Members of KC Tenants held a picket event outside Quality Hill Towers on Oct. 4 (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

Nearly 200 tenants launched a rent strike at the start of this month over what they see as intolerable living conditions at two large apartment buildings in Kansas City and Independence.

The renters at Quality Hill Towers and Independence Towers are demanding better upkeep, repairs, collectively bargained leases and capping annual rent hikes at 3% across the country for buildings backed with federally secured loans.

The Beacon has put together a guide breaking down who’s involved, what tenants want and what’s at stake.

When was the last tenant strike in Kansas City?

The last high-profile rent strike in Kansas City came in August 1980. More than 500 residents withheld their rent for four days to demand new management at Vista Del Rio retirement complex.

Where can I report issues in my rental unit?

Tenants in Kansas City, Missouri, can report maintenance problems to the city’s Healthy Homes Rental Inspection Program by calling 311 or 816-513-6464 or at the city Health Department at 2400 Troost Ave. Healthy Homes covers complaints like water leaks, pests, mold and lack of heating. The Health Department can investigate and issue citations to landlords.

Residents in Independence can report unresolved issues through the city’s Rental Ready Program by completing and submitting a landlord/tenant complaint form to the Community Development Department. You can do this by emailing blicenses@indepmo.org or going to City Hall, 111 E. Maple Ave. A third-party inspector may then check for code violations. However, unresolved issues in approved properties, including Independence Towers, have raised concerns about the program’s effectiveness.

Tenants in buildings assisted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development can report issues by calling the Multifamily Housing Complaint Line at 1-800-685-8470.

Do Kansas City tenants have the right to strike?

In Missouri, a tenant has no right to withhold rent in most cases. If a tenant withholds rent payments until repairs are completed, the renter may be in violation of their lease and may be subject to eviction. However, there is a narrow exception that allows tenants to make specific repairs and deduct costs from rent, but only if the following conditions are met:

• The condition affects the sanitation, security or habitability of the property and violates city code. If a landlord disputes that, the tenant will need written verification of the violation from city inspectors.
• The tenant must have lived at the property for at least six consecutive months.
• The tenant must be up-to-date on all rent payments.
• The tenant cannot be in violation of the lease.
• The tenant has provided written notice of the problem to the landlord along with the tenant’s plan to fix it. The landlord then has 14 days to respond.
• If the landlord still does not fix the code violation within 14 days of receiving the notice, the tenant can proceed with repairs. In most cases, costs should be kept below $300 or half a month’s rent, whichever is higher.

If these criteria are not met, withholding rent could make a tenant vulnerable to eviction. However, evictions always require a court order, and tenants have the right to fight eviction in court.

What is Fannie Mae?

Independence Towers and Quality Hill Towers were bought through loans backed by the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae. Rather than lending directly to homebuyers, Fannie Mae buys loans from banks and other private lenders.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency regulates Fannie Mae by overseeing its policies and ensuring safe conditions in the properties it backs.

In May, Fannie Mae filed a lawsuit against 728 N Jennings Rd Partners LLC., the owner of Independence Towers. A Jackson County judge appointed Trigild Inc. as the receiver in charge of managing the property. Representatives with the FHFA say that Fannie Mae cannot directly instruct the receiver, but it can provide funding and offer guidance on necessary improvements based on its knowledge of the property.

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Diasha White (on the mic) was one of several speakers at the KC Tenants rally outside of Independence Towers on Oct. 1. The tenant union is demanding a national rent cap, a collectively bargained lease and maintenance updates (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

When you walk into the back entrance of Independence Towers, you’re met with a foyer filled with dust, debris and cobwebs.

Two rust-coated elevators loom against the back wall. Peeling paint and caution tape line the dirt-ridden hallways on either side.

Diasha White said it wasn’t always like this. She’s lived in the building for six years and described the first three as “beautiful.”

But she said everything changed when a new owner purchased the building and a company owned by FTW Investments LLC took over management.

“You knew he was a different type of landlord who did not take care of the property,” she said. “We’ve got holes in our walls with rusted pipes exposed, vermin falling out of those holes, water creating soft spots in the ceilings and mold.”

Independence Towers is owned by a limited liability company, 728 N Jennings Rd Partners LLC. FTW Investments said in a statement it managed the LLC as a service.

After losing hot water for weeks, White joined the Independence Towers Tenant Union in May. That union accounts for 65% percent of the 63 occupied units in the building.

In mid-May, a Jackson County judge appointed Trigild Inc. to manage the property after the Federal National Mortgage Association, known as Fannie Mae, accused the owners of failing to keep up with repairs and payments.

But tenants say that essential repairs have not been addressed. They said Trigild’s Vice President Nancy Daniels has not communicated with the union since a meeting in June.

Trigild Inc. did not respond to The Beacon’s request for comment.

The Independence Towers union — together with the Quality Hill Towers Tenant Union — launched a rent strike Oct. 1 to demand better living conditions. The strike is organized by KC Tenants. The unions are advocating for maintenance improvements, collectively bargained leases and national rent caps on federally backed buildings.

KC Tenants says both properties were purchased with multimillion-dollar loans backed by Fannie Mae in 2021.

The tenant unions want a national rent cap of 3% for all buildings that receive loans backed by Fannie Mae, which is regulated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. They also seek repairs and maintenance for their respective buildings, as well as collectively bargained leases for residents.

Sentinel Real Estate Corp,, which owns Quality Hill Towers, said in a statement that it’s been “working with the union in good faith for more than a year,” respects tenants’ right to organize and is in the process of completing requested repairs.

The Quality Hills Towers strike will ultimately harm tenants because it will make it harder to complete repairs, the statement said.

The company gave tenants until Oct. 3 to submit their rent before issuing a total of $2,750 in late fees to residents in the 55 striking units, according to an Oct. 5 KC Tenants press release.

Tenants said they taped their late fee notices to management’s door and burned several outside their offices.

What are the living conditions?

Many residents at Quality Hill Towers say they love the area because of Case Park, which overlooks the West Bottoms and the Missouri River. But inside, the reality is starkly different.

“Once I moved in (last January), I saw roaches within a week,” said Sarvesh Patel. Patel said he has also dealt with mice. He caught 12 in one weekend last year. His living room lights don’t always work, his bathtub doesn’t drain and his windows won’t stay open.

Before the strike, he paid $910 a month in rent, a 22% increase from what he initially paid, he said at an Oct. 1 rally.

Enrique Rodriguez has only lived at Quality Hill since April, but in just six months, he says he’s dealt with a kitchen sink that backs up with sewage water, peeling layers of paint and infestations of both mice and bedbugs that have left his legs marked with welts.

At the rally, a Quality Hill organizer said that the tenant union, which represents 63% of the 234 occupied units, has withheld over $39,000 in rent from Sentinel.

Twenty-one miles east, residents at Independence Towers face similar disputes with their landlord.

Once off the elevator, the carpet on the ninth floor immediately emits the smell of old, damp fabric and mildew. Chris Carlton, a resident of nearly a year, said that’s because a section of the hallway recently flooded. Along the walls splattered in yellow and white paint, the baseboards are coming loose or completely detached from the wall.

Elliot West and her parents have lived there for eight years. In their previous apartment on the now-condemned 10th floor, their ceiling collapsed. She said management left them there for a month before they were moved.

In their current apartment on the ninth floor, she said, the wallboard in her parents’ bedroom fell onto their bed, and they’re also battling roaches and bedbugs. Although they had to pay $1,000 to treat the infestation, West insists her family wasn’t the cause. She said management told them there was no proof of who was responsible.

Before the strike, White, the tenant who has lived in the building for six years, said she was paying $740 for her two-bedroom apartment. However, through conversations with management, she discovered her rent had been raised to $850 last summer — which she never received notice of.

After losing hot water in May, residents endured weeks without air conditioning in June. Tenants were given portable AC units, but they found this resulted in higher electricity bills.

“I paid $728 for my summer electric bill running the portable AC,” White said. “Usually, my highest bill is $42.”During this time, a 22-year-old resident was charged with first-degree arson after police said she confessed to setting her kitchen on fire, which rendered most of the second floor uninhabitable. Then in late July, a 3-year-old boy fell to his death from an unsecured and broken window on the eighth floor.

Management’s response 

Leaders with KC Tenants said the rent strikes mark the first in its history. They also say these are the first-ever strikes targeting FHFA, the regulator for Fannie Mae. Both buildings were purchased with loans backed by the government-sponsored enterprise.

Together, the unions plan to withhold over $60,000 from their landlords in October, according to a KC Tenants press release. That could potentially impact a landlord’s ability to make mortgage payments on Fannie Mae-backed loans.

At the Quality Hill rally, speakers called for federal regulators to foreclose on Sentinel during negotiations. They want to be involved in finding a new property owner.

The statement from Sentinel said that residents renewing their leases are already seeing annual increases of approximately 3% on average.

“We believe the tenant union’s rent strike is misguided, short-sighted, and has the potential to create negative consequences for the entire property,” the statement said.

Residents at Independence Towers said they want permanent fixes to the plumbing and heating and air conditioning systems, more maintenance staff, monthly pest control treatments, repairs to the parking garage and a moratorium on evictions or lease nonrenewals.

The ongoing issues at Independence Towers have raised concerns about the effectiveness of the city of Independence’s Rental Ready program, designed to ensure rental units are safe and meet health standards.

Despite complaints about building conditions, Independence Towers passed its most recent inspection in December. Brent Schondelmeyer, an Independence resident and former Kansas City Star reporter, told the City Council he’d found that 99% of inspections from May 2022 to May 2023 received a perfect score, based on a checklist of nine health and safety standards.

Critics argue that the inspection process, which relies on third-party inspectors hired by landlords, may not adequately address safety issues.

Independence City Council members are now considering revisions to the Rental Ready program, which they hope to have ready by the end of the year.

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Builders say today’s average homebuyer expects their house to be built with high-efficiency insulation and electric appliances (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon).

Twenty years ago, only the most environmentally minded of homebuyers worried much about solar panels, insulation ratings or the value of a heat pump.

Today, all those factors matter in a market where energy bills take on growing importance in homebuyers’ calculations.

Green home technologies have become more ordinary, even expected (and sometimes mandated by local building codes).

And the planet-friendly standards pioneered a few decades ago have been boosted by improving technologies — though the most dazzling ways to save energy and use more environmentally friendly materials tend to require buyers with beefier budgets.

The cheapest way to make a house greener is to keep it smaller. But other details matter.

Higher-rated insulation and electric appliances have become the standard. Meanwhile, amenities like conventional heat pumps and electric water heaters are becoming more popular among small-budget, first-time buyers. Solar panels and pricier geothermal heat pumps, meanwhile, are gaining popularity in the luxury home market.

“There’s been a lot of progress on this trend towards efficiency and electrification,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “That’s really taken off in the last five years because a lot of people are interested in using less fossil fuels and less energy.”

The shift toward greener homes comes partly because local and federal governments encourage it with a range of subsidies.

Evergy, for instance, gives its electricity customers rebates for heat pumps and at-home electric vehicle chargers.

And the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (which imposed more rules around fighting climate change) offers tax credits covering up to 30% of the costs for eligible clean energy home improvements like solar panels and solar water heaters installed by 2032.

What’s hot in green tech in Kansas City?

While luxury homes may feature high-end natural materials, the real driving force in today’s green construction is the demand for designs that guarantee lasting energy savings.

“There’s an aesthetic right now that’s very natural,” said Rumbach. “But that’s not the main mover of the market. A lot of these basic things, like the heating, cooling, and roofing materials, are.”

Homebuilders say that as technology advances and energy standards grow stronger, all types of buyers expect better-weatherized homes with high-insulation walls, upgraded heating and cooling systems and tight seals around windows and doors.

“Homeowners have become more aware of how extreme the weather gets here,” said Luke Owen, owner of Owen Homes. His construction company builds homes certified in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. “We have to consider all the different weather events that are going to occur on the house and try to make sure our exterior surfaces are built for this.”

Rumbach said that energy-efficient furnaces have made huge strides in popularity. About two decades ago, most furnaces ran around 80% efficient — meaning you’d get 80% of the energy back as heat — but today’s models typically achieve between 90% and 99% efficiency, he said.

Green experts also say that electronic appliances are the standard in new home construction as buyers look to move away from fossil fuels like natural gas.

Rumbach said electric water heaters have become popular and more people are buying tankless, on-demand water heaters with federal incentives.

Bill Griffith, a member of Kansas City’s Climate Protection Steering Committee, said that he’s noticed a shift from electric stovetops to induction stovetops. Those save on electricity by using electromagnetic fields to heat pots and pans directly instead of the entire cooking surface.

But the most notable shift he’s noticed is in the popularity of heat pumps, which heat and cool air more efficiently by transferring outdoor heat inside during winter and expelling indoor heat outside during summer.

Griffith said that seven years ago, heat pumps struggled to heat homes when temperatures dropped to 35 degrees. However, the technology has improved significantly. In March 2022, he replaced his gas furnace and air conditioner with an electric furnace and a heat pump. He said he was pleasantly surprised to find that the heat pump heated his home without needing backup from the furnace, except for two extremely cold days in December.

“It still worked the second day at five (degrees) below zero before it kicked over to the backup,” he said.

And heat pumps cost only marginally more than air conditioners and bring energy savings, Griffith said. He paid $6,500 for his heat pump and an air conditioner would have cost him $5,700. He said that current homebuyers can see added upfront savings with a $2,000 federal tax credit for heat pumps.

“Most of my … savings come from the utility bill going down each month,” he said.

Heat pumps have risen in popularity so much so that Owen Homes typically includes them in its homes instead of air conditioners. They beat out gas-powered furnaces in total units sold in the U.S. last year.

But several advancements in green building lie beyond the budgets for first-time homebuyers. Owen Homes builds houses in the $1 million to $3 million range with pricier tinted and tighter-sealing windows.

“Our window packages typically range from $40,000 to $60,000,” he said. “A normal entry-level home is probably in a $7,000 to $10,000 package.”

Other technologies, like roof-mounted solar panels and geothermal heat pumps, are rising in popularity in the luxury market.

Geothermal heat pump systems make heating and cooling more efficient by running pipes underground to exploit the constant temperature.

And  Kansas City’s current energy code requires that certain new homes be designed with roofs prepped for potential solar panel installations.

Owen said that everyone wants to build green until they see the upfront price and how long it takes to make your money back in energy savings. He said first-time homebuyers might need to think smaller.

“It’s about understanding the trade-off between the size of the home and the amenities,” he said. “You can either have a larger home with fewer upgrades or a smaller home with more.”

Are green homes expensive?

The Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City estimates that adhering to the city’s current building code can add up to $31,000 to the price of a 2,400-square-foot, two-story home. However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that the 2021 International Energy Code, the basis for the city’s standards, typically increases the cost of a single-family home by around $7,200.

Travis Brungardt, co-owner of Catalyst Construction, said that one of the biggest challenges to affordability is the shortage of trained workers who know how to install new, advanced systems. That lack of expertise means that installation and maintenance are more time-consuming and costly.

“It’s simple math for a tradesperson to choose between installing a system that they’ve installed 25 times and slowing down to learn a new system,” he said. “They will choose to take the easy work and make more money.”

Homeowners also have to learn to use the emerging technologies. For instance, Owen said, they have to know how to tweak humidity and ventilation settings on energy recovery ventilators, which exchange stale indoor air with fresh outdoor air, or they risk overworking the system during extreme weather.

“We’re pumping fresh air into the homes,” he said, “but the outdoor air could be 100 degrees or negative 10 degrees.”

Green technologies can also be costly to repair. Fixing a geothermal heat pump system can sometimes mean digging underground to access the network of pipes. That’s labor-intensive and expensive.

“It’s a lot more of a technical piece of equipment,” Owen said. “I’ve had several homeowners who have gotten extremely good benefits from them, like lower utility bills. But I’ve had some that had issues with their electronic system. It depends on what brand we go with or where it was produced.”

Brungardt said that Catalyst Construction built a 5,000-square-foot green home two years ago and its occupants have never paid more than $34 a month for electricity.

“I paid $260 last month for air conditioning and I live in a home half that size,” he said.

Catalyst Construction builds $700,000 to $2 million homes. Brungardt said that spending on any level of efficiency is worthwhile.

“There are things that you can’t put a price on,” he said, “like indoor air quality and human health.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Homebuilders want the Kansas City Council to relax its current green building code requirements so that they can find more cost-effective construction options (Alex Unruh/The Beacon).

The Kansas City Council gave homebuilders new rules last year designed to make housing easier on the environment.

Those rules told them what kind of windows to install, how well the walls should be insulated and how efficient the heating and air conditioning systems should be.

Developers now blame those rules for a construction slowdown that’s keeping the housing market tight and posing obstacles to making more of those homes affordable to more people.

But environmentalists say the new code needs more time to work. Ditching it, they contend, will lead to construction of energy-hog homes, adding to global climate change, and stick owners and tenants with higher energy bills.

“It will lead to less efficient and more costly homes,” said Billy Davies, conservation program coordinator for the Missouri chapter of the Sierra Club.

Some regional homebuilders want the city to relax the energy-efficiency rules of the building code it put into action last year. Rather than a rigorous checklist that dictates specifics, they want a general scoring system that gives them options to hit the mark on conserving energy. That, they say, can help them keep costs down and keep housing more affordable.

“What this is intended to do is add flexibility within the process for the contractor, the homebuilder and the homebuyer,” said Will Ruder, the executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City.

Groups defending the existing, stricter code see it as the only way for Kansas City to hit its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 100% by 2040.

Buildings play a critical role in this effort, as they are responsible for 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, said architecture instructor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Dominic Musso. “So something needs to be done if we’re going to create as big of an impact,” he said.

What would change?

The Kansas City Council adopted the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code in July 2023. That code offers builders three ways to comply with its energy standards.

However, homebuilders want more flexibility. They say they’re willing to build energy-efficient housing, but they just want to figure out the best way to do that themselves. So they’ve suggested a fourth option: achieving a Home Energy Rating System score of 68 or lower to qualify for permits.

The HERS scale, created by the Residential Energy Services Network, uses a baseline score of 100 to represent the energy use of a home built to the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code. The lower the score, the better the energy efficiency.

But Davies said that the new proposal sets the standard too low by referring to energy standards set almost two decades ago. And he said the standard isn’t tough enough. In California, new homes average a HERS score of 18.

“This is a score that is so easy to meet,” he said, “that it practically makes the code null and void.”

But Ruder with the homebuilders group said a HERS score of 68 is equal to the average in suburbs like Overland Park and Prairie Village, making it the lowest and most energy-efficient score in the metro.

The city code adopted last year requires more effective wall insulation, energy-efficient furnaces and updated windows that help maintain indoor temperatures.

The homebuilders want the leeway to upgrade windows, walls and furnaces to different standards so long as the home produces an energy rating of 68 or lower.

Ruder said that would avoid wasted expenses for buyers.

Davies said that the current energy code is crucial for protecting residents from the impacts of climate change.

“What (the homebuilders’ proposed change) does is create a loophole in Kansas City’s ordinance by weakening the energy policy and allowing developers to build more cheaply,” he said.

Davies said that he is also concerned that the proposed ordinance only requires energy testing for the first home in a development plan, which could lead to undetected issues and increased costs for homeowners.

“Imagine if there’s no testing,” he said. “Then the occupant could learn a year after they moved in that their utility bill is really high — there’s some kind of leak or other issues.”

Ruder said that builders want the City Council to change the language at its next meeting (July 23) to ensure that every home undergoes energy inspections.

Has the green building code impacted affordable housing?

Builders blame the current energy code for Kansas City’s housing shortage, partly for slowing down the rate building permits get approved.

The city averaged 60 permits per month between October 2023 and June, Ruder said. That same nine-month period averaged 66 permits a month over the last two years and 85 permits a month over the last four years.

Davies said that a drop in permits is common when new codes are introduced. He said construction workers who have already adapted to the current code shouldn’t have to learn a new one so soon.

“Kansas City needs to give the experts in the building community who want to work with this (2021) code more time to make it happen,” Davies said.

Steven Bennett, a professor in the Construction Management department at Johnson County Community College, said that Kansas City has historically had a slow permit process. But he finds the delays over the last nine months excessive. He said nearby cities typically need one to two months to adapt to new building codes.

