% increase in property taxes will raise they’re rents even more.
ReplyDeleteWhenever a tenant can't afford to pay the rent they deem it the landlords fault. "My faucet is dripping" or some other lame ass excuse they can come up with. The state statutes are already written in favor of the renters, but it doesn't protect them if they can't explain the problems to a judge. That's why I got out of the biz. If the deadbeats don't pay, I still had to pay the mortgage. One or two months is all it takes to wipe out any profit for the year.
ReplyDeleteTara Raghuveer cooked up this game for her own personal advancement. As soon as the chickens come home to roost and the errors start piling up on her she'll be gone.
ReplyDeleteHoly Sheep Shit Batman, did you get a good look at that crowd? Biggest group of free rent advocates I have ever seem. I willing to bet 90% of those people there don't even have a damn job. I bet not a damn one of them could pass a credit check for a place to live. I also am willing to bet 50% of more of them are on the verge of being kicked out of where they live now. The biggest problem isn't bad places to live it's bad tenants who won't pay the rent or utilities while destroying the place. I live in the Golden Ghetto and had to go to court to get a deadbeat customer to pay up on a bad check and all I heard was one case right after another in the kangaroo court room I was in of landlords trying to have people removed who were 3 to 6 months behind on rent most were black with a few Mexicans thrown in who couldn't speak english and all had the most lamest excuses for not paying. More than half the people filed against were no shows after being served to appear. One lady had two landlords there going after her and her excuse was all the jobs she got would make her stand on her feet and it hurt too bad to work. I swear she had to hit the scales at 350. The fat pig don't want to work. Now for the best part, some all gets credit place was the next case called up still the same lady trying to get their car back she was hiding from them. The car was suppose to have some sort of a lockout thing on it and she admitted she had some man hack it so the car would run so she could go see her Momma who lives over on the east side somewhere, the carsales people didn't know since she had given a false address for Momma. So what does the judge do? He continues the car issue since nobody would admit where the car was gave her 90 days to come up with the cash for it. Told her to pay landlord number one in full in 90 days or vacate the premises. Told landlord number twos atty to file a lean on her for costs or something of that nature since she was jabbering so much hard to hear what the judge was saying all the time.
ReplyDeleteThat folks is our judicial system and these folks want renters rights. Appears to me they got fucking people using the court system down pat. They don't need anymore help doing it.
Hey 6:38 can you help me answer this series of questions? Who organizes these people that couldn't walk in from the playground without holding on to a rope? If they can't afford rent how do they afford these t-shirts? How do they afford those signs? How can they afford to be there during the day on a weekday? How can they afford to wear CHIEFs gear? How many meals have these people missed...lokking at most of them I'd say not many.
ReplyDeleteThis is a scam.
Organizing gets the goods.
ReplyDelete^^Simple, they never pay the rent.
ReplyDeleteTara must stay with her mom, a well to do physician when she's actually in town attending photo ops like this one.
ReplyDelete"Only" a million dollars from the general fund to create another slush fund which will be overseen by who?
ReplyDeleteThe KCMO general fund already is little more than a slush fund to get shoveled out the door for the latest big big idea or to the loudest most obnoxious intimidating "group".
And there's always deathly silence from the electeds.
No one ever calls these "proposals" out for the scams they are.
You really can't make this stuff up!
This just makes renting more expensive /less profitable. The end result will be a reduction in the availability of low income housing. Can't fight economics.
ReplyDeleteMfers wouldn't be worried about it if they were responsible to begin with. Poor me shit. Can't pay my bills when I am busy blowing money on doing my nails, 1,200 I phone and driving a 55,000 suv around shit town. Urbaneconomics 101
ReplyDeleteThe issues with housing in Kansas City are not financial issues. I moved here a few years ago without issues that would concern any landlord. The houses for rent would not pass inspection for sale and so the houses are for rent. Neither the infrastructure of the neighborhoods nor is the housing in the neighborhoods are maintained. The excess of rentals is in part due to the inability of the housing to pass real estate inspections. Decades of "upgrades" not to code requires tens of thousands of dollars to address.
ReplyDeleteOr in other words, if you want to live in a high quality house you are going to need to pay for a high quality house. The "bill or rights" will require high quality housing and result in high quality housing prices; thus pricing out the activists...
Lot of things going on with this last statement. First, dude says housing is not a financial issue? Not sure what utopia he arrived from but the Real Estate lobby is the largest lobby in the USA! There's a lot of mythology involved in the housing market. This city would cease to function if the janitors and dishwashers walked out and went on strike. We're not talking about consumers, this is the flesh and bone that has no desire to live at Two Light Towers? The bankers don't want to look at the working people and the sentiment is likewise.
ReplyDeleteThere is no magic law that says working people have to live on the same economy as the bankers and property owners?
When your Escalade and your I phone are your priorities.
ReplyDeleteHow did they forget to mention "credit history" as a prohibited reason to deny someone a lease?
ReplyDeleteIf they were to add that, then the city should just appoint tenants to landlords, regulate their rent and then guarantee their lease payments should the tenant default - like Section 8 Ball Housing.
The keyword is "affordable housing". "Credit History" pertains to the "Market Economy" from an ideology that was created at the Chicago School Of Economics in the 1930's as attempts to derail FDR's New Deal. What working people are demanding is nothing more than what people who paid 30k for a house on Ward Parkway and are now selling for 400k? The exception this time is there will be no working class housing on the "market economy".
ReplyDelete