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  • Comment Detail

  • Date: 08/01/23
    First Name: Mary Allison
    Last Name: Joseph
    Email: maryallison@trinitykc.org
    Organization Type: other
    Organization: KC Tenants

  • Comment

    My name is Mary Allison, and I am a tenant living in Westwood, Kansas. I am a member of the Homes Guarantee Campaign.

    Since moving to the Kansas City area, my family and I have personally experienced numerous rent hikes over the years. Most recently, my partner and I experienced a rent hike of $100/mo, which isn't exactly affordable for us. We already pay well over 30% of our income in rent, and the additional $100/mo means we're taking on more debt in order to keep a stable roof over our heads.

    Beyond my personal experience, I work at a church in Midtown Kansas City, MO, perhaps the most rapidly gentrifying neighborhood in Kansas City. Between 2010-2019, the Black population on Armour from Main to Campbell (census tract 178) fell from 46.06% to 24.93%. That’s a reduction of more than 20% in less than 10 years. In 2007, Mac Properties moved into Midtown and has slowly taken over our street, one building at a time. Federally-backed mortgages to the tune of $71.5 million have allowed them to take over neighborhood, raise rents, and displace Black and poor and working-class folks in the process.

    The church I work for is a small church, with only about sixty people in worship on Sunday mornings, yet eight of our members and participants have struggled with housing issues in the past two years. Five of them were displaced via lease non-renewal notices so their landlords could raise the rent, and four of those people received their lease non-renewal notices from the same landlord: Mac Properties.

    Rent prices are out of control. The Federal Housing Finance Agency should protect tenants by limiting annual rent hikes to 1.5 times the Consumer Price Index or 3%, whichever is lower, in properties with federally backed mortgages. These limits should be applied universally as a requirement to all federally backed mortgage programs.

    In addition to limits on rent hikes, the FHFA should prohibit evictions without good cause, ban source of income discrimination, enforce and expand existing protections against discrimination, require safe and accessible housing conditions, create a landlord registry, require fair and standardized leases, ensure tenants have the right to organize, and create an Office of Tenant Protections to enforce these rights in all properties with federally backed mortgages.

    Sincerely,
    Mary Allison