What do the numbers say?

The Home Builders Association estimated that following the current standard can add up to $31,000 to the price of a 2,400-square-foot, two-story home. Bennett, who has also taught classes on green building, agrees. He said that while builders should strive for better energy efficiency, the city’s existing energy standards are too pricey.

“It’s going to impact the owner’s cost to build, which in turn increases rent and lease costs for those utilizing these homes,” Bennett said.

He said that the code increases home construction costs by up to 30%.

However, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development states that the international standards adopted in 2021 add about $7,200 to the cost of a single-family home.

Musso at UMKC believes that the added expenses from an updated energy code are worthwhile.

“You don’t want to do it cheap up front and then have everything not give you the performance that it should,” he said.

Conservationists agree. They say that the money residents will save on utility bills will eventually offset the upfront cost of building to the city’s current standard. The U.S. Department of Energy found that the average new homeowner in Missouri can expect to save $677 annually on their utility bills, which average out to $2,603 annually.

That would take roughly 10 years to break even under HUD’s upfront cost estimation.

But homebuilders have different ideas about the cost-benefit ratio for homeowners.

Bennett said that in his experience, savings aren’t as great as significant as energy agencies claim. Even if they are, he questions the value.

“If you saw a home with a break-even deal in 10 years, I don’t know that I would advise you to do it,” he said. “You’re probably going to move out and never see that savings.”

The Home Builders Association calculated that utility savings would only be $90 to $125 per year for a 1,400-square-foot starter home, using average gas prices from Spire and average electric costs from Evergy, Ruder said.

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Six matches will be held at at Arrowhead Stadium during the 2026 World Cup (Vaughn Wheat/The Beacon).

The 2026 World Cup will squeeze Kansas City’s already tight housing market in ways that could make shelter particularly scarce for homeless people.

Many thousands of soccer fans flocking to the region will need places to stay. But some housing experts say that the World Cup’s short-term impact on the housing market could prod the market to create more housing that would benefit the city long after the international crowd leaves town.

“You want to spend on public service infrastructure that has benefits beyond the event,” said Michael Frisch, professor of urban planning and design at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. “Ideally, that infrastructure should have broad impacts.”

How the World Cup could affect homelessness

Realtors say property owners are already converting their spaces into short-term rentals.

Sal Loiacono, owner of Better Builders Co., said that short-term rental prices will skyrocket by 2026. That was his experience when he attended the previous World Cup in Qatar.

“Prices were three times the typical rate,” he said.

The competition for apartments, in turn, likely will push up rents and make permanent housing less affordable. Frisch said that residents will want to avoid any leases that end the summer of 2026.

“Renters with leases that are up between May and August 2026 are going to be threatened with displacement,” he said.

Every country that bids to host the World Cup has to comply with a human rights policy and submit its own human rights strategy, a FIFA spokesperson told The Beacon.

Host cities must collaborate with housing rights groups to address potential housing issues, such as rising rent prices and possible evictions caused by the event. Cities are also asked to work with homeless rights groups to develop a plan for people living on the streets and find shelter for people displaced by the event.

The host nations of Canada, Mexico and the U.S. put together their strategies to ensure that the 2026 FIFA World Cup doesn’t worsen housing problems.

But in Brazil in 2014, up to 250,000 people were displaced to make way for construction tied to the World Cup. Similarly, thousands of migrant workers were evicted from their homes to make room for soccer fans when Qatar hosted in 2022.

Josh Henges, Kansas City’s homelessness prevention coordinator, said that major displacement should not be a problem in U.S. cities because no new stadiums or housing projects will need to be built.

“All of the infrastructure already exists,” he said.

But Stephanie Boyer, the chief executive officer of reStart Inc., said homeless and domestic violence agencies often put clients in hotels. With the World Cup, out-of-towners will take over those rooms.

Boyer said that Kansas City’s homeless population has been displaced for past sporting events. She is in talks with the city’s World Cup committee to make sure that doesn’t happen this time.

“What we don’t want to see is a repeat of what happened when the NFL Draft came to town (in 2023) and encampments started disappearing,” she said.

The city’s encampment policy requires police or city officials to give service providers and encampment residents at least 48 hours notice before clearing an area. But officials cleared out encampments without notice in preparation for the NFL Draft, Boyer said.

That sudden action prevents outreach workers from contacting homeless people, causing case managers to lose track of clients.

“They could have been close to getting that person housed and now they’re nowhere to be found and they have no way to contact them,” she said.

Long-term impact of 2026 World Cup in Kansas City

Frisch from UMKC said that the World Cup’s impact on affordable housing in Kansas City depends on the city’s approach to development and policies. He stressed that long-term benefits come from investing in public needs.

“If they serve private needs, like the owners of sports teams, then there’s not going to be a public impact,” he said.

Past host cities have leveraged large sporting events to create long-term housing benefits. Barcelona used the 1992 Olympics to improve infrastructure and rebuild run-down areas, converting the Olympic village into mixed-income housing. Atlanta adopted a similar strategy after the 1996 Olympics. However, both projects also resulted in widespread gentrification and displacement of low-income residents.

Ryana Parks-Shaw, Kansas City’s mayor pro tem, said that City Hall has not begun discussing the World Cup and homelessness. But she said that as long as the city’s strategy to end homelessness by 2030 remains on track — which includes the construction of a low-barrier shelter — then Kansas City should be well-prepared for the World Cup.

Shaw said that increasing affordable housing stock over the next two years will curb displacement.

That includes establishing a citywide land trust, a nonprofit model that keeps housing affordable by acquiring land and separating a resident’s ownership of a home from that land, she said.

That land trust can help sell the 3,000 vacant properties that the land bank commission is looking to use for affordable housing, Parks-Shaw said.

She said the city’s housing locator, which connects residents with property owners in need of tenants, will also help to get stock off the market. Landlords can no longer turn away tenants merely for using rent subsidies. And it’s spending $1 million to entice landlords to take in more low-income and high-risk tenants.

“I heard from our housing providers that on any given day, 8 to 10% of their housing stock sits vacant,” she said. “Our goal is to take advantage of that housing stock that sits vacant and get individuals to lease those homes. That will be in full effect by the time the World Cup comes.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Ken Simard was homeless for seven years. He slept in an encampment under a Blue Parkway bridge (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

Ken Simard mainly slept under the Blue Parkway bridge near railroad tracks along Brighton Avenue for the seven years he was homeless, numbing himself with meth and weed.

“If it were not for the drugs that I did, I would have been suicidal,” he said. “I would do anything to take my mind and put it in an alternate place and time.”

That drug use would have made him unwelcome at Kansas City’s homeless shelters.

“It’s not a good mix to have somebody who’s hallucinating with people who are sober or haven’t used,” he said. “When you’re hallucinating you’re inclined to think your best friend is out to get you. It just turns into a dangerous environment for all parties involved.”

Kansas City has the country’s highest rate of chronically homeless people who can’t find an apartment — or space in a shelter. A U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development survey found that 96% of those people in Kansas City live on the street.

Last year, the Kansas City Council set out to pass along $7.1 million in federal tax dollars for a low-barrier shelter — a last-resort way to get people off the streets by dropping the usual shelter rules like sobriety or job skills training. It’s a key part of the city’s Zero KC plan to end homelessness by the end of the decade.

Hope Faith Homeless Assistance Campus landed a grant from the city in January to open a low-barrier shelter at Virginia Avenue and Admiral Boulevard.

But pushback from residents in Northeast neighborhoods stalled that plan. They’re worried about the safety of a center that they fear would concentrate people with mental health or substance abuse issues to one place. That opposition prompted the City Council to retract its grant to Hope Faith for a low-barrier shelter.

Factions in the Northeast neighborhood lobbied to split the money among multiple, scattered shelters.

But that money won’t stretch far enough for multiple shelters. So Hope Faith argues Kansas City needs at least one place that takes in people other shelters turn away — if it wants to make sure people aren’t forced to live under bridges or in encampments.

“If we don’t help them, then where do they go? The streets. And I’ve never seen anyone improve their life by living long-term on the streets,” said Hope Faith Executive Director Doug Langner. “The solution for this problem is to get them off the streets. And we feel we have a plan.”

Why did the City Council restart the low-barrier homeless shelter application?

The Kansas City Council voted 8-2 on April 25 to restart grant applications. Of the $7 million, $5 million will be set aside for the construction of a new shelter.

Evie Craig, president of the Paseo West Neighborhood Association, said the City Council should have been more transparent about what was planned and where it would go. She said residents weren’t aware there were plans to build a shelter in her neighborhood until after the proposal was approved.

“There was no community notification or engagement,” she said. “Why not share outcomes and issues and have regular meetings? It could be a true collaboration between providers and neighborhoods.”

Craig said large homeless shelters aren’t always safe for all populations, particularly queer people or victims of domestic abuse.

“One large building that the city is investing in can become an area where you have the same kind of dynamics that happens on the street,” she said. “Like a (homeless) campground in concrete. You really want a place where folks can feel safe.”

She said many Northeast residents don’t want their neighborhood to host the only low-barrier shelter in the city. Hope Faith is located near several other homeless services, such as reStart Inc., City Union Mission and NourishKC.

Craig said the neighborhood has supported those groups, but she doesn’t think converting Hope Faith into a shelter is an accessible plan for everyone in the metro. Residents would like to see the money distributed to other shelters across the city or establish new small-scale shelters.

“There are pockets of street homelessness throughout the city,” she said. “And we felt that one place where you’re displacing folks from where their support system is may not be the best solution. We’re advocating for a better solution. Not just the easiest one.”

But Josh Henges, the city’s homeless prevention coordinator, said the $7 million in federal money barely pays for a single shelter and couldn’t be used effectively for multiple locations.

“That argument is fine if we’re splitting up $100 million, but we’re not,” he said. “The quickest way to have 100 homeless people standing outside of your homeless shelter is to have a homeless shelter that only has 40 beds.”

Henges said that Kansas City can’t afford to wait for a perfect solution before taking action.

“We’re not even close to a solution. And we’re arguing about why we need multiple shelters,” he said. “So that means let’s not just start with one?”

Could splitting up the money work?

Henges said the city is making a mistake by trying to appease residents. He argues residents will always oppose a shelter in their neighborhood. So trying to win over residents, he said, means endless delays and abandoning the ambitious Zero KC goal of ending homelessness by 2030.

“There’s always going to be people who don’t want a thing,” Henges said. “If the role of (the City Council) is to appeal to the people who don’t want a thing, nothing is going to get done.”

Henges argued that low-barrier shelters are critical when he co-wrote the Zero KC plan. He said City Hall needs to listen to the insights of people working directly with the homeless community.

“Kansas City isn’t special,” Henges said. “It has to solve homelessness the way homelessness is solved everywhere and you have to have a starting point, which is a low-barrier emergency shelter.”

He said spreading money across existing shelters with stricter requirements won’t work. Rather, he sees a low-barrier shelter as the best chance to make a difference for the chronically homeless, who have experienced homelessness for at least a year — or repeatedly — while struggling with substance abuse, a serious mental illness or a physical disability.

“We’re trying to solve for chronic homelessness,” Henges said. “We have nothing for chronic homelessness, which is the reason the emails are coming in, the reason the cops get called and the reason that ERs are plugged up.”

He acknowledged Northeast residents’ concerns, but said Hope Faith has served the chronically homeless for a decade. He said a shelter there wouldn’t concentrate homelessness, but provide much-needed services to an existing population.

“They are a low-barrier day center,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is solve the problem of what happens when Hope Faith is closed (at night).”

Hope Faith’s application included a proposal to use the $5 million to expand its campus at Virginia Avenue and Admiral Boulevard by creating up to 100 beds with shared bathrooms.

But rules attached to the federal tax dollars call for individual rooms and private bathrooms. Langner said Hope Faith originally proposed shared bathrooms to maximize the bed count. In the new application, it will include more bathrooms but have to cut out 70 beds.

Kansas City spent four times as much on a single animal shelter, so Langner said $7 million is barely enough for a single homeless shelter.

“I can’t put our organization in a spot where we either can’t do construction, or have to do it in such a manner that’s not dignified,” he said. “If they split this pot of money up, then I don’t know that we could move forward.”

Why is low-barrier homeless shelter necessary in Kansas City?

National Alliance to End Homelessness says more than one in five people who become homeless end up that way chronically. A chronically homeless person costs taxpayers more than $35,000 a year. Give them housing, the group says, and that cost is cut in half.

Langner said he understands why residents are concerned about the safety of a large facility. A homeless person is more likely to be the victim of a crime than to commit one. And he said a larger low-barrier shelter doesn’t have to bring chaos.

If Hope Faith becomes a shelter, guests will not have to pray to stay or be sober, so long as they pose no danger to themselves and others, he said.

Bakersfield, California, ended chronic homelessness for a moment. In 2020, the county briefly achieved functional zero, meaning at least as many people escaped homelessness as fell into it.

Federal pandemic funding allowed homeless service agencies to place people in hotels and motels. But that wasn’t a long-term solution. The high cost of housing in California remains the core issue, said Carlos Baldovinos, chairman of the Bakersfield Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative in Bakersfield.

Baldovinos said communities will decide what best suits their low-barrier shelter needs through trial and error. Low-barrier shelters in Kern County, for example, began to allow guests to bring their pets. Some shelters even installed dog kennels.

He said large shelters should have evaluations and trained professionals on-site to deal with mental health issues or substance abuse.

“You have to accommodate people where they are and work with them,” he said. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

Henges said Kansas City needs to do something now if city leaders want to see Zero KC hit its 2030 goal. For now, he said, Kansas City is behind schedule.

“We are more likely to double our homeless population than we are to reduce the homeless population by even 5 percent,” he said. “At some point, your elected officials have to decide this is a problem they want to solve. Until then, it’s not solvable.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

T’Montez Hurt went missing on Feb. 1 at a Greyhound bus station on Troost Avenue. The 19-year-old's disappearance has become a rallying cry for better police cooperation by family members of missing people (Mili Mansaray/ The Beacon).

T’Montez Hurt had just started working at a Price Chopper in Grain Valley to save money after a semester away from Missouri Western State University.

Then in the early hours of Feb. 1, the 19-year-old placed an anxious phone call to his grandmother, Tecona Donald-Sullivan, saying he thought he’d been drugged. The day before he’d had a mental breakdown and sounded distressed over the phone.

He asked his grandmother for her prayers.

She called 911 from St. Louis. Hurt was taken to a Kansas City hospital, where a urine test revealed no drugs in his system. Before he was discharged, his grandmother arranged with the hospital to call him a cab that would take him to a Greyhound bus station so he could return to St. Louis.

Security footage captured Hurt walking up to the door of the bus station at Troost Avenue and 11th Street before discovering it was closed. He then attempted to reenter the zTrip rideshare car. He’d left his cellphone in the car but the driver wouldn’t unlock the door. That was the last confirmed sighting of T’Montez.

Hurt’s disappearance ignited a communitywide search effort. Youth news platform KC Discover joined forces with his family to organize search parties. That outpouring of support reflects a rise of concern among residents regarding missing people in the area.

The Kansas City Police Department reports that Hurt is one of seven adults who have gone missing in Kansas City in 2024 and have yet to be found. That number likely represents only a fraction of missing people — many cases go unreported — yet it nearly doubles the four active missing-adult reports compared to the same time last year. And the increase in missing minors has been more significant, from seven at this time last year to 29 today.

The trend extends across the state. The Missouri State Highway Patrol reports a fourfold increase in active adult missing persons reports in Missouri compared to the same time last year.

Groups involved in finding missing people offer no single explanation for the rise. More active cases could mean an increase in disappearances. It might also signal a growing willingness by community members to report disappearances to police.

In Kansas City, police have revived the missing persons unit. Officers say they publish the number of missing people and communicate with the families involved with missing persons investigations.

Still, community leaders say families get frustrated that police sometimes won’t open a missing persons case without obvious evidence of foul play or unless their relative suffers from a physical or acute mental health problem. More broadly, families report a cumbersome process that makes it daunting to file a report.

“It’s about really catering to the needs of those families that have reported their loved ones missing,” said Damon Daniel, president of AdHoc Group Against Crime, an organization dedicated to fighting crime and violence in Kansas City. “Families (often) don’t feel like enough is being done.”

AdHoc has had a long-standing relationship with KCPD since its inception in 1977, when former police officer Alvin Brooks formed the organization to address the unsolved murders of Black women. The organization prepares videos and collaborates with the department on search parties and door-to-door canvasses, including one for Hurt.

KCPD Missing persons unit 

KCPD is actively investigating T’Montez Hurt’s disappearance, police spokesperson Capt. Jacob Becchina said in an email to The Beacon. While a search party organized by KC Discover found a bone near Troost Avenue and 81st Street on April 13, it wasn’t human. A body discovered nearby by police triggered a separate ongoing death investigation.

Statistics show a rise in both adult and juvenile missing persons cases. The number of active missing juvenile cases in Kansas City lept from seven in the first four months of 2023 to 29 this year.

That increase follows the reinstatement of the police department’s Missing Persons Section in April 2023.  Police Chief Stacey Graves reopened the unit in response to criticism that the department needed to put more effort into finding missing Black women. The unit had disbanded in 2022 because of staffing shortages. It now dedicates seven detectives and a sergeant specifically to missing person investigations.

“Re-dedicating a squad of detectives to focus primarily on missing persons provides a greater capacity to tend to the needs of those investigations,” the department’s spokesperson said in an email.

KCPD took a missing person report on Hurt on Feb. 2, the same day they were notified about Hurt, The Kansas City Star reports, but a flyer wasn’t posted on the department’s website or distributed to local media until March 27.

Community response

The case of Jaynie Crosdale shows the disconnect between law enforcement and Black communities, The Kansas City Defender founder Ryan Sorrell said.

Crosdale was reported by police as a potential witness in the case against Timothy Haslett Jr., who has been charged with kidnapping and torturing a young Black woman he picked up on Prospect Avenue in 2022.

Crosdale’s remains were later discovered in a barrel floating in the Missouri River in July 2023. Haslett has not been charged in her death. Sorrell said that when Crosdale went missing, Excelsior Springs police announced that she was a potential witness instead of a potential victim. He said the difference in that language matters.

“That scenario is indicative of how the police view missing Black people, more times than not, as criminals as opposed to victims who need help,” he said.

Sorrell said distrust of police because of historical criminalization of victims and police brutality makes it hard for police to rally cooperation in missing persons cases. Those suspicions of police have discouraged families from pursuing formal investigations. So many have taken on the work themselves.

The Defender has been receiving and amplifying community tips on missing people after it began to investigate the trend of missing Black women in Kansas City in 2022, Sorrell said.

“It continues to be an urgent crisis within our city that is not being adequately addressed — and is not even capable of being adequately addressed — by the police,” he said. “Many Black people don’t even feel safe going to the police department to report it.”

Black people make up 56% of all the missing persons reports in the past eight months, despite only making up 26% of the population in Kansas City, according to data from KCPD.

Families looking for missing people have also addressed the difficulty of filing a report. The department has no minimum time a person is gone before declaring them missing. But they must either have a life-threatening medical condition, be suffering from a mental illness or dementia, be suicidal or there must be strong evidence of foul play.

Kris Wade has seen this firsthand. She is the co-founder and executive director of The Justice Project, which advocates for women in poverty. She said families need to understand filing guidelines before approaching the police department.

“If they have the right information, they’ll start looking. But if they don’t have enough information, what can they do?” she said. “They can’t just send people out to aimlessly drive around the streets. That’s why people will need to do their homework before they go down there. Or to ask the police, ‘What do you need from me to make this work?’”

Daniel with AdHoc said police simply don’t have enough officers to conduct robust investigations into every missing persons tip, especially considering the number of violent crimes that take place in Kansas City. But he believes more can be done when families reach out.

“Does that mean that if I can’t file a report I’m not going to get any help at all?” he said. “That’s a little unacceptable.”

Becchina said that investigations are confidential and complex and require a unique approach for each case, but the department does what it can to be transparent.

“We publish the daily numbers and we are in contact regularly with reporting parties and available for follow-ups to answer questions when needed,” Becchina said.

Daniel said that KCPD needs to be straightforward about educating families on how to file a missing persons report and what to expect after one is filed.

“There has to be a better education to the public as to what those processes are,” he said. “They should put them (clearly) on their website. At least make it plain out there.”

Theda Wilson would agree. She founded Looking for an Angel in 2006, three years after her 9-year-old son, Christian Taylor Ferguson, went missing. The St. Louis-based nonprofit helps families find their missing loved ones.

Wilson said she’s had to be persistent with local law enforcement and the Missouri Highway Patrol to pursue missing persons investigations. She often has to remind officers, for example, that there is no time limit on an investigation when they insist that families wait 24 to 48 hours after a person goes missing.

“Most of the time these terms are new to them and they don’t know what to do,” she said.  “They’re expecting guidance from a representative like a police department or a police agency to tell them what they need to do. I’ll go down there and I’m going to get some answers and I’ll stand there until they open their door and talk to me and their parents.”

Editor’s note: Mili Mansaray has freelanced an article for The Kansas City Defender profiling Kansas City’s first poet laureate. 

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Small Area Fair Market Rents program will give voucher holders more housing options in areas like Hyde Park (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

For generations, federal housing subsidies have provided a lifeline to families struggling to afford rent.

But the maximum amount families got for rent stayed the same regardless of which neighborhood best suited their needs — effectively segregating them into low-income areas.

Come this fall, the rent cap for a standard apartment will vary from one Kansas City ZIP code to the next.

Experts see the new program — Small Area Fair Market Rents, or SAFMR — as a game changer giving families access to neighborhoods they have been essentially shut out of. That could mean putting families closer to fresh produce and better schools and moving them out of high-crime areas.

But by raising the subsidies in some neighborhoods, the program will eat through federal dollars more quickly and make those Section 8 rent vouchers available to fewer families.

“This means that you’re not artificially stuck with a voucher that has a cap on its ability to pay,” said Brian Handshy, regional spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “Raising the (fair market value) is not going to solve everything completely. But it certainly empowers the tenant to have more ability to push back on (money) constraints.”

Regional housing authorities across the metro have until the end of this year to roll out their ZIP code-based subsidies.

Why will Kansas City section 8 use SAFMR?

HUD will publish the subsidies for 2025 on Oct.1. Small area fair market rents will only affect new voucher users. Current leases will be upheld unless a landlord requests a rent increase.

Local housing agencies currently pay up to $1,098 for a one-bedroom and $1,258 for a two-bedroom.

That’s based on the federal government’s calculation of fair market rents set by the average rent of standard quality units — or nonluxury apartments that are more than two years old offering basic amenities.

Housing authorities will then make sure that the rent charged for an individual unit is reasonably priced in comparison to other units in the area. The tenant will pay about 30% of their income for rent and the housing authority pays the rest.

“Under the fair market rents, you have that lower benchmark that housing authorities set their payment with,” Handshy said. “That’s been a problem in these last few years with rising rental costs.”

Last year, Kansas City was chosen as one of 41 additional metro areas to participate in SAFMRs, because at least 20% of its standard rentals are in ZIP codes with fair market rents significantly higher than the citywide average.

“If we found that there’s only one or two ZIP codes where that was a challenge, then there’s really no reason to force that housing authority in that ZIP code to go to small area,” Handshy said. “But that’s not what we’re seeing for Kansas City.”

Edwin Lowndes is the executive director for the Housing Authority of Kansas City, which serves Kansas City proper, Raytown, Grandview and Gladstone. He said most of the region’s high-income neighborhoods are in the suburbs, where low-income residents often can’t afford to stay. Based on 2024 calculations from HUD, SAFMR would significantly increase voucher payouts in those areas.

In southern Johnson County, where the median household income is $109,363, the housing authority would pay up to $1,650 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,890 for a two-bedroom.

This would place voucher holders within the range to afford a standard apartment in the area, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,219 and the average rent for a two-bedroom is $1,521, according to Apartments.com. Luxury apartments, however, can go for rents twice as high.

Voucher holders could also move to downtown neighborhoods like Quality Hill and the Garment District, where a voucher for one bedroom would pay up to $1,500. A two-bedroom would max out at $1,720.

In areas where the rent average is lower than the region’s, the voucher amount will decrease. That would apply in the area stretching east of The Paseo extending to Eastwood Park, where the median household income is $28,493. In that area, rent subsidies would decrease to $970 for a one-bedroom and $1,110 for a two-bedroom apartment. About 12% of current voucher holders live in that area currently, Lowndes said.

What impact could SAFMR have on the market?

Income segregation traps poor residents in neighborhoods with fewer opportunities and resources.

Low-income housing often exists in food deserts or neighborhoods that have limited access to nutritious food. A 2021 study by the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that families facing housing instability are 40% more likely to face food insecurity.

Without access to healthy meals, low-income residents are at a higher risk for diet-related health conditions, such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Schools in high-poverty neighborhoods have fewer instructors, less access to high-level coursework and lower levels of state and local funding. The Kansas City Public Schools system has a long history of segregation and inefficiency.

And without other vital resources — such as health care and job opportunities — low-income neighborhoods are more likely to be affected by crime than high-income neighborhoods.

Kansas City’s shift to SAFMR reflects a national trend in housing policy. HUD required 24 other metro areas to make the switch in 2018. The Housing Authority of Cook County, Illinois, was an early adopter in 2012. Voucher payments in Cook County were too low to allow poorer families to move into its more prosperous northern suburbs.

Switching to SAFMR allowed voucher payments to better reflect market rents in high-rent areas. Landlords then became more receptive to the program. And the number of units in high-income areas available to voucher holders rose by 14% in 5 years.

New payment standards for the housing voucher program could bring similar changes for the 17,586 people on Kansas City’s voucher wait list, Lowndes said.

Does SAFMR have any unintended consequences?

Candace Ladd, outreach coordinator for the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, is optimistic about the new payment standard. Her organization provides free legal aid to renters and she believes SAFMR, combined with legislation preventing landlords from discriminating against voucher holders, will let tenants explore previously out-of-reach neighborhoods.

But she worries the smaller subsidies for apartments in poorer neighborhoods could cut off access to some housing. Voucher holders already struggle to find something they can afford even outside of high-income neighborhoods due to rising rents.

In Cook County, while the number of affordable apartments in high-income areas increased by 14% under SAFMR, the number of affordable units in low-income areas decreased by 14% in five years.

“If a tenant’s not able to find a home within a certain period of time, they actually lose that voucher and have to start all over,” she said. “So If a tenant isn’t able to rent in a certain area of town any longer because that voucher is too low, they’ll miss out on the voucher entirely.”

But Lowndes said that having more housing options should speed up the process for tenants.

“They can go to wherever they want … and there should be a higher probability that the rents will be approved,” he said.

Instead, Lowndes said HUD should watch out for the negative impact higher rent subsidies will have on the amount of vouchers the housing authority can give. HAKC gets $60 million a year to pay landlords, he said. They will not be getting any additional funding in 2025.

“There are conflicting aspects. We want families to move to high-opportunity neighborhoods but that means they cost more,” Lowndes said. “Higher rents mean more funds are paid out on behalf of the tenants, which means we can serve fewer people.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

KCPS wants the Royals to fund the DeLano Youth Housing and Supportive Services project, which would rehabilitate the closed school to provide shelter to at-risk youth (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

The Royals, vying for support weeks before voters will decide whether to promise them decades of tax money, are finalizing terms to give Kansas City Public Schools money to offset the loss of property taxes.

The team’s plans for a stadium and entertainment district in the East Crossroads would swallow up six blocks of real estate that would otherwise represent nearly $1.4 billion in property taxes over 40 years.

The news of a deal between the team and the school district comes a day after the Royals promised millions in a community benefits agreement — a deal that some organizations say offers too little.

Jackson County legislators say an agreement to offset the loss of property taxes means the new stadium won’t hurt public schools or shift the district’s tax burden onto other property owners.

Yet school officials argue that the team needs to pay for other community benefits. They contend that public schools might come out even on the property tax loss, but that public schools don’t get anything out of a downtown stadium.

The Royals have yet to make similar promises to other taxing districts that support libraries and mental health care.

Is KCPS gaining anything with this deal?

In 2023, the land targeted for the stadium and entertainment district generated $1.4 million in property tax revenue. Land in the area that would generate an additional $500,000 a year already benefits from tax exemptions or abatements.

The former Kansas City Star building got tax abatements until it shut down in 2021, said Dan Moye, vice president of land development at the Economic Development Corp. of Kansas City. He said the property lost its tax abatement when it stopped functioning as a printing facility.

KCPS got $850,000 in property taxes from the six-block area in 2023, according to a statement released by the district.

At least four of the six city blocks targeted for the ballpark district would be owned by Jackson County, which doesn’t pay property taxes. If voters approve a 3/8-cents sales tax extension on April 2, the county would purchase the land and the Royals would sign a lease with the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority. Officials involved with the project remain unsure whether the two blocks the county wouldn’t own would be assessed property taxes.

If the stadium were built on privately owned land — say, if the Royals paid for the project on their own — county records suggest it would pay KCPS $16 million in property taxes the first year and $745 million over 40 years.

In a statement on Thursday, KCPS said it landed a guarantee that the district would not lose property tax funding and that the team would give paid internships to three to five students a year for 10 years.

Yet the district wanted more. It called for the Royals to fund its literacy programs and the cost of running the  DeLano Youth Housing and Supportive Services project. The DeLano project would revamp a former KCPS school building to provide shelter, transitional living and support services to youth ages 14 to 21.

“We are disappointed that we have been unable to secure any direct long-term benefits to the district,” the district’s statement said.

What will KCPS get from the county Community Benefits Agreement?

The day before this announcement to offset the loss of property taxes on a downtown stadium, the team committed to a community benefits agreement with the Jackson County-backed Community Benefits Coalition. While the coalition negotiated its own CBA with the Royals, KCPS has been advocating for a separate benefits agreement targeted at public education.

The Chiefs and Royals have committed to providing $260 million over the next 40 years to support Jackson County residents and workers. The Royals pledged $140 million over 40 years, or $3.5 million a year.

Initially, the coalition’s community benefits draft proposed both teams pay $1.4 billion in community benefits, including $120 million for education over 40 years. When their housing demands got slashed, leaders representing the Missouri Workers Center and Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom left the coalition.

“What the Kansas City Royals released today is far from reflective of any ‘significant input’ they claim to have gathered,” the organizations said in a joint statement. “The Royals have given themselves outsized power in making appointments to the ‘CBA Board’ responsible (omitting) a clear indication that community members will have any meaningful say.”

Leaders with the Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity (MORE2) also left the coalition.

Lora McDonald, executive director of  MORE2, said that her organization pulled out because she had to watch the negotiations on a television in a separate room.

“The people convening the table for Jackson County in this process wanted me, representing forty congregations and non-profits, to be sidelined,” she said in a statement. “I hope the Royals … can reach an agreement that somehow benefits the community. I can watch television at home.”

The terms of the official CBA haven’t been released, but Jackson County Legislator Manny Abarca said the team is offering “a historic level of benefits.”

Abarca said the school district is being promised more money than needed.

“The Royals told me they’re standing by figures I would even say are unreasonable based on incorrectly assessed values of 2023,” he said.

What about other tax jurisdictions?

Meanwhile, the Royals haven’t promised money to public libraries or mental health services that would lose revenue when more property in the proposed ballpark district becomes tax-exempt.

In 2023, Kansas City Public Library drew $90,000 in property taxes from the area. Without the existing tax abatements, the six blocks would have generated  $120,000 for libraries.

“We’re talking about a 40-year agreement at a minimum of $120,000 (a year),” said Debbie Siragusa, the library district’s assistant director.

That, she said, is the equivalent of hiring two workers.

Over 40 years, the library district would receive nearly $72 million from the ballpark if it was privately owned. The libraries get 95% of their money from property taxes. Siragusa said her office has not heard anything from the Royals.

“No one has reached out to us either from the Royals or the county,” she said.

She said the library district will be reaching out to the team this week, but developers going through tax incentive agencies are typically required to approach taxing districts.

“For a significant tax incentive, this is not how it would normally happen,” Siragusa said. “We have worked very hard with the city to make sure the taxing jurisdictions, including the library, have an opportunity to talk with developers and incentive agencies so we have input early on.”

The Jackson County Community Mental Health Fund is fully funded by property taxes. Bruce Eddy, the executive director, also hasn’t heard from the team. It stands to lose $350,000 a year, or $14 million over 40 years.

“I don’t know if there’s an intention of paying all of it, some of it, or none of it,” Eddy said.

The abatement the property receives from being leased with a government entity makes the stadium deal unique, said Dan Moye with the EDCKC. Although he is not involved with the deal, he said tax incentive agencies are subject to specific rules.

“A public agency will own the new stadium,” he said, “so it won’t go through the traditional abatement process.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A rendering of the Royals proposed downtown ballpark (image submitted).

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Researchers say that large real estate companies are buying into Kansas City’s single-family housing stock, creating a heightened demand for homes and a more expensive real estate market for homebuyers (Dominick Wiliams/The Beacon).

Brenna Dwyer was in a race to buy her first home. When she and her sister decided to purchase a house together in 2020, they didn’t realize how steep the competition would be — or who they were up against.

“If we would find a house we liked and needed to think about it, by the time we had just a few days to talk it was already gone,” she said. “We had to make a decision quick or the house would go away.”

It took the sisters six months to find their home in Shawnee, Kansas. Then it took them one day to put down an offer.

The Dwyers ran into an increasingly rushed homebuying market where Kansas Citians find themselves bidding against large investors swooping in to find rental properties.

That, in turn, continually shrinks the number of houses available for people buying for themselves and further hurries financial decisions that could drive a family’s economic security for decades.

Investors are “intentionally targeting what has primarily been housing intended for ownership to turn it into rentals,” said Josh Akers, research manager for the Mid-America Regional Council.

A strong presence of large and out-of-state investors can have repercussions for tenants too, researchers found.

Real estate agents and large property investors say that the tight market comes from a housing supply shortage. Rising interest rates make it even harder for homebuyers to afford what they want — and the cost of borrowing money typically deters small investors from scooping up homes for rental income.

Still, a 2023 MARC study on investor impact found that rentals make up almost a fourth of all the single-family homes in the nine counties covering and surrounding Kansas City. Of the region’s 157,000 single-family rentals, nearly 20% are owned by people or companies with 10 or more properties.

Where did large investors come from?

Thirty-three companies own nearly 14,000 homes in the Kansas City region, MARC found. Five of those companies own nearly 8,000 homes.

Nearly 45% of the single-family rentals in Jackson County are owned by investors with 100 or more properties, according to the study.

VineBrook Homes is one of the top five investor-owners in the region. Its latest SEC report shows that the Ohio-based real estate company owned 24,657 homes in 18 states as of December 2022.

VineBrook owns 1,118 properties in the Kansas City area, spokesperson Megan Grabos wrote in an email to The Beacon.

Investment companies started buying up more homes in the wake of a wave of foreclosures set off by the 2008 housing crisis, Akers said.

Years of banks making subprime loans to homebuyers caused the housing bubble to burst. Millions of properties tumbled in value and real estate investors were left with an opportunity to buy a large amount of property quickly and at cut-rate prices.

Akers said the pandemic compounded the trend. Many mom-and-pop landlords with 10 or fewer properties found themselves stretched thin on their payments due to eviction moratoriums that allowed tenants to stay in their homes and apartments even if they couldn’t make the rent. Large-scale investors were able to swoop in and pick up any property the smaller landlords lost.

But what was once a reaction to an abundance of abandoned or repossessed properties sitting on the market has now become a standard business practice for large investors looking to maximize their profits, Akers said.

“They’re competing directly in the community, directly in the real estate market where most individuals or families are trying to buy properties, as opposed to looking at foreclosures,” he said.

C.J. Pennington, a real estate agent with the Ken Hoover Real Estate Group, said that every listing is likely to get an offer from a large institutional investor, but they aren’t as prevalent in the market as they were just a few years back.

He believes higher interest rates on homes have steered many investors away.

“It wouldn’t be as lucrative to have a lot of their money tied up as it was when they were buying everything,” Pennington said.

But Akers said that higher interest rates only impact small investors who may rely on loans to purchase property.

“Mega investors are operating in cash with large pools of liquid capital,” he said. “So interest rates don’t have an impact on their operations.”

Steeper mortgage rates make many current homeowners reluctant to sell their homes and take on higher mortgages on the new houses they’d move into. That’s propelled a shortage of housing.

What is the impact of corporate investing in real estate on residents?

Dwyer bought her house during the pandemic with a $50,000 down payment. The house was listed for $232,000.

“We walked in and immediately knew it was the nicest house we’ve seen,” she said. “We weren’t going to find anything like it for this price so our Realtor got on it that day.”

The median listing price for a house in Kansas City in December 2020 was $324,475, according to Federal Reserve Economic Data. By December 2023, it was nearly $400,000.

MARC has found that homeownership in the Kansas City region has declined by 2.9% since 2011.

Akers said a large presence of institutional buyers can push up home prices. He said that’s especially true for less expensive starter homes. They’re targeted by institutional buyers because of price, uniformity and ease of renovation.

Those well-heeled investors can also increase demand as they outcompete prospective buyers on these homes.

Jaz Hays and his wife bought their two-bedroom home in the Northland in 2020.

Like Dwyer, he said they looked for about four months and toured at least 10 houses, but everything they were interested in sold too quickly.

“My wife and I had to put it in an offer within seven hours of our house being listed,” he said.

For a seller, a choice between an individual who would pay through a mortgage or a corporation that can pay the price upfront is easy.

“A lot of the competitive advantage that those institutional buyers have is that they are cash buyers,” Hays said. “It made it really difficult for us to purchase our first home.”

Pennington said large institutional buyers aren’t overheating the market. Rather, he said it’s a shortage of homes.

“It’s simple supply and demand,” he said.

A combination of fewer houses for sale than people looking to buy, as well as a drop in home construction, has tightened the market and pushed up prices.

Where are these investors?

Large property owners also tend to consolidate ownership in certain neighborhoods. MARC’s study found that much of their holdings were concentrated in the region’s suburbs and on the northern and southern edges of Kansas City.

Owner clustering in one area can make it easier for companies to push up rent prices for tenants, while small-scale landlords are more subject to market rates, Akers said.

“They can raise rents in particular areas and achieve those rents, regardless of the market that’s around them.” Akers said. “People that are looking to rent in that place will need to pay whatever the going rate is for rent.”

VineBrook says its houses are typically three-bedrooms that go for $1,234 a month. That’s cheaper than the average rent of $1,540 for a two-bedroom apartment in Kansas City, per Rent.com.

Gabos said the company is one of the largest providers of affordable housing for rent.

“We were founded on a vision to acquire and restore distressed properties,” she said in the email.

The company, which has received complaints of neglect and unfounded evictions, tends to own property in predominantly Black areas, a Midwest Newsroom investigation found.

Nearly 13% of single-family rentals in the Kansas City area are owned by businesses based outside of Missouri or Kansas, according to MARC.

And when you add apartment buildings into the mix, those numbers go up.

A 2021 study on Who Owns KC by Jordan Ayala, a research professor at Bard College, found that owners of residential properties in Kansas City, both single and multifamily, come from more than 2,000 cities around the world.

“These are often called absentee landlords,” said Hays, who compiled and processed the data for this study. “They won’t necessarily be super responsive to their tenants, often because they’re faceless. So their tenants don’t even know who they are.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Law enforcement responds to a shooting at Union Station during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl LVIII victory parade on February 14, 2024 in Kansas City, Missouri. Several people were shot and two people were detained after a rally celebrating the Chiefs Super Bowl victory (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

For starters, experts suggest, get the kids back into school. Routines matter in the raw aftermath of trauma.

Child health experts say the shooting that killed a mother and wounded several children at the close of Kansas City’s celebration of the Chiefs’ latest championship likely left kids traumatized. Whether they were near Union Station or, for some, just hearing the news.

Schools quickly made social workers and counselors available Thursday and put out advice to parents on how to help children return to a sense of normalcy and safety.

Some children, the experts say, need to talk about their concerns. That, the experts say, needs to be balanced against dwelling too much on what happened or trying to force conversations that could go wrong.

Wednesday’s violence came after clinicians saw a troubling mental health hangover from the pandemic.

“Rates of anxiety and depression doubled for young people,” said Dr. Shayla Sullivant, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with Children’s Mercy Hospital. “Now we have more kids that have experienced trauma.”

Multiple school districts told The Beacon that they’re turning to what’s familiar — like going right back to school — to help restore calm after a calamity.

When disaster strikes, “it comes from a place that we didn’t expect, and we don’t know how to deal with that,” said David Smith, a spokesperson for the Shawnee Mission School District. “Being able to connect people, kids, to the familiar, to the routine, can be helpful and give them a comfort that the world is returning to the world that they know and (where) they feel safe.”

Adults matter, too. Parents and teachers, Smith said, need to recognize and seek support for their own distress “in order for us to be there for our kids.”

The shooting marked a “community-level trauma,” said Damon Daniel, president of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, even in a city that saw a record 182 homicides last year.

“We live in a city where we’re not strangers to violence,” he said.

His group worked with prosecutors and other organizations to offer counseling on Thursday at the Kansas City United Church of Christ in Brookside. He said it’s time to talk with professionals and not to lean on isolation, substance abuse or more violence to cope.

“It’s a very complex problem. It’s not one solution,” Daniel said. “There’s no silver bullet to this.”

For starters, public places might never feel the same to some people after the Union Station shooting. Chris Williams, a counselor with Heartland Therapy Connection, said teenagers and young adults might be particularly damaged by the trauma.

“There are no public places they can look at and be, like, ‘I’m safe here,’” he said. “More and more children are on guard, looking out.”

He said survivors can experience extreme post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, such as paranoia or fear of loud noises, and will look to adults for assurance.

“We’re losing that ability to tell them it’s gonna be OK,” Williams said. “There are no safe spaces.”

After Kansas City mass shooting, Missouri Democrats demand stricter gun laws

Kansas City Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Collier emailed parents urging them to address the trauma directly.

“While our instinct may be to shield them from the harsh realities of the world,” she wrote, “it’s essential to proactively address their concerns, especially with our older students who are more likely to seek information independently.”

The district was still sorting out Thursday how many students were close to the shooting even as it suggested parents limit their children’s exposure to news coverage.

Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools also enlisted counselors and social workers and told parents that their kids need someone to turn to.

“People deal with pain and tragedy differently,” district spokesperson Edwin Birch said. “The main thing is just being available.”

At Wichita’s USD 259, the largest school district in Kansas, administrators strove to return to the routine.

“Children are pretty quick to move on to the next thing,” said Stephanie Anderson, who works in the district’s counseling services. “They don’t dwell on stuff like this, unless they hear adults dwelling on it.”

That, she said, needs to be paired with candor.

“(Don’t) sugarcoat it or don’t create fear,” Anderson said.

She and other experts suggest parents look for routines breaking down in the aftermath of the Super Bowl parade. Is your child having trouble sleeping? Has their appetite dwindled? Are they crankier than usual?

An adult’s ear can prove especially helpful, said Tori Cordiano, a clinical psychologist specializing in children and adolescents at Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

She said trusted adults — family, mental health professionals, school staff — need to be available. Cordiano said younger children may prefer to process their emotions about the parade shooting through art, and older children will need someone to confide in.

“When they have those places to talk,” Cordiano said, “it can help them cope.”

The more comfortable kids feel to talk, she said, the better to keep them grounded and feeling safe.

“When we shut it down,” she said, “it makes it too big or scary.”

Yet exposure to gun violence leaves some psyches damaged for a lifetime. Starsky Wilson, president of the left-leaning Children’s Defense Fund, said gun violence can heighten children’s risk of abusing drugs and alcohol or weigh them down with depression and anxiety.

“The normalization of gun violence in society can desensitize children to the impact of violence and contribute to a sense of helplessness or resignation about the problem,” he said in an email to The Beacon.

Wilson said, in turn, that can make it harder to feel secure, form relationships or thrive in school.

“When exposed to violence,” he wrote, “school-aged children tend to exhibit lower academic grades and increased absenteeism.”

This story was compiled by Scott Canon based on staff reporting. Suzanne King contributed.

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The new Royals stadium could open in 2028 if voters choose to extend a 3/8-cent sales tax when they cast ballots in April. This rendering shows a downtown version of the project (Major League Baseball).

The Kansas City Royals want voters to promise four more decades of tax money to underwrite a new stadium. Parking attendants, beer vendors and the other people who tend to fans want more leverage on their wages.

And the Royals say the team stands willing to bargain, offering to enter into a community benefits agreement modeled after deals cut in other cities.

Now comes the tricky part. Experts say much lies ahead to sort out whether the resulting deal actually brings terms that could raise the standard of living for stadium workers.

“When these are done right,” said Matthew Eisenson, senior fellow at Columbia University Law School who studies such deals, “it’s an opportunity to secure benefits that they otherwise would not get.”

The Good Jobs and Affordable Housing for All Coalition, which includes the union representing current stadium workers, says it’s eager to dig into talks with the team.

“This is my first time at the table, sitting across a billion-dollar organization to negotiate working conditions and wages. It’s like a dream come true,” said Terrence Wise, a leader with Stand Up KC, a group of fast-food and retail workers that’s part of the coalition.

Wise drives for Uber and Instacart and has been working with Stand Up KC and the Missouri Workers Center for more than 10 years. Both groups are part of the coalition that has called for a legally binding CBA with the Royals for over a year.

The coalition has maintained a neutral stance towards the sales tax, but members say promising more tax dollars to the stadium gives them new leverage to bargain with the team.

“Before we can all blink, there could be a new billion-dollar entertainment district downtown,” Wise said. “If it goes how we want, it will be transformative to the city.”

What we know about the CBA so far

Jackson County Executive Frank White vetoed a proposal that would put a 40-year extension of a 3/8-cent cents tax on the April ballot. He argued the Royals and the Kansas City Chiefs owe the county and voters more details about their plans — starting with terms on any new stadium leases and where the Royals want to move.

Then the Jackson County Legislature overrode him this week after the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority, the Royals and the Chiefs released a letter of intent to provide more details and a pledge to stay in Jackson County.

County Legislator Jalen Anderson originally backed White’s veto of the tax, but changed his mind on Monday after the letter was released. His vote clinched the override that put the tax question to voters.

“We wanted to see some type of movement happen with what the Royals plan to do, what they stand by, and see what they’ll at least have a conversation about,” he said.

The letter states that the county plans to meet with various interest groups to make investments in programs and initiatives that respond to community needs.

It lists 33 examples CBA topics, including a minimum of 30% participation of businesses owned by people of color or women, living-wage agreements, on-site health care for new stadium workers, workforce training and apprenticeships.

“The CBA hasn’t been finalized, but I think the reps and workers having a place at the table to discuss what they want to see and what they will not accept is a crucial step,” Anderson said.

A draft should be completed by Feb. 14, according to an unofficial schedule of additional tasks the Jackson County legislators want to see checked off.

“Everyone thinks the initial vote is the last day for accountability, but that’s not the case,” said Legislator Manny Abarca, who uploaded the timeline to his Twitter profile. “Several checks and balances exist along the way to make sure voters get the best deal in this effort.”

Wise said the coalition has not started negotiations with the team yet. And while there are no available details on the budget for the CBA, Eisenson at Columbia University said that developers may wait to release a budget until they factor in the cost of the benefits that come with additional fees, such as child care and employee training.

What are the worker demands at Royals stadium?

Wise said that the main demands from the coalition are not far off from what Stand Up KC always advocates for: livable wages and the right to unionize without interference.

“We’re talking about thousands of workers from day one being a part of a union and having good union jobs,” he said. “This has got to be a good deal for everyone. It will impact our city for decades to come.”

Other demands could include requirements to hire workers from ZIP codes with high unemployment rates, protecting the jobs and union contracts of current stadium workers and a guarantee of truly affordable housing and avoidance of displacement for low-income residents near the stadium.

Eisenson said deals in other cities faced roadblocks because they lacked the teeth to hold developers to CBA standards.

“For example, if the CBA promises that the developer will hire locally,” he said, “the agreement should provide some sort of mechanism to ensure that the information about who the developer is hiring is being disclosed.”

What makes a strong CBA?

The Royals have cited the CBA for the new Kansas City International Airport  terminal as well as the CBAs with the Milwaukee Bucks, Tampa Rays and Buffalo Bills as models for their agreement.

In 2016, the Milwaukee Bucks announced that the team had finalized a CBA with the local coalition Alliance for Good Jobs. That agreement has been heralded by experts as a major success and a national model for other CBAs.

A 2022 study done by COWS, a nonprofit think tank based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, concluded that three factors made that deal significant. First, it gave service and hospitality workers a fair process to unionize. Next, it set minimum wage in the district around the arena. Finally, it created a first-source hiring hall that hires at least 50% of workers from low-income ZIP codes.

The Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers Organization was also established as a  union and the successor organization to the Alliance for Good Jobs.

That avoided a common failure of CBAs: the collapse of community coalitions.

“If the developer makes an agreement with a community-based organization and that organization dissolves,” Eisenson said, “who can assert claims on its behalf?”

He said it’s important for the community coalition to have a solid foundation with long-term goals to speak on behalf of workers and residents.

The Kansas City coalition is also trying to understand some CBAs that they see as failures.

Edgemoor Infrastructure & Real Estate, the developer for the new KCI terminal, allocated $23.4 million to its Terminal Workforce Enhancement Programs — which included a workforce training program and 14 other initiatives. But Wise said the terminal was ultimately a bad deal for some workers.

“It provided union jobs to help build it,” he said. “But where were the jobs for workers after the airport was up and running?”

The CBA for the Buffalo Bills was announced in 2023, with the team dedicating $3 million annually over 30 years to fund projects that benefit Erie County, New York. But that $90 million was dwarfed by the $850 million taxpayers made to the $1.5 billion stadium.

Experts have said that the Buffalo deal also doesn’t specify how the money will be spent. Instead, it creates an oversight panel to make the decisions.

Eisenson said that ambiguity during negotiations provides a big obstacle to crafting strong agreements. Terms should be clear and leave little room for interpretation.

“If the terms are ambiguous, the agreement is harder to enforce,” he said. “A well-designed CBA is enforceable to the same extent as any other binding contract.”

So, he suggests, get legal help. And that cost, he said, can sometimes pose a significant hurdle.

Wise said that his coalition will use its collective voice to hold the team accountable.

“We take tools from our toolbox — strikes, civil disobedience, rallies, speak-outs,” he said.

“We always hold folks accountable when they don’t do right by the people.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Qasim Rahimi came to Kansas City as a refugee in 2021 following the Taliban’s siege of Kabul. He is fleeing persecution as a journalist and former government official (Dominick Williams/The Beacon).

When the Taliban overtook Kabul in 2021, Qasim Rahimi went into hiding at a neighbor’s house.

Meanwhile, U.S. troops withdrew and took nearly 90,000 Afghan evacuees who were in danger of persecution. Rahimi knew he had to leave, too.

“I was a journalist and a director in (the) Afghanistan government when the government fell, so I was not feeling secure,” he said. “I had to escape.”

Rahimi’s two older brothers, one a journalist and the other employed with International Security Assistance Forces, found a way for much of the family, including Rahimi, to flee to a military camp in Germany. From there, he found his way to the United States and, eventually, Kansas City.

He is one of several thousand refugees who were granted humanitarian parole status. That grants them temporary admission to the U.S. based on threats they’d face to their lives if they stayed in their home country.

Once in Kansas City, Rahimi relied on Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas for help settling in. The agency helped him find an apartment, apply for asylum status, find work and more.

While many Afghans have gotten far in their resettlement process, two years later, some refugees still face issues with housing and uncertainty about how long they can stay in the country as their temporary humanitarian parole status inches to its end.

What support did Afghan refugees receive?

The arrival of Afghan refugees meant a crush of work for local aid groups.

“It felt like a humanitarian crisis,” said Dr. Sofia Khan, the founder of KC for Refugees. “ It was overwhelming.”

Her group has helped roughly 1,000 Afghans since 2021, including one group of 20 families that landed at Kansas City International Airport with little money and even less understanding of their new environment.

“It was a time to tighten our belts and push ourselves,” Khan said, “not the time to walk away.”

She said her organization needed help from the local Afghan community to understand the new refugees’ cultural traditions and social norms.

They put together about 500 welcome baskets filled with Qurans, prayer rugs, prayer beads, black tea, dried fruit, nuts and electric tea kettles. Volunteers recruited the help of Afghan women to sew cushions for toshaks, floor cushions traditionally used as a couch or bed.

“We added things that bring family together and make them feel like they’re back home,” said Zhamilya Koshmambetova, a volunteer with KC for Refugees.

Koshmambetova also distributed more than 2,000 articles of clothing to children. Just as many articles of clothing were collected for adults, who had stricter requirements for their wardrobe.

“For many,” she said, “Western clothing was off the table.”

To accommodate refugee requests for traditional clothing, people from local South Asian communities and mosques stepped up to donate similar garments.

Health care and education also posed challenges. Jewish Vocational Service, a nonprofit that helps newcomers integrate into the community, set up refugees for health screenings, health care providers and vaccinations children needed to enroll in school.

“School enrollment was the biggest challenge because so many people came in at once, and our capacity to help people was down because of COVID, so there were less people coming in, then all of sudden more people came,” said Hilary Singer, the executive director of JVS.

“There was lots of waiting for people to get vaccines and challenges with school districts to get kids enrolled because they didn’t have vaccines or permanent addresses. We had to get creative.”

At first, Singer said, Kansas City Public Schools teachers came to the hotels and offered instruction to kids. Later, a bus was routed to the hotel to take children to the KCPS Global Academy, which is designed to help students transition to life in Kansas City.

“As hectic and busy as it was, (it) brought about real collaboration with our partners that had the benefit of the community in mind,” she said.

What challenges do Afghan refugees face?

Many Afghans have found some stability two years into their time in the U.S. Rahimi works as an immigration specialist, for example.

Yet housing remains an ongoing challenge for him and other refugees who don’t have an intuitive understanding of the rental market — or their rights as tenants.

Catholic Charities made it easy for Rahimi to find his first apartment. But when he went looking on his own in September 2022, he said the landlord pulled a bait-and-switch.

“They showed me the sample. I loved it and they told me everything was the same,” he said. “But when I moved into the apartment, the situation was bad and I wanted to leave.”

After multiple complaints to his landlord, Rahimi was moved to a different unit with very similar problems, including roaches and malfunctioning amenities.

“During the winter, the heat doesn’t work very well,” he said. “During the summer, the AC doesn’t work. I usually don’t have any hot water pressure.”

He’s asked city inspectors to take a look, but he’s reluctant to take his complaints to court for fear that could foul up his refugee status.

“I don’t have the mental or physical power to open a case like this at the moment,” he said.

Refugees also qualify for rent subsidies through the federal Section 8 program, but those apartments already have long waiting lists and come with restrictions that may keep families out.

“A lot of these families have four to five kids and Section 8 has strict rules on rooming. You can’t have a two-bedroom with five kids sleeping there,” said Khan, the founder of KC for Refugees.  “Looking for larger homes with Section 8 restriction is even harder.”

While refugees wrestle  with housing issues, they remain in limbo about their ability to stay in the country.

The humanitarian parole status that protected refugees from deportation and granted them the freedom to work for two years was set to expire this summer. In October, the federal government announced Afghans could apply for a re-parole process for a temporary period, but advocates say that extends refugees’ worries about their status rather than solves the issue.

“If folks want to be able to stay in this country permanently, that’s a one-by-one determination either through special immigrant visa process or the asylum process, and they’re cumbersome processes to engage in,” said Singer, the JVS executive director.

She said JVS submitted asylum applications for 80 families last summer. Only seven have had a formal decision since then.

“The vast majority of folks don’t have any sense of whether they can stay in the U.S. permanently,” she said. “It’s not like they have an alternative that is realistic.”

Their advocates say the stakes are high.

“A lot of these people were already targets of the current existing government over there,” said Khan. “There’s not really a way for them to be safe if they go back to Afghanistan.”

The importance of community aid

Refugees say their troubles finding work and apartments are small compared to the worries that linger about the family they left in Afghanistan.

“My psychological situation cannot be separated from Afghanistan,” Rahimi said.

He’s part of the Hazara ethnic tribe facing long-standing persecution at the hands of the Taliban.

“Here, you can buy a car, home or anything you want,” Rahimi said. “But in (Afghanistan), your sister doesn’t have enough food, your family doesn’t have security, and your niece or nephew can’t go to school.”

Rahimi has also not seen his wife, who lives in India, in seven years, and with his current migrant status, he is not sure when he will see her next.

Fatima Abbasi, who came to the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2018, also deals with feelings of guilt and remorse. Abbasi began to volunteer with KC for Refugees to provide support to young women coming from her country. But she can’t help but think of the support she wishes she could provide back home.

Her father died in Afghanistan in October before she had a chance to visit him. Her mother recently suffered a heart attack.

“I can help another refugee, but I can’t help my mom,” she said. “I have everything in the U.S. but my family.”

Still, Afghan refugees have begun to build a community here. Rahimi, for instance, has found something of a home in Kansas City.

“Everyone has some sort of issue with a new type of culture,” Rahimi said. “Fortunately, I have found the people of Kansas and Missouri to be very kind.”

The friendships he has made through work and school have aided Rahimi in learning to drive, purchasing a car and finding things to do on the weekends.

“When you’re trying to learn about a new culture, you need time,” he said. “But when you have a good community it doesn’t take as much time.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s nationwide eviction moratorium, which began in September 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ended in July 2021 (iStock/Getty Images).

Jared Johnson hasn’t paid rent in four months. The trouble started when his car got towed. That cost him his job delivering groceries for Instacart.

He’s been able to hold off an eviction — for now.

At his eviction trial, his landlord agreed to give him until the end of September to pay his back rent. Johnson, who is originally from Florida, said the extension is the only thing between him and a homeless shelter or a short-term housing program.

“Or my last resort, since I won’t be able to take my dog with me, is to go back to Florida,” he said.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s nationwide eviction moratorium, which began in September 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, ended in July 2021. Since then, eviction rates in Kansas City have risen back to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, efforts to evict tenants run higher now than before the pandemic.

Jackson County court records show 261 evictions in July and 1,388 so far this year.  Before the pandemic and the national ban on evictions, the county saw 183 evictions in July 2019 and 1,675 evictions in the 10 months before the moratorium.

Landlords are also filing more cases to evict more tenants. More than 11,000 cases were filed from July 2022 to July 2023  in Jackson County, compared to 7,358 from June 2021 to June 2022.

To help tenants fight their cases, the Kansas City Council passed a “Right to Counsel” ordinance last year that gives free legal assistance to residents facing eviction.

One year later, the demand for representation has surpassed the supply of legal help.

“We were able to represent everyone who appeared in court when it went into effect,” said Gina Chiala, the executive director of the Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom, an organization that provides legal services for low-wage workers and tenants. “Since then, that has changed and we’ve really started to feel the pressure.”

Why are residents getting evicted?

Rent is at the center of eviction disputes. About a third of the eviction cases filed are for rent and possession, Chiala said.

This year, the Kansas City area had the second-highest yearly increase in rent among the 50 biggest cities in the country, according to a study by Rent.com, a digital apartment marketplace.

Renters pay an average of $1,044 per month in Jackson County. Yet, as the rent rises, wages are stagnating.

Missouri’s minimum wage is $12 an hour, but the living wage for a single adult in Jackson County is $33.60, according to a living-wage calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“People … are just living at the edge of existence,” said Kirk McClure, professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas.

The average American renter is also rent-burned, meaning they pay more than 30% of their income on housing.

“Most low-income folks that get laid off don’t have big savings accounts to pay their rent,” McClure said. “They have a very low cushion to absorb a shock like the pandemic or a layoff.”

Lindale Lee stopped paying rent after he lost his job and his roommate moved out in July. He has since found a new job and paid it back, but he still found himself on trial due to the added fees.

“I owe $700,” he said. “But with the late fees, processing fees and attorney fees, I owe $1,402.”

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have also influenced landlords to raise rental costs. Many are looking to recoup the money they lost due to the national eviction moratoriums.

“Landlords were put on a huge financial crunch since they weren’t getting their rent on time. Sometimes it was paid, sometimes not,” said Michael Fortin, a lawyer who  provides legal services to business owners. “Now that the moratoriums are lifted, the landlords have to raise their rents to cover their losses. … A lot of their patience is gone.”

Through federal emergency rental assistance programs, state governments distributed $2.6 billion in assistance to renters. But McClure said it took months to reach them.

He blamed out-of-state corporate property owners for the rising rents.

“We’re getting professional investors who’ve never even been to the city they’re buying in,” he said. “They’re seeing rents going up and they’re saying, ‘I want in on that.’”

The Heartland Center for Jobs and Freedom says property owners in California, New York and New Jersey evict the most tenants in Kansas City.

Can Right to Counsel handle heightening Kansas City rent?

In the 15 months since the Right to Counsel ordinance was passed, nearly 2,000 tenants have been represented by attorneys, with 86% of the rulings ending in no eviction, according to the Heartland Center’s State of Eviction report.

But as case filings rise, the organizations are losing the capacity to represent tenants.

“We are scrambling to build up staff to meet the number of evictions that are actually being filed,” said Chiala.

There are 12 attorneys between Heartland, Legal Aid of Western Missouri and the University of Missouri-Kansas City combined, each capable of handling 120 cases in a year.

The organizations want to have 18 attorneys by the spring of 2024, and they have already hired two more.

“In the meantime,” Chiala said, “we’re having to turn down cases since there’s not enough attorneys to keep up.”

Without attorneys, many tenants must defend themselves.

But a lawyer makes a sizable difference in outcome.

“A lot of times the tenants have affirmative defenses, most often because the landlord failed to maintain the property,” Chiala said. “And so we’re able to raise those defenses and then try to negotiate a humane outcome between the tenant and the landlord.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Brian Haimowitz has been unhoused at times for the past three years. He chooses to sleep outside rather than use local emergency shelters (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

Three years ago, Brian Haimowitz slept behind buildings and under bridges because he couldn’t afford a place to stay with the money from his job as a cashier at a local Wendy’s.

He said he tried to get help through Kansas City’s shelter system, but he was quickly turned off by roadblocks he encountered.

One shelter told him it required guests seeking admittance to its dormitory to check their phones and electronic devices. Though the rule was created to protect the privacy of clients, it was a deal-breaker for Haimowitz. He was on parole at the time.

“I even told them, ‘I’m on paper right now. I have to have my phone on me because if my parole officer calls me and I don’t respond, I can get in trouble,’” he said.

“We’re not in prison or jail. We’re men or women who need a bed.”

Unable to follow the shelter’s rules, Haimowitz slept on the street. He eventually found a place to sublet, but he lost it in May. He’s been living outside ever since.

Haimowitz’s experience points to a gap in Kansas City’s network of resources for people who lack stable housing. Service providers — and unhoused people themselves — say the city has no shelters with minimal requirements for entry.

When city leaders last year drafted Zero KC, an ambitious plan to end houselessness, addressing that absence was listed as a top priority. Although it is still trying to raise funds toward that goal, the city is preparing to seek proposals from organizations to run what’s called a “low-barrier” shelter.

“We don’t even have a low-barrier shelter, so we can’t even begin to talk about what success looks like if we don’t have the basics,” said Josh Henges, the city’s houseless prevention coordinator. “The first stage of success we need to be on track is to create the infrastructure that is needed in Kansas City. We’re 10 years behind a city of our size.”

The low-barrier difference

The latest published point-in-time count by the Greater Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness found 1,582 unhoused persons were identified in Jackson County over a 24-hour period in January 2022. Of those people, 711 were not staying in a shelter. Because the count only includes people who were surveyed, providers think the actual number of people living on the streets, in vehicles and in campsites runs much higher.

Many local shelters focus on transitional housing, a stopgap between houselessness and stable housing. Most transitional housing programs require sobriety, for example, and participation in things like job training, addiction recovery and life skills classes.

Transitional programs provide a path to long-term, stable housing, Henges said. But he said shelters that provide safe places for people without layering on too many conditions are needed, too.

“Low-barrier shelter,” Henges said, “is the front door.”

Zero KC is based on a housing-first model, which prioritizes getting people off the streets,  out of camps and into stable housing as quickly as possible.

“People need necessities like food and a place to live before attending to anything less critical, such as getting a job, budgeting properly, or attending to substance use issues,” the drafters of Zero KC said in their report. “Shelter, however, in and of itself, is not a solution to homelessness but rather, a lifesaving intervention for any person in a housing-related crisis.”

What are the barriers to Kansas City shelter?

A frequent complaint among unhoused people in Kansas City is that existing shelters may require them to participate in religious activities or part with belongings or pets.

“At a lot of the shelters, people have to give up everything,” said Alina Heart, a six-year volunteer with KC Heroes, a nonprofit that provides support to unhoused residents. “If they don’t have a long-term plan, they actually end up worse because they’ve given up all their camping supplies,” she added.

Tamika Roberson, who has been homeless, has run into issues at shelters that don’t allow pets.

“I have an emotional support animal, and animals aren’t allowed in the shelters,” she said.

And Haimowitz, who sleeps outside, said he balked at the “local church involvement” required by a shelter he stayed at.

“You’re either forced to believe what they want,” he said, “or leave.”

Shelter KC, a rescue mission near downtown Kansas City, offers 60 emergency beds in its emergency shelter for men and plans to add 30 more in October.

Shelter KC’s website says guests in the shelter are offered a chance to participate in C-COR, or Christian Community of Recovery, a program for people experiencing substance use disorder.

After two weeks, they are invited to the Shelter Launch program, which connects guests with a life coach to work on issues leading to permanent housing, such as health, employment and unraveling legal issues.

Rules for entry vary among shelters in Kansas City. For example, Shelter KC will allow people without identification or people who have sex offender convictions to stay. But it does not allow people under the influence of drugs or alcohol in the building unless the weather is life-threatening.

Eric Burger, Shelter KC’s executive director, said he agreed on the need to provide emergency shelter without onerous restrictions. But low-barrier shelter alone isn’t an answer, he said.

“One of the challenges is that low-barrier becomes the endgame, but as soon as the weather is nice everyone gets back into the camps,” Burger said. “How do you accept people where they are but also challenge people to go to the next step?’

He added: “Low-barrier is important, but there must be an ability to transition people in some way or another.  We want to have that open door but we want to encourage you to make changes in your life, otherwise you’ll repeat the cycle.”

How does Kansas City plan to address low-barrier shelter needs?

Low-barrier shelters have been a source of dispute in Kansas City. Last year, the City Council’s finance, governance and public safety committee rejected a proposal that would have allowed the city manager to determine the cost of one or more of them. But city leaders now say low-barrier shelters are back on the table.

“Ultimately, the city’s goal is to partner with an agency that will allow us to create an emergency shelter that has limited barriers,” said Ryana Parks-Shaw, the 5th District councilwoman and chair of the city’s houseless task force.

City officials applied for federal grants and received $8.3 million from the  U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOME Investment Partnerships American Rescue Plan Program. Of that funding, $4.8 million has been set aside to construct a low-barrier shelter, to be completed by next year at a site yet to be determined.

Henges said the HUD money won’t fund all of Kansas City’s emergency shelter needs but called it a good first step. Ultimately, the city, state government and HUD will need to come together and find creative ways to fund this project, he said.

In August, Kansas City released a request for proposals to find a low-barrier shelter provider, Henges said.

The goal of Zero KC is to have a greater number of people securing stable housing than those who are unhoused.

“Once the infrastructure is in place, there could be a rapid decline” in houselesness, Henges said. ​​

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Sherrita Jackson was a bus driver with the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority for 21 years before a passenger attacked her, spurring her to quit (Zach Bauman/The Beacon).

Sherrita Jackson was a bus driver for 21 years before she got fed up with abuse from passengers and switched careers in 2021.

At the time, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, passengers were required to wear masks. A passenger not wearing a mask boarded Jackson’s bus and refused to comply with the mandate.

“He threw a shoe and hit me in the face,” Jackson said. That was the fourth time in her career that a passenger assaulted her.

Some local bus drivers say that sort of violence happens too often, and it’s why many of them quit. That’s true even though the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority hired 55 drivers last fall, exceeding its end-of-year goal, and 50 of those drivers still worked for the agency as of Monday.

KCATA is not short-staffed right now, Chief Operations Officer Chuck Ferguson said. The agency employs 284 full-time bus operators and 22 part-time operators.

But unless ongoing safety concerns are addressed, some drivers say, KCATA will struggle to recruit and retain workers.

Across the country, violent passengers are pushing many bus drivers to step away from the wheel, recent data show. Ninety-six percent of transit agencies surveyed last year reported driver shortages to the American Public Transportation Association. Assaults against bus operators quadrupled from 2009 to 2020, according to the Federal Transit Administration.

So far this year in Kansas City, there have been eight recorded assaults against bus operators, four of them physical, said Cindy Baker, vice president of communications for KCATA.

There typically were roughly 30 assaults against drivers each year until about five years ago, when KCATA installed barriers on the buses to separate drivers and passengers, she said. Passengers can reach around the barriers, but the number of recorded physical assaults against drivers significantly declined — falling to six incidents in 2018, according to KCATA data. There have been less than a dozen recorded incidents each year since then.

But Jackson said the number of recorded assaults does not accurately represent the violent encounters drivers deal with each day. She said KCATA once told her the day after a scheduled court hearing for an assault case that she had been subpoenaed.

“If you don’t go, those charges get dropped and then they have no case against the person who harmed you,” Jackson said. “And the company can say there was no assault because no one was prosecuted.”

KCATA only receives subpoenas when the driver’s personal information isn’t documented, Baker said, but she acknowledged that the agency has become more proactive when communicating about court proceedings.

“That’s a complaint that we have heard in the past from operators. And truly, we were not as diligent, say, five years ago,” she said.

Baker said KCATA is arranging meetings with the drivers union to discuss their safety concerns.

What is being done to ensure bus drivers’ safety?

KCATA contracts with Titan Protection Security to provide 20 armed officers to its bus operations. The company has another six guards completing training with the Kansas City Police Department.

The guards patrol the bus service areas to respond to driver emergencies.

Multiple guards are positioned throughout the routes during each shift, at bus stops, patrolling routes or riding the buses. Up to nine officers are on duty between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. — the peak window for passenger disturbances, Ferguson said.

Still, drivers say the guards aren’t preventing violent incidents with passengers or even between passengers. Jackson said a driver told her a few weeks ago about a shooting that happened on their bus.

“We can’t continue to put our lives on the line,” Jackson said. “It’s like we’re punished for doing our job by the general public.”

Titan officers can only detain people until police arrive. Two officers from the Kansas City Police Department are assigned to KCATA’s security team, but Ferguson said they are often overwhelmed. The agency is in talks with the police department to recruit two more officers.

Meanwhile, when there is an issue, drivers can press an emergency button on the bus to alert security. Buses are equipped with interior and exterior cameras, although the recordings are not monitored live “at this point,” Ferguson said.

Addressing the reasons why drivers quit

Aside from the security concerns, KCATA has made improvements aimed at improving drivers’ job satisfaction. In October, KCATA bargained with the drivers union for new contract terms, which included raising starting wages from $17 an hour to $23 an hour and allowing prior commercial driver’s license training experience in place of a GED diploma.

Increasing compensation was an important element of contract negotiations for local drivers. Pay is a significant reason why bus drivers quit since the coronavirus pandemic, according to the American Public Transportation Association’s 2022 Transit Workforce Shortage Study.

But the new wages alone aren’t enough, said Nic Miller, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1287.

“The financial piece is fine,” he said. “The issue that needs to be addressed now is ridership.”

This story was originally published by The Kansas City Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

Layla Walker (from left), Ciassy Wilson and Jenny Weitzel on the patio in front of a Center for Developmentally Disabled home (Chase Castor/The Beacon).

The Center for Developmentally Disabled is building four-bedroom family houses across Kansas City that are designed to help people with disabilities live with greater independence.

The new homes will include automatic doors. The ceilings will be outfitted with lift and track systems to make it easier for a caretaker to get someone with limited mobility out of bed and into a wheelchair or bathtub. The flooring will be wheelchair-friendly. The two bathrooms in each house will have reinforced walls so the space can double as a storm shelter. The CDD will also provide caretakers for residents who need in-home assistance.

About 600 people are on the waiting list for these homes throughout the state, but only six houses are being built; they would house at least 24 people.

“It is really difficult to find accessible housing on the market,” said Karrie Duke, the center’s chief development officer. Few, if any, houses available for rent in Kansas City are completely accessible for people with disabilities, she said.

Throughout the nation, there is a severe lack of housing that is affordable and accessible to people with disabilities. About 18 million people with disabilities in the U.S. “are eligible for federal housing assistance but are not receiving it,” according to a 2022 report from the Urban Institute and The Kelsey, an organization dedicated to developing affordable, inclusive community housing. Almost 4 in 10 people with disabilities live in homes that lack “accessibility features such as entry-level bedrooms or full bathrooms,” according to a 2019 survey from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Less than 1% of the homes are accessible for wheelchair users.

Adults with disabilities experience poverty at twice the rate of adults without disabilities, decreasing their likelihood of finding affordable housing and increasing the likelihood of eviction.

Where is all the disability housing in Missouri?

In Kansas City, more than 41,000 renters make 30% or less of the area median income of $96,800 for a four-person household, according to Zero KC, the city’s plan to end houselessness in five years. The city needs 17,303 extremely affordable units to accommodate those renters, according to the plan.

There are even fewer affordable housing options for people who need accommodations for disabilities.

“The homes that we have built as an agency have that accessibility that’s necessary, but for our folks who have to go out in the community and rent an apartment or rent a house to live in, it’s really hard to find that accessible housing,” Duke said.

The first of the new housing sites will be in the Marlborough neighborhood near a city bus line. Builders are slated to break ground for the first home this summer at 83rd and Paseo. Construction of that house is slated for completion by the end of the year.

The CDD worked closely with the Marlborough Community Coalition on this project, eventually purchasing a plot of land from the coalition to build the first house. The center will look to source staff for their in-home caretaker positions from the neighborhoods where the new homes will be located.

Later construction is planned for Blue Ridge, Independence and Waldo. As the organization constructs homes, they are also raising funds to continue the project.

So far, the CDD has raised $3.3 million of the projected $4.7 million needed to complete the entire construction project. The organization does not receive any funding from the city, instead raising money through donations from foundations, individuals and companies. All residents of the CDD housing are funded through a Medicaid waiver.

“There’s a big push for housing in the city right now, the mayor has really taken that on, but as far as reaching out to agencies like us and asking, ‘What can we do to help?’ No. It’d be really awesome,” Duke said.

A shortage of in-home caretakers also hurts the center’s capacity to take on new clients.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that 711,700 openings for home health and personal care aides will go unfilled each year until 2031. Many of those openings will likely stem from the need to replace workers who pivot to different careers or retire from the labor force, according to the bureau.

Why do people with disabilities need accommodations?
People are already living in a CDD-constructed and -owned duplex that was built last spring in Clay County. Another CDD house under construction in Independence is slated to be completed in July. The units have lowered countertops, widened doorways and hallways, and other accommodations for people in wheelchairs and those with high mobility needs.

Layla Walker, 22, is blind and deaf and has been a resident of the Clay County duplex since December. Before moving to the CDD building, Walker lived in another accessible housing unit through a different agency.

It took her a year to get into that housing and another four months before she was able to move into CDD housing.

Along the walls of the open floor plan, there are handrails that help her recognize where she is in the house. “That’s how I know where to turn,” she said.

Her colorfully decorated room includes a piano as well as a radio, crafts and plenty of braille books. In the kitchen, Walker can touch mats placed at each chair to find the one with her name as well as her dietary instructions for new caretakers.

A caretaker helps Walker wash clothes and dishes, prepare food and create art projects. She can access the bathroom on her own thanks to a lowered sink and other features.

Walker feels positive about the house and the accommodations that enable her to live independently.

“I like the staff that works here,” she said. “I like the fact that we do a lot of activities and the staff manager comes up with a lot of activities. I like the roommates. I can wash my clothes all by myself. I get to wash the dishes a little bit. I’m happy I get to be more independent.”

Jenny Weitzel, 32, is one of Walker’s two roommates and has lived at the house for nearly a year. She has a mobility impairment and gets around either in her wheelchair or by crawling. She enjoys watching TV or listening to the radio in her Minnie Mouse-themed room.

The house has an open floor plan that allows Weitzel to easily navigate in her wheelchair. While she does not use the handrails along the walls, they will eventually come in handy for her.

“The bars are going to be helping me to walk because I am going to be walking soon,” she said.

The bathroom features a curbless standing shower, without raised edges, that allows her caretakers to lift her into her shower seat.

Before moving into the duplex, Weitzel also lived in specialized disability housing through another organization.

“It took a while finding a place because I am wheelchair handicapped,” she said.

Like Walker, Weitzel says her favorite part of her home is the ease it grants her to navigate life.

“I’m able to do things, I can get around things,” she said. “Everything is open so I can get around the house. Everything is easier for me.”

The three residents of the home have developed a strong bond. Weitzel said she has taken on a big-sister role with the two youngest residents.

Older residents with disabilities live on the other side of the duplex, and together, the building has fostered a familylike environment.

“If somebody needs some help over here, we’re going to help them. Whenever we need some assistance we’re back and forth with each other. We’re just here for each other like a real family,” said Ciassy Wilson, the lead caregiver in the unit.

Wilson works eight-hour morning shifts throughout the week assisting the women in the bathroom, making their meals, shopping for groceries and supplies, taking them to doctors’ appointments, and anything else they need. She has been an in-home caretaker for six years and has worked at the CDD house since January. The job can be laborious, but it’s also rewarding, Wilson said.

“Making them happy, making them fulfill whatever dream that they have for that day, that’s what makes me come back every day,” she said.

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Merrique Jenson is the founder and executive director of Transformations KC, a nonprofit organization which supports and advocates for trans women of color (Chase Castor/The Beacon).

Four years ago, a viral video showed two Kansas City police officers slamming a Black transgender woman, Brianna BB Hill, onto the sidewalk, kneeling on her in the face, torso and ribs and forcing her cuffed hands above her head.

In the time since, the officers pleaded guilty to third-degree assault. And Hill was shot to death in an unrelated encounter. At the time of her death, she was the third documented trans woman to be murdered in Kansas City in 2019, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

In the wake of her assault and homicide, transgender activists continue to remember Hill and cite her story as a source of their mistrust with police.

“There’s a much larger system in place with KCPD not listening to Black and Latino community members,” said Merrique Jenson, the founder and executive director of Transformations KC, which supports and advocates for trans women of color.

Police officials told The Beacon they are taking steps to build trust with the LGBTQ+ community, including elevating a liaison position from part-time to full-time and reviewing the department’s policies dealing with transgender and nonbinary citizens to see if they should be updated.

Brianna BB Hill

In May 2019, police were called to a beauty supply store at 1319 E. Brush Creek Parkway. Details are unclear, but the owner wanted Hill off of the premises.

Hill was at the front of the store when now-former KCPD officers Matthew Brummett and Charles Prichard arrived at the scene. They arrested Hill and slammed her to the ground.

“So I’m at home and my phone rings. It’s BB,” said Kris Wade, the founder of the Justice Project, an organization that supports and advocates for vulnerable women, including trans women of color who may live or work in the streets.

Hill, a longtime client, was calling from University Health Truman Medical Center.

“She said, ‘Miss Kris, you need to come down here and take pictures.’ And I said, ‘Well, what happened?’ And she goes, ‘I got beat up,’” Wade said.

“I go in there and she is beat to hell.”

The officers had issued Hill citations for resistance, trespassing, disorderly conduct and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to the prosecutor’s office. She spent time in a holding cell before making her way to the hospital.

Prichard and Brummett were sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation in 2022. They had to surrender their peace officers’ licenses, and neither can serve in law enforcement in Missouri again.

While the sentencing of the two officers was a small win for the trans community, many still felt the officers were let off easy.

“I knew that the community was going to be disappointed because they weren’t going to prison,” said Wade, who testified in the court case. “Because they’re thinking, if we did this, we would have gone to prison.”

Dangers posed to trans women of color

Hill was one of at least 27 trans individuals to be killed nationwide that year alone. This year, The Human Rights Campaign has documented 10 trans murders so far.

The risks to trans and queer individuals of color in Kansas City, which includes the murders of Dionte Greene in 2014 and Tamara Dominguez in 2015, inspired Jenson to form Transformations KC in 2016.

After arriving in Kansas City in 2014, Jenson organized a community roundtable that included representatives from KCPD and families of trans and queer murder victims.

According to Jenson, the encounter did not go well. Families felt the police brushed off their concerns.

“These situations continue to show a pattern,” she said. “We see that not only do the police not take it seriously, and not want to actually listen to the concerns—if anything, the community’s kind of gaslit.”

Trans women, especially trans women of color, are more than four times as likely as cisgender people to become the victim of a violent crime.

Some resort to prostitution for financial stability due to job discrimination and a host of other factors.

“A lot of us were sex workers because a lot of us didn’t have adequate education due to moving out at an early age or running away from home,” said Kelly Nou, a board member of Transformations KC. She is a first-generation Cambodian-American immigrant who has lived in Kansas City since she was young and transitioned over 20 years ago.

Nou ran away from home as a youth and had to turn to sex work to support herself. And while she has been able to escape that life, she has lost many sisters to the violences of sexual exploitation.

“Everyday life is very dangerous for some because when you’re doing sex work, you don’t know what type of man you encounter,” she said.

The ongoing safety concerns are compounded by governments in Missouri and Kansas, which are creating a hostile environment with efforts aimed at restricting trans people from certain accommodations and limiting their access to gender-affirming therapy, Jenson said.

Turning the page with KCPD

The decision by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office to prosecute Brummett and Prichard over their treatment of Hill created friction with KCPD. They argued, for one thing, over the police department’s refusal to provide essential documents.

Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said she is hoping for a more cooperative relationship with Chief Stacey Graves, who was sworn in almost five months ago.

“I am working hard to turn the page with this new police chief,” she said. “The community deserves that.”

Already, the new KCPD administration has taken steps to improve its relationship with LGBTQ+ communities.

Alex Saragusa, the department’s LGBTQ+ liaison officer, said Graves quickly elevated his part-time position to a full-time post.

As part of his role, Saragusa serves on the city’s Human Rights Commission as the hate and bias crime chairperson, and connects with advocates on trans issues.

The department has announced plans to participate in the AIDS Walk this year — a first in the walk’s 35-year history. And it will staff a booth at the KC PrideFest in June.

Also for pride month, KCPD is planning a genderless self-defense course. And Saragusa is working with LGBTQ+ bars on recognizing and reporting viable threats and being prepared in case of a shooter or other incidents.

While reviewing its procedures for dealing with citizens who are LGBTQ+, the department is already rolling out training for current and future officers, Saragusa said. It includes a curriculum on proper pronoun usage.

Jenson commended the department’s new leadership for those steps but said even more work needs to be done.

“The KCPD, or KC in general, has a history of using people of color and queer and trans folks to create a sort of performance,” she said. “In the words of my sisters, we call them stunt queens.”

Jenson said white trans persons usually are tapped to help craft policies for a diverse community.

“Whenever I hear that an org or city department is having a training, my question is: Who is leading the training and what is their relationship with the org doing the training?” she said.

She called for “genuine relationship building” among police officials and Kansas City trans women of color.

Jenson is organizing a June 7 town hall called “Nothing for Us Without Us” with city and police officials. It will take place at a location to be determined.

The people doing the work

In 2020, the Kansas City Council established an LGBTQ Commission to provide insight to city officials.

JD Bezares, a Latino trans man, serves as the housing commissioner. Bezares says the group is looking for more support.

“We’ve had some challenges with funding,” he said. “We don’t have a budget line item in the city’s budget, which is problematic because that puts all the work back on the folks that are being marginalized to figure things out, which is very typical. Something we’ve seen here in Kansas City is that a lot of people want us to work for free.”

Melissa Kozakiewicz, an assistant city manager and the LGBTQ liasion for the city manager’s office, said the city does not fund any of its boards or commissions, whose role is primarily to provide guidance.

But Bezares warned of burnout among unpaid volunteers and said he’d like to see more support from the City Council on long-range planning.

Nou, who has lived in Kansas City as a trans woman for two decades, said she has been called upon more frequently to contribute to conversations with city officials. She wants to see those opportunities opened up for more Kansas City trans women of color.

“I’ve never really been the center of any discussion, it’s always like white trans women that are being called,” she said. “So it’s good to see that recently that there was like me and Merrique being a part of this conversation, and other trans women of color.”

Most of all, Nou wants to experience a larger sense of support, not just from city officials but from Kansas City as a whole. Trans people need allies in the face of hostile legislation in Jefferson City and Topeka, she said.

“We definitely need love poured in,” Nou said. “Because these bills are just pushing hate on us and it’s pushing others to hate on us as well.”

This article first appeared on The Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A red-clad crowd packs Arrowhead Stadium to watch the Kansas City Chiefs play (Eric Thomas/Kansas Reflector).

Kansas City is down to the final details of its ambitious effort to host this year’s NFL Draft, an event that is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to its main downtown site and other events around the area for three days beginning April 27.

A giant stage is under construction in front of Union Station. Roads are being closed and traffic is being rerouted around downtown. Parks and businesses are being spruced up to impress the expected guests.

Over the last decade, the draft has evolved from a low-key affair to what is called the biggest nonsporting sports event in the nation. Kansas City NFL owners in 2019 chose Kansas City as this year’s host, and organizers such as the Kansas City Sports Commission, Visit KC and City Hall have worked steadily on the logistics ever since.

Now, Kansas Citians are making their own plans to participate in the festivities — or avoid the crowds. The Beacon has prepared answers to some pressing questions that are popping up as draft weekend draws near.

What’s the latest estimate on how many visitors are expected to attend?

About 100,000 visitors are expected to attend the NFL Draft each day of the event, according to Elliott Scott, director of marketing and communications for the Kansas City Sports Commission. In total, organizers anticipate anywhere from 300,000 to 350,000 visitors from across the country traveling to Kansas City. The draft is expected to be the largest sports event in Kansas City’s history.

What exactly will be going on?

The heart of draft activity will be located in front of Union Station and on the north and south lawns of the Liberty Memorial.

Actual NFL Draft activities, when teams announce their player selections, will take place at the NFL Draft Theater, which will be located in front of Union Station. While close-up seats will be reserved for invited ticket holders, others may be able to catch a glimpse of the proceedings. According to the NFL’s FAQ: “General fan viewing is standing room only and will be on a first-come first-served basis on the North Lawn of the Museum and Memorial.” Draft activities will also be shown on screens all around the grounds.

Other highlights will include the NFL Draft Experience, described as the NFL’s interactive football theme park, and a free concert series. Kansas City Chiefs fans can enjoy the special Chiefs Kingdom Experience, which includes the chance to rush out of a tunnel to the roar of a crowd.

How to attend the NFL Draft in Kansas City

In order to attend events, visitors will need to download the NFL OnePass app and abide by all NFL safety and security protocols, including a strict clear bag policy.

“You will have access to the Fan Experience on the south side and the north lawn of the National WWI Museum and Memorial,” Scott said.

Fans can also visit NFL.com/DraftAccess to register, but will need the app to play games at the Fan Experience. NFL OnePass will also have up-to-date information on schedules and program changes.

I live on the fringes of the metro area and will be driving to the draft.  What is my best strategy for avoiding crowds and finding parking?

The main pedestrian entry for all fans to access events will be at the intersection of Wyandotte Street and Memorial Drive on the south side of the National World War I Museum and Memorial.

VisitKC has prepared an extensive guide for the best ways to get there, including an interactive map of parking garages.

Planners recommend that fans look for parking near the route of the Kansas City streetcar, which includes the Crossroads Arts District, Central Business District, Crown Center and River Market.

There is also abundant parking near the RideKC Max rapid transit line, which will take visitors to within a short walk of the draft entrance.

A park-and-ride service will operate from the West Bottoms neighborhood; prebooking is required to reserve a seat on the shuttle.

When and how frequently will the KC Streetcar be running? 

The KC Streetcar will operate with more frequency and extended hours during the NFL draft. The plan is to have five streetcars in operation Thursday through Saturday, arriving at the designated stops every five to 10 minutes, said Donna Mandelbaum, communications and marketing director of the KC Streetcar Authority.

On Thursday, April 27, and Friday, April 28, the streetcar will operate from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. On Saturday, April 29, streetcar hours will be 7 a.m. to 2 a.m.

The Union Station streetcar stop will be closed to passengers during the draft. The southbound route will end at the Crossroads stop at 19th and Main streets, and northbound service will begin there. All other streetcar stops will remain the same.

Will regular bus service be disrupted by the draft? 

As of now, most RideKC buses are expected to operate as usual. The MAX rapid transit line will continue to run through the downtown area. The route will operate along Penn Valley Drive, where passengers can get off at the 29th Street stop, which will be a five-minute walk to the main entrance to draft events. Updates on bus service will come in the following weeks.

Will Amtrak trains stop running through Union Station during the draft? 

Amtrak will operate on its normal schedule during the NFL Draft.

Where are all these visitors going to stay?

Hotels and short-term rentals around the area are doing a brisk booking business, and the closer to the action, the higher the prices.

Hotels in the downtown area are reserving rooms for about $500 a night over the period of the draft, although some rooms are available at around $331.

Prices vary for short term rentals in the area, including Airbnb and VRBO, with a few starting below $100 a night but most renting for $250 to $500 a night.

Some rentals close to the draft activities are listed at over $1,000 a night. A “luxury downtown penthouse and private rooftop deck” is listed on VRBO for $3,332 a night. And a one-bed, one-bath studio apartment, advertised as “just steps away from the outdoor excitement,” is listed on Airbnb for $5,500 a night.

Why is Kansas City Public Schools canceling classes while the draft is underway?

Because of the expected influx of visitors and traffic in the heart of the city, which is primarily within KCPS boundaries, district officials have decided a remote learning model on April 27 and 28 would be best for student and operational safety.

Middle and high school students will log in to Microsoft Teams from 9 a.m. to noon to attend class and receive instruction. Work will be assigned on Google Classroom.

Elementary students will bring home instructional packets on Wednesday, April 26, with assignments that will be due the following Monday. Students will have to return their completed packets to receive attendance credit for the two days. Teachers will be available by phone, email or Microsoft Teams to assist students and families on Thursday and Friday mornings.

This story was originally published by The Kansas City Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest. It is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Bill Thompson, a member of Stand Up KC, has worked as a cook at Burger King for 10 years. He and Stand Up KC want to ensure protections for hourly workers at the planned downtown Royals stadium (Chase Castor/The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

Bill Thompson cooks at a fast-food restaurant, shares a car with his wife and helps care for an older family member. He’s got a lot to manage, but Thompson has found time to attend “listening sessions” that the Kansas City Royals have organized to discuss plans for a new downtown ballpark.

“We want to have a seat at the table,” Thompson said.

He’s talking about Stand Up KC, a coalition of fast-food, retail and other low-wage workers around Kansas City who advocate for better pay and conditions. The group has organized unions and supported job actions at fast-food restaurants. Now it is focusing its energies on the $2 billion stadium and accompanying entertainment district that the Royals want to build.

The team announced last year that it is planning to leave Kauffman Stadium after 50 years. The team’s lease is good through 2031, but the Royals are looking to move sooner, probably to a site in or near downtown Kansas City.

Team officials have hosted three sessions to talk about the merits of a new stadium and ballpark district, and to gather community input. Members of Stand Up KC have been present at all three. Organizers want to ensure protections for hourly workers in the form of a community benefits agreement.

Thompson has been a cook at Burger King for 10 years, making $12 an hour. He has one car, which he drives to work, but he often has to walk home so his wife, a visiting nurse who makes the same hourly wage as he does, can use the car. The couple cares for Thompson’s mother-in-law, who helps them afford their home with her disability check.

“If something happened to her, with our wages, we wouldn’t be able to keep our home,” Thompson said.

The way he sees it, the ballpark, which is being proposed as “an uplifting and beneficial project,” should agree to decent wages and benefits for future workers.

“We want labor with dignity and respect for the workers. I can’t retire. I can’t afford to go to a doctor. These are the things that these workers don’t need to suffer through,” Thompson said.

New downtown Royals stadium

According to the Royals, the opening of the $2 billion ballpark and entertainment district would create 2,200 jobs, mostly in the service and retail sectors. Those jobs would spur $200 million in annual labor income and $500 million in annual economic output, according to the team.

But for Kansas City workers, this isn’t enough.

“What kinds of jobs are they going to be? Are they going to be more poverty wage jobs where we’re still seeking public assistance because our wages aren’t enough to meet our needs to put food on the table?” Thompson said.

In its community benefits agreement, Stand Up KC wants the Royals to establish a wage floor to guarantee income for workers that reflects the cost of living of the moment. The current living wage for Jackson County is $16.68 according to the MIT living wage calculator. The current minimum wage in Missouri is $12 an hour.

Workers also want the team to agree that at least half of service and hospitality workers come from Kansas City ZIP codes with the highest rates of unemployment.

The benefits agreement also demands that the Royals agree to not engage in union-busting tactics and to allow all current stadium workers to keep their jobs and continue their collective bargaining agreement at the new stadium.

The question of a community benefits agreement was raised publicly at the second listening session, on Jan. 31 at the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy. Royals staff said the details are up in the air.

“I think it’s really important that we fully acknowledge the need and commitment around a community benefits agreement,” said Sarah Tourville, Royals senior vice president of business operations. “At the same time, I ask you to be patient with us because that community benefits agreement will be dependent upon our new home,” she added.

Workers were not satisfied with the answer.

“Regardless of where this stadium is being built, they can tell us that there will be affordable housing, that there will be a wage floor, that workers will be a part of negotiations and have a seat at the table. There are things that they can commit to even before a location is picked,” said Terrence Wise, a member of Stand Up KC.

‘We refuse to subsidize our own displacement’

While Stand Up KC organizers are focusing on worker protections, another group that primarily represents low-income Kansas Citians is staunchly opposed to the construction of a new ballpark.

Shortly before the Royals started public listening sessions, KC Tenants weighed in with a press statement.

“As landlords raise rents across the city and as our people struggle to find decent homes, the proposed downtown stadium would usher in a new wave of gentrification, like it has in so many other cities with similar recent projects,” the citywide tenants’ union said.

“The stadium downtown would threaten longtime community members, hitting our poor and working-class neighbors and the Black and brown residents of Kansas City’s east side and northeast neighborhoods the hardest. This is a bad deal for the people,” it continued.

The news release noted that taxpayers are almost certain to be asked to help pay for the new stadium and district. “The worst part? They’ll ask us to foot the bill,” it said. “We refuse to subsidize our own displacement.”

Many poor and working-class residents are already facing displacement as the rents in Kansas City continue to increase.

Stand Up KC organizers, who often are aligned with KC Tenants, say they think affordable housing should be guaranteed in the community benefits agreement. Unlike the tenants’ union, Stand Up KC thinks the development could be beneficial for workers if protections are in place.

The proposed community benefits agreement addresses affordable housing, asking the team to guarantee three new affordable housing units for every unit that gets displaced.

“We don’t outright oppose it because we want a seat at the table to negotiate these things. We want to make sure that there is affordable housing eviction prevention,” Thompson said.

What’s next?

The Royals have committed $1 billion to the construction of the entertainment district and “hundreds of millions of dollars” toward the construction of the stadium, but are looking for public funds to foot the rest of the bill.

The team said it will ask Jackson County voters to extend the 3/8-cent sales tax that was approved in 2006 for improvements on the Truman Sports Complex. Continuing the sales tax would generate $300 million to $400 million for the team over 30 years.

People familiar with development in Kansas City expect the team to also apply for developer subsidies to offset the cost of the project.

After being asked at the second listening session why he couldn’t just pay for the stadium himself, Royals owner John Sherman replied:

“We feel strongly about it being a public-private partnership to make sure that this team thrives for the next 50 years, for us to create a world-class ballpark that creates economic activity 365 days a year. We feel like we can do much more together than we can do for ourselves.”

Sherman has also said private funders and investors would be able to help offset the stadium’s cost.

As the terms and conditions of the community benefits agreement remain up in the air, Stand Up KC will continue to push for its demands.

“We know that John Sherman and the Royals will say what they have control of, but we know they have major sway. If they say they want union jobs in this district, it’ll happen. If they say they want living wages, it’ll happen,” Wise said. “These are billionaires we’re talking about.”

If workers don’t begin to see results, they will turn to other avenues to be heard, he said.

“How we got things done is rallies, protests, civil disobedience and strikes. We use every tool in our toolbox,” Wise said. “So we’ve been good stewards and listening, but when our patience runs thin and we’re not getting the results we want, we do what we do best and that’s mobilize, organize, and we take action.”

For Thompson, the path to a community benefits agreement is looking more clear.

“They seem open to the discussion, but so far, it’s just been a discussion,” he said. “It’s not anything concrete. We’re the Show-Me State, we want to see the community benefits agreement.”

Patrick Mahomes throws pass against the Buffalo Bills during the third quarter in the AFC Divisional Playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium on January 23, 2022 (Jamie Squire/Getty Images).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

Football excitement in Kansas City won’t be over once the confetti gets vacuumed up after the Chiefs victory parade on Wednesday.

In a little more than two months, Kansas City will host the 2023 National Football League Draft, an extravaganza that organizers predict will draw more visitors than any single event in the city’s history.

The three-day event, from April 27 to April 29, will take place in the area around Union Station and the National World War I Museum and Memorial. Described as “the NFL’s interactive football theme park,” the event is expected to draw fans from around the nation, as well as round-the-clock media attention as teams select the best players to emerge from colleges.

The Kansas City Sports Commission has been coordinating with the NFL, City Hall and other offices to plan the 2023 draft activities. With their help, The Beacon has prepared answers to some frequently asked questions about the glitzy upcoming event.

How many people can we expect and where are they coming from? 

Organizers have said that up to 350,000 people from around the country will be arriving in Kansas City for the draft, But that might be an underestimate; more than 600,000 fans participated in events in Nashville in 2019. More than 10 million people tuned into TV networks to watch the draft in Las Vegas last year, and that was considered an underwhelming audience.

How did KC come to host the NFL draft? 

The first NFL Draft was a low-key affair in 1936 in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.

In 1980, the league began televising the proceedings from  Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The draft moved to Chicago in 2015 and has become a coveted event for cities ever since. Kansas City was selected in 2019 to host the event this year.

What does Kansas City stand to gain from the draft? 

A great deal, says Elliott Scott, director of marketing and communications for the Kansas City Sports Commission.

“The economic impact from an event of this scale is considerable and will conservatively bring in tens of millions of dollars to Kansas City,” Scott said in an email to The Beacon.

Kansas City and the NFL estimate that the event will bring in approximately $102.1 million in direct spending towards the city’s economy.

What local businesses will benefit from the three-day event? 

Hotels, restaurants and shops across the Kansas City metro will benefit from the increased number of tourists.

The NFL has partnered with the sports commission to create the Business Connect Program, which will provide 100 diverse businesses that have worked on large events with possible opportunities to provide goods and services for the draft. The program, which requires the businesses to be 51% owned by a minority, woman, veteran or LGBTQ+ individual, will also provide participants with networking and development opportunities.

“The Kansas City companies used by the NFL through the Business Connect Program receive compensation as a result of their work,” Scott said.

How is downtown Kansas City preparing for the draft?

The arrival of 350,000-plus people to Kansas City’s downtown will have a substantial impact on local business.

“All of our retailers and businesses are gearing up and looking forward to it,” said Sean O’Byrne, the vice president of the Downtown Council.

“New restaurants are coming in and the city’s been working with them to make sure they are set and ready to go. Hotels are also gearing up and looking to increase business overall,” he said.

Ambassadors for the Downtown Community Improvement District, which provides security, cleaning and promotional services to the area, are also preparing for draft weekend.

Where are all of these out-of-town visitors going to stay? 

Visitors are expected to stay in hotels across the metro and venues such as Airbnb and other short-term rentals.

We’re talking about thousands of people flocking to an area with limited parking. What are the plans for getting people to the event?

“Overall, we’ve been working with the NFL since August 2022,” Chuck Ferguson, the chief operating officer of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, said in an email response.

The NFL will be directing  logistics such as plans, maps and schedules, and RideKC, the bus service, will adjust routes accordingly.

“… The role of our agency will be focused on what we do best: fixed route transit,” Ferguson said. He said the Main MAX bus, which runs from and around downtown to the Plaza, Brookside and Waldo, will run more frequently during the events.

How will the KC Streetcar handle the NFL draft?

The streetcar will continue operating its downtown route throughout the draft.

“We are still working on our operational plans and will have more information to share with the public as the NFL Draft dates get closer,” said Donna Mandelbaum, the communications and marketing director of KC Streetcar Authority.

Who is paying for crowd control, cleanup and other services?

On Jan. 19, the Kansas City Council approved an ordinance agreeing to spend up to $3 million to make sure the draft goes smoothly. The money will come from the Convention and Tourism Fund.

Also, the Sports Commission is raising funds by offering sponsorship packages totaling $1.5 million, Kimiko Black Gilmore, the city’s convention and entertainment facilities director, told The Beacon.

“These funds will be used for security, rental fees, staffing, information technology and transportation,” she said.  “The city’s Public Works Department will be responsible for cleanup.”

I don’t follow professional football. What’s in this event for me?

The NFL Draft Experience will feature interactive exhibits, exclusive merchandise and autograph sessions. The festivities are free to fans.

The draft will also include a concert series that nonfootball fans can enjoy, according to the sports commission.  And locals don’t need to await news of the draft picks to appreciate the prospect of downtown Kansas City alive with people, music and fun.

An aerial view showing the construction of the new KCI terminal (Photo courtesy of the Aviation Department). .

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

Sandy Cisneros has a retail job in Liberty where she makes $15 an hour. But the mother of two children was looking for something that would offer more hours, better pay and a more flexible schedule.

After showing up at a Jan. 23 hiring fair sponsored by the Vantage Airport Group at Kansas City International Airport, Cisneros left with everything she was looking for — along with the possibility of a raise. She will be a shift lead at Dunkin’ Donuts when the new KCI terminal opens in a few weeks.

For Cisneros, her new job will be something of a homecoming. She’s worked retail jobs at KCI in the past. She expects that her return, like the $1.5 billion terminal she’ll be working in, will be busier and livelier.

“It was an OK experience,” Cisneros said of her previous KCI gigs. “But I’m looking for more excitement because of the companies that are going to be at the new terminal.”

Excitement and flexibility — something else Cisneros was looking for — are two of the benefits employers are advertising as they staff up for the opening of the 1 million square-foot new terminal.

When is the new KCI airport opening?

The new terminal is set to open Feb. 28, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas announced in a press conference.

Construction on the project began in 2019, two years after Kansas City residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of the development. Replacing KCI’s two horseshoe-shaped terminals, the new structure boasts 39 gates, an array of amenities focused on accessibility, and 50 retail, food and beverage operators.

While roughly the same size as the current airport terminals, the new structure will need more feet on the ground in day-to-day operations.

“As far as the Aviation Department goes, it is status quo with no additional positions necessary to operate the new terminal,” said Joe McBride, marketing and communications manager at the Aviation Department.

“The current terminals do not lend to having staffed locations, but the new terminal does.”

Denisha Jones is the owner of Sweet Peaches Cobblers (Chase Castor/The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

When Denisha Jones launched her business, Sweet Peaches Cobblers, in August 2020, it was just her, her husband and her mom in a community kitchen — taking orders, making the cobblers and doing deliveries.

Now she has a team of individuals helping her sell cobblers in stores and at events and festivals across the country, including the Kansas City BBQ Festival.

Jones’ speedy evolution from mom-and-pop business to successful entrepreneur had a lot to do with overcoming traditional financial barriers confronted by small and especially minority-owned enterprises.

“There has been a lack of resources for small businesses, such as myself,” she said. “They want you to be at a certain level before they can offer you any type of resources from their company,” she said.

Black business owners typically receive less financing from banks. According to the Federal Reserve, 80.2% of white business owners received at least a percentage of the funding they requested from a bank, in comparison to 66.4% of business owners who are Black, indigenous and people of color.

Jones’ niche product presented other challenges.

Frozen food products require storage spaces and packaging expertise that aren’t easily found around Kansas City, she said.

“I’ve had to go outside of the state of Missouri just to obtain some of the resources that I need in order to grow and expand my business.”

But Jones last year became the recipient of a game-changing $25,000 grant from Generating Income For Tomorrow, or GIFT, a nonprofit launched in 2020 to foster economic prosperity and wealth in Kansas City’s Black community. Since its creation, GIFT has assisted Black-owned businesses east of Troost Avenue, the city’s historical racial and economic dividing line.

“We don’t want to fuss about what people aren’t doing for us, we don’t want to argue about it, we just want to be a solution and begin to change the inner city and build up Black communities where we grew up,” said Cornell Gorman, GIFT’s chief operating officer and co-founder.

The GIFT grant

GIFT is specific about the rationale for where and how it invests.

In Kansas City, the poverty rate in ZIP codes east of Troost Avenue is 36%, and three-fourths of the residents are Black, the nonprofit notes. In ZIP codes west of Troost, or in the section of Kansas City north of the Missouri River, only about 5% of residents live in poverty, and 91% of residents are white.

“This area was intentionally disinvested into and the reason it was disinvested into was because Black people were over on this side of the town,” Gorman said.

“So historically, it has been extremely difficult for students, for homeowners, for business owners, to get the capital, to get the resources, and get them the help they needed in order to be successful in homeownership, in education, and in business entrepreneurship.”

Since its launch, GIFT has distributed $687,000 to 42 Black businesses. They include a hair salon, a car customization service, a food truck and others that provide essential goods, promote access to health and employment or encourage community, entertainment and self-improvement.

GIFT provides 12 grants per year and has set a goal of reaching $1 million in funding before the end of this year. The potential for job creation is a priority for applicants. GIFT recipients have so far created more than 60 new jobs, Gorman said.

Sweet Peaches Cobblers was able to purchase commercial freezers, hire new employees and improve its marketing strategies, Jones said.

“In October of last year, we were only in five stores,” she said. “And now we’re currently in 33 locations.”

While Sweet Peaches Cobblers remains a family-operated business, the GIFT grant has enabled Jones to treat her staff less like volunteers and more like employees.

Grant recipients are required to present an itemized breakdown of how the grant dollars will be used. Eligible expenses include payroll, inventory, fixed costs such as rent and equipment, and other day-to-day expenses.

Leeah Bryant has been on the Sweet Peaches staff since the company launched, providing customer service, working the register and attending events. While her rate of pay is the same, she is no longer donating hours, as she did when she helped her friend get Sweet Peaches off the ground.

“A  lot of things that I did to help her were to just help,” Bryant said. “Now I’m paid for each hour that I work, whereas beforehand, a lot of it was just donating my time.”

Next steps for Black-owned businesses

Generating Income For Tomorrow got its start on May 5, 2020. Three weeks later, in Minnesota, a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on his neck and cutting off his oxygen supply.

The videotaped act of brutality ignited a national outcry against institutionalized racism. And it created a wave of support for Black-owned businesses.

Yelp search interest for the term “Black owned” grew by more than 12,000% in June 2020 in comparison to the year before. Between June and August of that year, 75% of Black business owners saw an increase in business, according to a poll of more than 400 Black business owners by Groupon and the National Black Chamber of Commerce.

That surge in support for Black-owned businesses brought an initial rush of donations to GIFT and its mission. Many of the donations were from people who live outside the neighborhoods that the nonprofit was aiming to serve.

“I think they didn’t want to be seen as the problem, so they got involved and they began to donate,” Gorman said.

Two years later, the support does not look the same. About 45% of GIFT’s funding continues to come from individual donors, Gorman said.  But while the amount of donations the organization receives is relatively consistent, support from white and more affluent individuals has dropped somewhat, while donations from people more connected with Black communities has ticked up.

The rest of the organization’s funding — about 55% — comes from corporations and foundations.

Some of GIFT’s challenges come solely from being a new nonprofit and not well known by funders or even possible recipients, Gorman said.

GIFT tries to be creative to raise its profile. It sponsors a monthly Black business pop-up where entrepreneurs can show off their goods and services. This year it opened a business center at 50th Street and Prospect Avenue, with services available to the community at no cost every weekday.

Most recently, Brandon Calloway, a co-founder of GIFT, received a $100,000 Pinnacle Prize, a no-strings-attached award given annually to two Kansas Citians who are working to strengthen communities facing socioeconomic challenges.

Gorman said his team understands it will have to continue to seek support from individual donors, even as the public’s attention shifts to other causes.

Black-led organizations are also less likely to receive grant funding and often have less revenue than white-led organizations. GIFT currently has a goal of reaching 15,000 donors.

“We still do need the support from the entire Kansas City metro area, while also maintaining and seeing the growth in the inner city, in order to see a better Kansas City for everybody,” Gorman said.

Like its benefactor, Sweet Peaches Cobblers is juggling ambitions and challenges. One of its most pressing goals is to get more staff. Small-business owners nationwide have been struggling to hire as a result of the pandemic.

“It’d be nice if she just had, you know, a good group of people that were on standby, ready. Because right now we’re all just kind of juggling everything,” Bryant said.

Sweet Peaches is also looking to produce its products in mass quantity to maximize its profits. The business is currently looking for a co-packager.

A GIFT grant entitles recipients to a year of coaching and other entrepreneurial resources. Jones used her newfound savvy to pitch her business to other funders.. In September, she won the $30,000 grand prize from the Hy-Vee OpportUNITY Inclusive Business Summit and pitch competition.

Jones is confident that with the combination of funding, perseverance and a universally loved product, Sweet Peaches Cobblers will be everywhere in no time.

“Sweet Peaches Cobblers is going to be a global brand,” she said.

After a Black woman escaped captivity in Excelsior Springs, a vigil was held on Oct. 16 to raise awareness of the issue of missing Black women in Kansas City, as well as to pay respects to those who have not returned home (Mili Mansaray/The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

On Oct. 7, a terrified 22-year-old Black woman escaped from a home in Excelsior Springs. She told police she had been locked up there for about a month, after being abducted from Prospect Avenue in Kansas City by a man who lives in the home.

The man, Timothy M. Haslett Jr., 39, is in custody facing charges of rape, kidnapping and assault in Clay County. The woman told neighbors and police that she was restrained in a small room in Haslett’s basement, where he repeatedly raped, beat and tortured her. She managed to escape when he took his elementary-age son to school.

The woman told a neighbor and police something else: There were other victims, she said. Women who “didn’t make it out.”

The woman’s escape and Haslett’s arrest occurred a month after The Kansas City Defender, a Black-owned news publication, republished a video of Bishop Tony Caldwell, a community and church leader, alerting the public of assertions that at least several Black girls and women are missing from the Prospect Avenue corridor.

“We got four young ladies that have been murdered within the last week off of here at 85th and Prospect,” Caldwell said in the video. “We got a serial killer again.”

After the video went viral on social media, the Kansas City Police Department released a statement calling Caldwell’s assertions “completely unfounded.” The department makes the public aware of every homicide it investigates, the statement said. It said police had responded to one homicide of a woman in six weeks, at a location not close to Prospect Avenue.  Several local news outlets, which had not reported on Caldwell’s allegations, did report the police rebuttal.

Authorities in Kansas City and Excelsior Springs have told news outlets they have not found a link connecting the woman imprisoned in Haslett’s home with any other reported missing or murdered women. A police investigative squad in Clay County is working the case and searching for any other victims.

But the woman’s emergence, and her story of being abducted in Kansas City, has roiled Black leaders and residents. They contend that the events are proof that police don’t take reports of missing Black women seriously and that mainstream news outlets are too quick to accept the police version of events.

“I’m tired of hearing these excuses. I’m tired of hearing people thinking what people know, instead of going to the people and seeing who they are,” said Gloria Ellington, the founder of GYRL, a nonprofit she started in 2000 with the mission of empowering women, especially victims and survivors of domestic violence. Ellington is part of the group searching for missing women and girls along the Prospect corridor.

What’s happening?

Caldwell said he began to fear for the welfare of multiple Black women in Kansas City after he helped a father search for a 15-year-old girl who went missing from the area in mid-September. The teenager was eventually found. But in the process of looking for her, Caldwell and other canvassers ran across information about other missing girls and women.

“All this information started coming out, as we were looking for a totally different person,” he said.

Local activists say it isn’t uncommon for young women to go missing from the area generally known as the Prospect corridor, which frequently records some of the city’s highest crime rates.

Two years ago, Caldwell and others conducted a search for 38 individuals they had been told were missing.

“Out of that, 32 of them happened to be African American.  And we were able to find 13 of them,” he said.

Nationally, of 300,000 missing girls and women reported in the U.S. in 2020, a third of them were Black, according to PBS NewsHour. In Kansas City, the proportion is the same.
Black Kansas Citians are acutely aware that concerns about missing women too often prove to be correct. In 2004, 47-year-old Terry A. Blair was charged with murdering six women near Prospect Avenue. He was convicted in 2008.

Barriers to filing missing persons report

The recent confluence of events has also raised questions about whether Kansas City’s requirements for initiating a missing person investigation are too stringent.

According to KCPD procedure, an adult missing person report will be completed when a preliminary investigation determines that the person was last seen in Kansas City and meets an additional requirement, such as being under professional care for mental health issues, or under threat from domestic violence or another reason.

While the requirements for reporting missing juveniles are different, parents still confront issues in trying to complete the reports.

“We had a lady there today that talked to us. She tried to file a report with her daughter, it didn’t happen,” Caldwell said. “They told her, ‘We don’t even know if you have a daughter or not,’” he said.

The father of the 15-year-old girl whom Caldwell helped search for in September came to him because of roadblocks he confronted in trying to report her missing to the police department, Caldwell said.

“He found us out because our name was already out there of us doing certain things like this in the community, working with people that nobody else will work with,” Caldwell said.

A long history of mistrust has also left members of the Black community with a reluctance to disclose information to the police.

“We all know that a lot of people in the streets do not trust the police. So they don’t talk to the police about certain things,” Caldwell said.

“With things going on and on about police brutality, a lot of people, if they have information, they’re still not telling the police, because of distrust and the walls that have been built up. But they’ll talk to us all day long, the community leaders,” he said.

Disconnect between local media and community

Residents of Kansas City’s Black community are also calling out local news outlets, saying they help to perpetuate the silencing of Black Kansas Citians.

“We know that we’ve been incarcerated at a higher rate, so we know that most of us will be disfigured in our commentary to the media. So we don’t talk to them,” Ellington said.

Ellington said she regards the willingness of news outlets to rely on the police response as the only and last word as typical of the media’s disregard of her community. Many Black Kansas Citians depend on social media to get the word out, she said.

“We’ve never had that backing, and we never relied on the media to be our friends. So the word of mouth is the strongest information you can get out there,” she said.

“To talk to each other gets the word out whether somebody comes with a camera or to write. But we’re at the point now that we’re sick and tired of it. And we’re not asking for their permission any longer.”

What’s next?

The kidnapping story and the allegations that concerns about missing women were not taken seriously have drawn reporters from national news outlets to Kansas City. And as interest shows no signs of subsiding, advocates say they are receiving more reports of missing women in the area.

Caldwell called for police in Kansas City to do a better job of hearing and working with Black residents.

“Instead of trying to alienate people, they need to learn to embrace people,” he said. “How they word things means a lot. This community is already hurting. Don’t traumatize us any more.”

Black leaders are also asking for a less onerous process for reporting a person missing.

“I don’t care anymore about them saying if it was a report or not, we still have people missing,” Caldwell said. “Our thing is, let’s bring them home safely. Let’s not try to prove a point.”

Change can happen on a personal and communal level, Ellington said.

“We need to get back to what we were created to do, and that is to be a servant of each other,” she said. “To help the voices rise that can’t speak for themselves.”

April Shabazz at her apartment in Kansas City. She drives for Uber but doesn’t own a car, instead she rents one by-the-week and hopes to make what she needs for bills and the next week’s car rental fee (Chase Castor/The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon. 

April Shabazz began driving for Uber full time this summer. The job wasn’t new for her. Rideshare driving had been her side gig for three years, along with work as a tax preparer.

Shabazz, a member of Stand Up KC and the Missouri Workers Center, likes Uber’s flexible schedule. It enables her to work around some health issues and frequent medical visits.  She still has grievances with the company, however.

“Honestly, I’m not gonna say that I really feel valued as a driver,” she said.

Shabazz is not alone in that sentiment. Coming out of the disruptions caused by the pandemic, and following a summer of heightened gas prices, many rideshare drivers say they do not feel valued by their companies. They say large commission cuts, few resources  and a lack of corporate transparency make their jobs harder, especially in a place like Kansas City, where competition for customers can be cutthroat.

While rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft do not share localized data on their numbers of drivers, The RideShare Guy (RSG), a blog about the rideshare gig economy, estimates that approximately 1.5 million drivers represent Uber and Lyft in the United States.

Overall, 16% of Americans have earned money at one time or another via an online gig platform, according to the Pew Research Center. Fifty-eight percent of gig employees rely on their gig jobs to meet basic needs.

RSG estimates that about 1% of the working adult population of the U.S. is involved in some sort of gig job, according to Sergio Avedian, senior contributor at the blog.

While Uber alone has added 640,000 drivers to its Uber and Uber Eats platforms since January 2021, it has not been able to retain most of its drivers and has to continually replenish its driver base. About half of Uber’s drivers quit after just one year, according to the RideShare Guy platform.

“Unfortunately, from the first day, Uber and Lyft had this attitude of churn and burn,” Avedian said. “We don’t care if we lose a million drivers this year, because there’s another million waiting  to join the platforms.”

Drivers make less while the apps charge more

Uber claims that it charges its drivers a 25% fee on all fares. But after accounting for other additional fees deducted from the fare, such as booking, safe ride and marketplace fees, the percentage taken from drivers is much higher.

“Since 2019, the fares that Uber and Lyft are charging passengers have gone up anywhere between 60 and 70 percent throughout the country, depending on the city,” said Avedian.

“They are charging a lot more and they are paying a lot less.”

The company no longer produces a receipt showing the breakdown of what the trip cost, what fees are deducted and what the driver will receive.  Instead it shows an aggregate total of trips and driver earnings over a given period. The amount that Uber has taken off the individual fare is not available, although the company has said it is working on a plan that would give drivers more information up front.

“Less transparency is definitely happening,” Avedian said.

Drivers are also not compensated for gas, and while the price of gas has fallen from its summer peak, the higher cost of living post-pandemic continues makes it difficult for drivers to break even with these fees.

Erica Downey, who lives in Wyandotte County, drives for the food delivery platform DoorDash, which does break down fees for drivers but does not compensate them for fuel costs until they reach five years’ seniority. Drivers for the app receive a base pay depending on the distance, estimated time of delivery and other factors. The minimum payment is $2.

“That’s not even the price of one whole gallon of gas,” Downey said. Over the summer, she experienced days where the amount she made from driving was the same amount she had to spend on gas.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s a fair wage,” she said. “It’s not just the gas prices here. It’s the way that DoorDash pays you as well.”

Downey started declining orders under $5, which has decreased her acceptance rate, resulting in her receiving fewer orders as she is now one of the last drivers to be notified of nearby orders.

“Since 2019, the fares that Uber and Lyft are charging passengers have gone up anywhere between 60 and 70 percent throughout the country, depending on the city,” said Avedian.

“They are charging a lot more and they are paying a lot less.”

The company no longer produces a receipt showing the breakdown of what the trip cost, what fees are deducted and what the driver will receive.  Instead it shows an aggregate total of trips and driver earnings over a given period. The amount that Uber has taken off the individual fare is not available, although the company has said it is working on a plan that would give drivers more information up front.

“Less transparency is definitely happening,” Avedian said.

Drivers are also not compensated for gas, and while the price of gas has fallen from its summer peak, the higher cost of living post-pandemic continues makes it difficult for drivers to break even with these fees.

Erica Downey, who lives in Wyandotte County, drives for the food delivery platform DoorDash, which does break down fees for drivers but does not compensate them for fuel costs until they reach five years’ seniority. Drivers for the app receive a base pay depending on the distance, estimated time of delivery and other factors. The minimum payment is $2.

“That’s not even the price of one whole gallon of gas,” Downey said. Over the summer, she experienced days where the amount she made from driving was the same amount she had to spend on gas.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s a fair wage,” she said. “It’s not just the gas prices here. It’s the way that DoorDash pays you as well.”

Downey started declining orders under $5, which has decreased her acceptance rate, resulting in her receiving fewer orders as she is now one of the last drivers to be notified of nearby orders.

The Kansas City Beacon is an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

Members of Stand Up KC, an organization of fast-food and retail workers advocating for their rights, supported the employee walkout at the Taco Bell on Wornall Road on Sept. 1. The organization has been fighting to increase the minimum wage (Dominick Williams/ The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon.

For years, Kansas City workers and organizers have fought to increase the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour. The demand was front and center recently when workers at the Taco Bell fast-food restaurant on Wornall Road in Kansas City’s Waldo neighborhood held a walkout over claims of poor working conditions and low wages.

“We have to drive cars that are constantly on the verge of breaking down or take the bus or Ubers while we are making other people enough to drive Ferraris and Porsches,” said Fran Marion, one of the workers who spoke at a rally in front of the restaurant.

“Some of the workers up here are even working two jobs just to be able to make ends meet,” said Marion, who is affiliated with the group Stand Up KC, which advocates for higher wages and workers’ right to unionize.

The current minimum wage in Missouri is $11.15 an hour. However, the living wage  —  the income a single worker requires to meet basic needs for a family of up to three children  —  is $17.19 in Jackson County, according to a living wage calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Local elections have shown that majorities of voters in Kansas City and Missouri support increasing the minimum wage. But state lawmakers have balked at doing so, contending the increases would burden businesses. Republican legislators have rolled back minimum-wage increases in St. Louis and Kansas City and threatened to overturn the will of voters at the state level.

Wages don’t match the cost of living

Over the decades, real wages  —  meaning wages accounting for inflation  —  have not increased significantly in comparison to the cost of living. The current value of the federally mandated minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, is at its lowest real-dollar level since the 1950s, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Another group, the Center For Economic Policy Research, has calculated that if the federal minimum wage had increased in line with inflation, it would now be $21.50 an hour.

The cost of living is increasing significantly. This summer saw a hike in gas prices, as well as shortages in affordable housing. In a sign of soaring living expenses, the Kansas City Council recently passed an ordinance defining affordability for a one-bedroom at nearly $1,200, while getting rid of the requirement to make 10% of apartments extremely affordable for households earning 30% of the area median income.

“Workers are being squeezed in both directions,” said Sirisha Naidu, associate professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

“Wages were not sufficient even before to cover basic expenses,” Naidu said. “But now with rents increasing, this unaffordability of living in a city like Kansas City is becoming worse.”

Fran Marion, who makes $16 an hour as an opening shift manager at Taco Bell, still finds herself living paycheck to paycheck.

“Just recently I was out of town and I got a notice that I owe the landlord $65.22  and that if we didn’t pay, we would have to be out in three days,” she said.

“For some people $65 may seem like nothing. But for me, five hours of work —  that’s the difference between keeping a roof over my family’s head or being out in the street.”

Missouri lawmakers oppose KC increase

The recent history of attempts to raise the minimum wage in Missouri is a story of some small steps forward and some large steps backward.

In 2018, Missouri voters approved Proposition B, increasing the state’s minimum wage by 85 cents a year until it reaches $12 in 2023.

In Kansas City, however, voters have pushed to raise the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour.

The City Council in 2015 passed an ordinance to raise the minimum wage to $13 an hour. The ordinance sat in court for two years, with the city’s minimum wage finally being increased to $10 an hour in 2017.

That same year, the Missouri legislature passed a preemption law, which dictates that state laws supersede laws and ordinances passed by local governments. The 2017 law specifically banned the approval of a minimum wage higher than the state’s  — thereby nullifying higher increases passed in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson has pushed for a $15-an-hour minimum wage for state workers, but even that proposal was blocked by Republicans in the state Senate.

Lawmakers and others worry that even modest minimum-wage increases will increase the cost of business and production. But Naidu said studies show that livable wages can boost  the economy.

“In fact, increasing the minimum wage and allowing workers to have a decent living is beneficial to the city, and perhaps the state,” she said.

Better wages allow workers to spend money in the local economy, Naidu pointed out.

“As much as it might be a cost for businesses, it’s also potential purchasing power,” she said. “So you might pay someone higher, and they might come back to your business and spend much more than they used to, if they had lower wages.”

Raising the minimum wage would likely result in a more productive, healthier workforce, Naidu added.

“It also comes down to what kind of society we want,” she said.

A fight for dignity 

At the Taco Bell rally, workers in Kansas City supported the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act, which recently was signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California. The law creates a statewide council, including workers, that will help set wages up to $22 an hour and improve conditions for fast-food workers in the state.

The law was opposed by the National Restaurant Association and other groups, which warn it could be replicated by other states and harm businesses.

The chances of a California-style law or a $22-an-hour minimum wage goal clearing the Missouri legislature seem remote. But workers and groups like Stand Up KC said they would continue the fight to get rid of preemption laws and increase wages in Kansas City.

“Wages represent sort of an economic element, but I think it also goes to this issue of dignity,” Naidu said. “You are saying something about what that person is worth, you’re saying that you are not worth a decent living. What people are trying to fight for is a better life and dignity.”

This story was originally published by The Kansas City Beacon, an online news outlet focused on local, in-depth journalism in the public interest.

Some riders of the RideKC system endure infrequent stop times, long waits and complicated reroutes (Chase Castor/The Beacon).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon.

On weekdays, Melissa Douds catches the 35th Street bus at 5:48 a.m. to get to her job as a facility worker at the Bartle Hall Convention Center.

Starting at the Armour and Gillham stop in Hyde Park, she is only seven minutes from work by car, but she does not have a car. Instead, she relies on the bus to get everywhere — including work.

“It normally takes me about anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on if the buses are on time and are dependable, or even show up,” she said.

In 2020, Kansas City became the first major U.S. city to offer free bus fare through a three-year program called ZeroFare KC. And while this milestone helps with transportation accessibility, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority continues to see decreasing ridership — by approximately 3 million riders from 2019 to 2021, according to data from the KCATA,

Before it was free, the city collected $8 million in fares per year. The city budget has since then dedicated $4.8 million to the transit system, with plans of making up the other half with federal pandemic funds through 2023. After that, KCATA will continue to seek a diversified funding partner to fund ZeroFare KC.

“Due to KCATA’s zero fare program, ridership recovered at a quicker pace than many other transit agencies,” said Cindy Baker, the vice president of marketing, communications and customer service for the KCATA in an email to The Beacon. “Ridership is now 80% of pre-pandemic levels. It is KCATA’s intention to build back service levels as more operators are available.”

While the surge of COVID-19 in spring 2020 contributed to the drop in ridership, the pandemic doesn’t paint the whole picture, especially now. Currently less than 3% of workers in Kansas City — and less than 1% in the metro region — use the bus to commute, according to the Census Reporter.

A city of Kansas City’s size needs more route options. Only 12.8% of low-income households are near a transit system, according to the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s AllTransit database, which measures transit connectivity across the U.S. The city has six transit routes per half mile.

Long wait times, infrequent bus service, complex reroutes and lack of communication negatively impact the bus experience for many riders, especially the ones most dependent on it, riders told The Beacon.

Douds’ commute on the 35th Street line, for example, involves a transfer, making the timeliness of her first stop even more essential. Some days it’s there on time. But there was an incident two weeks ago where the bus never showed up.

“I looked on the RideKC app saying that the next one was going to come at 6:33 a.m. Mind you, I have to be at work at 7 a.m.,” she said. “I had to call my boss and tell them that I was going to be running late due to the fact that my bus did not show up.”

Route changes delay riders going to work

The core tenets of RideKC service include access to essentials such as jobs, housing and education, according to the KCATA.

But in Douds’ experience, the KCATA hasn’t always taken proper steps to improve service for residents who need it most, especially when it comes to adequately communicating drastic changes to riders. This can have severe consequences for workers.

“I don’t like to be late,” she said. “I work so hard at my job for me to lose my job due to the miscommunications that the KCATA has given riders.

“It makes it really difficult when they’re not on time, or they don’t show up, or they are redirected or rerouted. They don’t let us know properly.”

Normally, Douds can walk about four blocks to catch the Main Max, but she no longer has this option. “Because of the streetcar expansion, they’ve got the Main Street Max all rerouted.”

On weekends, her line runs even more infrequently, about every 30 minutes, making any delays more stressful. To avoid these issues, Douds uses Uber to get home on the weekends.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” she said. “That’s an added expense that we low-wage workers really can’t afford to do.”

Frequency of service is an issue that the KCATA cannot resolve on its own, as it is dependent on financial resources, according to Baker.

“Most peer cities have twice (or more) funding than KCATA does, and most of them have a regional funding source, which the Kansas City metropolitan area does not have,” said Baker.

Kaamilya Hobbs has experienced similar hardships with the transit system.

Hobbs leaves the house around 9 a.m. to get to her job at Arby’s on North Oak Trafficway. Without a license, she uses the bus as her main means of transportation, catching the 27th Street bus at 27th and Benton Boulevard. By car, she is approximately 16 minutes from her job, but on the bus, her trip is close to two hours.

She used to take the 27th Street bus all the way to Crown Center before catching the North Oak bus, which was then a straight shot to her last stop. But the North Oak line is one of several that were rerouted in May as a part of the RideKC Next program, a redesign of the transit service to add more coverage to the core of Kansas City.

“It was a straight shot at first but then they made it so it detours to a transit center,” she said. “Sometimes the drivers make pit stops and take even longer using the bathroom while riders wait in the bus,” she said.

For Hobbs, the rerouting of the North Oak line felt very spur of the moment.

“One minute, I think it was a Monday, I had taken the bus at a certain time. And then two days later, I found out that it’s a whole 30 minutes later,” she said.

“I’ve even had to tell my bosses, I see no way of myself getting to work on time at all, except on Saturdays, just because of that change in route.”

According to Baker, the best way for customers to stay up to date on unscheduled delays is to subscribe to the RideKC Notify service, where one can receive phone calls, emails and/or texts about possible delays.

RideKC’s app, Transit, shows trips in real time.

“The one catch with that is that with the current driver availability challenge, if a morning run is late or must be held back, it doesn’t always translate to the app quickly enough. We are working to improve that,” Baker said.

KCATA is hiring bus drivers

The lack of drivers on her route once delayed Hobbs by about three hours.

“I ended up not even being able to go to work because they couldn’t find a driver until the next hour and a half,” she said. “Apparently nobody really wants to drive certain buses.”

Her stop along the 27th Street line falls east of Troost Avenue, a historical racial and economic dividing line. She typically waits at this stop for 45 minutes. Hobbs has witnessed multiple instances of hostility toward drivers that she believes contributes to the low number of drivers. Once, an upset rider smashed the window in a fit, which delayed her commute another 45 minutes.

“I’ve spoken to numerous drivers. They don’t feel safe riding anymore,” Hobbs said.

The driver shortage at the KCATA is simply a reflection of a bigger trend started by the pandemic, Baker said.

“It’s widely known that in virtually every industry, there is a labor shortage, and public transportation is no exception,” she said. “Decreased demand and staffing availability are the primary reasons service frequency was reduced during the pandemic.”

In response to the lack of drivers, RideKC launched a bus operator hiring campaign in 2021. The full- and part-time union jobs start at nearly $18 per hour.

“We do not have sufficient staff available today to increase and restore service frequencies to where they were before the pandemic. Recruiting new employees continues to be a very high priority,” Baker said.

Kansas City working to add more bus routes

Nash High is a materials relieving specialist at the downtown Central Library for the Kansas City Public Library. A year ago, he lived in Raytown, in the southeast part of the Kansas City metro. He would ride his bike into Kansas City to catch a bus downtown. Then his route was reworked as part of the RideKC Next program.

He has since moved back to the city.

“That was one of the main factors of why I moved back,” he said. “I was like, my commute is going to get a lot harder from there.” He now enjoys his commute, taking the 85 Paseo bus, from Paseo and 45th all the way downtown in about 40 minutes and leaving him with 15 minutes of cushion time before his start time.

What he mainly appreciates about this route is that it is a straight shot from where he starts off.

“Being able to just ride one bus and then get close enough to work is a huge benefit,” he said. “And that’s also one of the benefits of working downtown, because a lot of the buses go downtown, a lot of the north-south ones anyway.”

While free fare is a major feat for transportation equity and accessibility in Kansas City, it is not the final answer.

“I think it’d be a lot easier if they were to show up on time like they’re supposed to,” said Hobbs. “But I haven’t been seeing too much of that lately.”

Currently, east-west options pale in comparison to routes that go north-south.  All three MAX lines, which are express routes, run north-south.

Since the Kansas City metro area crosses the state boundaries between Kansas and Missouri, crafting unified transit across two government jurisdictions can be tricky.  In May, RideKC launched an East/West Transit Study in order to analyze the technical and financial feasibility of east-west transit connections across the state line.

The St. Louis Metrolink, a bistate light-rail transit system, serves as an example of a successful transit operation across state boundaries. The Metrolink also serves part of Illinois.

St. Louis also received a much higher performance score on AllTransit, with four times the amount of trips per week as Kansas City, as well as 21.5% of low-income households being near a transit system, and seven transit routes per half mile. In Portland, a similarly sized city, 95.3% of low-income households are near transit and there are 10 transit routes per half mile.

KCATA has added and expanded some services, Baker said. For example, a new Flex service, where buses can pick a rider up and drop them off at a specific location, was added in the Northland in May, and it has already resulted in a significant ridership increase month over month. Service was also restored on the 23rd Street route.

Bridging the gap in transportation accessibility not only improves the conditions for workers who rely on the bus, it can also strengthen the sense of community among residents.

“One of my favorite things about riding the bus is meeting people,” said Elizabeth Harris, a marketing and events coordinator for BikeWalkKC.

Despite owning a car, Harris chooses to take the bus to work not only for its convenience, but also as a way to engage her community. During her commute she has been able to create strong friendships with other commuters and even the baristas at the coffee shop along the way.

“The way we build our cities can either connect us or it can divide us,” she said.

“If we built a city where it was easy to get around by bus, or walk, or bike, or whatever it is, and more people did that, then I think we would be better neighbors.”

The Missouri Developmental Disabilities Council (MODDC) has announced a three-year, $275,000 grant to fund restorative justice training to one school, district, or organization in order to support its students of color who have developmental disabilities (George Frey/Getty Images).

This story was originally published by the Kansas City Beacon.

Studies show that students of color  and students with disabilities are suspended and referred to police more often than their peers in schools across Missouri.

This disproportionate rate of discipline can disrupt their education and push these students into the criminal justice system.

A new Missouri grant aims to help change the process.

The Missouri Developmental Disabilities Council (MODDC) has announced a three-year, $275,000 grant to fund restorative justice training to one school, district, or organization in order to support its students of color who have developmental disabilities. The deadline to apply is July 29 and the grantee will be selected in August.

The Disrupting the School to Prison Pipeline (SToPP) program aims to change discriminatory practices toward students and improve their education experience, especially for students with disabilities.

“In response to the latest research and what we hear from our stakeholders in Missouri, we are turning our attention to examining the widespread disparities of the treatment of children with disabilities, and then children of color with and without disabilities and LGBTQ youth,” said Miranda Fredrick, communications coordinator of the MODDC.

“Students of color have different experiences in school, and students who have disabilities have different experiences in school. When you intersect the two, the experiences of Missouri students are significantly different.”

Nationally, Black students are referred to the police at a rate of 8.4 per thousand, more than twice the rate of 3.6 per thousand for white students, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis of 2017-18 federal data. Nearly 230,000 students of all ethnicities were referred to law enforcement.

Students with disabilities were also found to be referred to police at the same rate — 8.4 students referred per thousand compared with 4.5 per thousand overall — almost twice the average rate.

In Missouri, Black students are referred to the police at  the rate of 6.3 per thousand, compared with 5.1 per thousand white students. Students with disabilities are referred at a rate of 9.1 per thousand, nearly double the rate for all students.

What is the school-to-prison pipeline? 

The school-to-prison pipeline is a structural process in which local, state and federal education and public safety policies pull students out of school and put them into the juvenile/criminal justice system.

“Black students experience a disproportionate amount of discipline at school and are also not given the discretion of lenience that other students tend to get,” said Melissa Patterson Hazley, a senior research associate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Institute for Human Development.

“This leads to a higher number of students becoming justice-involved, which is a ramp that’s difficult to get out,” Hazley said. “Students with developmental disabilities are impacted even more.”

Unconscious bias or racist preconceptions about the behavior of students of color are among  the biggest contributing factors to this pipeline. And if the student has a developmental disability, their method of processing or expressing their emotions can also be misconstrued.

“Students don’t act out for no reason,” said Hazley. “There’s a reason for that behavior. Experiencing an undiagnosed disability could be one of them. Or there could be some other social factors that are impacting the way a student might be misbehaving. Or there could just be some cultural differences in the way the student communicates and the way the adults communicate. And then adults are considering that misbehavior when that’s just a different communication style.”

Encounters with police and arrests are not the only forms of discrimation that disabled students of color may confront.

A disciplinary removal — defined as any instance in which a child is removed from schooling for disciplinary purposes — disrupts the student’s learning experience.

Nationally, there were 29 disciplinary removals per 100 students with disabilities in the 2018-19 school year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. The students were enrolled under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which supports states in their efforts to aid children and youth with disabilities.

For Black students with disabilities, there were 64 disciplinary removals per 100 students with disabilities, according to the data.

And despite the fact that out-of-school suspension rates have declined in Missouri, they are still more than five times higher for schools with predominantly racial minorities than in schools with a majority of white students. These rates are also four times higher for poorer communities than wealthier ones, and more than three times higher in urban schools than in rural ones, according to a 2020 study by the Policy Research in Missouri Education Center of St. Louis University.

If students have to interact with law enforcement, it becomes part of a problematic pattern, Fredrick with the MODDC said.

“Long-term effects include time out of class, falling behind on homework, damaged self-worth, and long term there is a far-reaching effect on our society, and it perpetuates the cycles of poverty, the slow education attainment and systemic structural inequalities,” Fredrick said.

“This combination of missed class times and lowered self-esteem creates a damaging cycle that results in classroom disengagement and high dropout rates.”

What is restorative justice?

The MODDC has an extensive history of supporting inclusive education through collaboration with schools, families and communities.

The grant recipient will develop a series of restorative justice trainings that they will implement throughout their institution. Restorative justice responds to wrong behaviors through reconciliation with victims and the community at large. Two Kansas City, Kansas, schools have been using restorative practices with their students.

Fredrick said the $275,000 grant would teach educators and school resource officers about building healthy relationships and community through conflict mediation, developing relational skills and participating in social engagement.

“Inclusivity, that piece is huge, very important. Exploring behaviors that have occurred, identifying those behaviors and impacts and being able to address those behaviors,” she said.

The UMKC Institute for Human Development will be applying for the SToPP grant.

The center already has a strong policy arm and a few direct service programs. But despite their long-standing programs and projects, the institute wants more participation from students of color. If it wins the grant, it hopes to find ways to make the participation more diverse.

The institute also wants to investigate how student interactions can be made less punitive and more therapeutic, according to Hazley.

“I think there’s a perception that we need a big police response in schools. But what we do less often is have those staff members in the building that can get ahead of the real serious discipline problem,” she said.

Instead of depending on school resource officers to handle student conduct issues, “there are opportunities for other types of staff people that can be really effective and impactful in an educational environment,” she said.

Any school, district, university or organization looking to make their institutions more equitable for students of color with disabilities can apply.

Applications are due by Friday, July 29, at 3 p.m. For more information about the grant, visit the MODDC website.