Is KC Tenants destroying the development future of downtown KCMO?

[phuqueue]

It makes sense why KC Tenants are hellbent on wanting to ruin developers and new developments while pushing for free housing.

A quick search on Casenet reveals several judgements against the top 4 at KC Tenants (Tiana Caldwell, Steven Tyler, Diane Charity, and Ronald Clark) over the past several years and into the mid-2000s. Judgements on things such as not paying rent and damage to apartments are common. A few of them were also caught for not paying their taxes to Jackson County. The rulings were determined in the 16th Circuit Court. Most of these cases have "no contest" in their notes. Really makes you think...

Not paying rent or taxes could also be consistent with, uh, not having any money, a situation that might conceivably animate somebody to become an activist for affordable housing. I mean, if you're really thinking about it. Anyway, it strikes me as very weird to go looking people up on Casenet to see if there have been any judgments against them. That idea has never occurred to me before and I'm not really sure what would compel somebody to do it. I get that the board is very upset with this decision, but there are still probably more productive uses of our time than this kind of cyberstalkery sleuthing.

[Anthony_Hugo98]

it strikes me as very weird to go looking people up on Casenet to see if there have been any judgments against them. That idea has never occurred to me before and I'm not really sure what would compel somebody to do it.

I mean, they are trying to argue that peoples complaints against their group are somehow invalidated because they’re *checks notes* white? How does someone’s race invalidate their opinion, or an argument that’s backed by financial evidence and data points?

[alejandro46]

It makes sense why KC Tenants are hellbent on wanting to ruin developers and new developments while pushing for free housing.

A quick search on Casenet reveals several judgements against the top 4 at KC Tenants (Tiana Caldwell, Steven Tyler, Diane Charity, and Ronald Clark) over the past several years and into the mid-2000s. Judgements on things such as not paying rent and damage to apartments are common. A few of them were also caught for not paying their taxes to Jackson County. The rulings were determined in the 16th Circuit Court. Most of these cases have "no contest" in their notes. Really makes you think...

Not paying rent or taxes could also be consistent with, uh, not having any money, a situation that might conceivably animate somebody to become an activist for affordable housing. I mean, if you're really thinking about it. Anyway, it strikes me as very weird to go looking people up on Casenet to see if there have been any judgments against them. That idea has never occurred to me before and I'm not really sure what would compel somebody to do it. I get that the board is very upset with this decision, but there are still probably more productive uses of our time than this kind of cyberstalkery sleuthing.

You join a public organization, put your name out there, anybody can look up your local record on CaseNet and your address on various sites. It's not fucking sluthing to Google things. Hence why I don't put my name, my employeers' name, etc. out there.

I support some of Tenant's goals. We need to hold absentee, racist, dishonest and unscruplous landlords accountable.

I have been reading their Twitter and generally found them dismissive, condescending, hostile and basically racist to "white urbanists on twitter" because they allegedly have been living in the area for 30 years and know how urban development better than anyone. So to answer the question, generally yes, I would say that KC Tenant's hostile and aggressive policies are not per se destroying downtown KC but they are not helping. Plenty of people are happy to move out to Lenexa since there's not enough quality housing in the core.

[Chris Stritzel]

I searched them up out of curiosity just like people can do for me. Although for me, they'll only find a speeding ticket issued in the City of Eureka this past summer. Not that exciting. But the KC Tenants people findings were interesting enough that I decided to post since, to me, it sheds light on their attitude and being condescending towards those who share different viewpoints.

I agree that bad landlords need to be held accountable because their actions can lead to once nice buildings looking like crap and residents treated like crap. I agree that affordable housing is a good thing, but I don't feel like we should force it on any property owner whether they seek incentives or not because it doesn't make sense in all instances. I don't feel like rent control is the way to go. KC, like many other Midwestern cities, does not have an affordability issue. You can certainly get by here and in St. Louis, Detroit and other places. Whereas in other cities across the nation, middle class folks who can afford a great apartment or home here drop to being poor. And the poor in our communities would then likely drop to being homeless.

There's room for dialogue, but I don't want to be talked down to by a group of folks who have their own pasts that make me question the main intentions of their organization. And to me, that main intention is revenge.

[phuqueue]

I think it's weird to make a political fight personal, particularly when the people on the other side of that fight are complete strangers to you. I think that you should question your impulse to look up what kinds of legal judgments have been entered against a group largely comprising people of color. And I definitely think you should think carefully about what it says about you that, having looked the judgments up anyway, you uncritically accepted them as evidence that these people can be dismissed because they're all just criminals out for "revenge" anyway and then published them on a message board with insinuations to that effect.

Whether the Mac decision is good or bad for KC is one thing, and what kind of personal information you can find about the individual people involved in it is something else entirely. This is a distraction and, frankly, a gross line of discussion to pursue, no matter the public status of the people in question, no matter how easy it is to look the information up, no matter how "mean" or whatever KC Tenants has been to anyone else on twitter.

I mean, they are trying to argue that peoples complaints against their group are somehow invalidated because they’re *checks notes* white? How does someone’s race invalidate their opinion, or an argument that’s backed by financial evidence and data points?

Though I have not clicked the link to see the tweet that has so ruffled your feathers, I suspect that they are using your whiteness as shorthand to refer to the fact that you have no real skin in the game. You are playing Sim City with their neighborhood. Maybe you have good intentions now, but other white people with bad intentions have been playing Sim City with their neighborhood for decades. Your economic arguments appear sound to you, but they are fundamentally the same economic arguments that people with power (that is, white people) routinely trot out to justify inflicting poverty on others, to justify taking whatever they want (such as newly-desirable urban neighborhoods) or throwing away whatever they don't (in generations past, undesirable urban neighborhoods, and all the non-white people living in them), so it should really not come as any big surprise to you that these arguments, whatever their academic validity, now fall on deaf ears. And I suspect that the frustration that you are feeling right now and that many others on the board are feeling right now has less to do with what they believe and more to do with the fact that, for once, you have been forced to listen to them. So instead of fretting about why they won't recognize the "validity" of your colorblind opinions and arguments, you ought to be working to build genuine trust between your community and theirs. But it's a lot easier to rant on a message board and look up people's legal histories.

KC, like many other Midwestern cities, does not have an affordability issue. You can certainly get by here and in St. Louis, Detroit and other places. Whereas in other cities across the nation, middle class folks who can afford a great apartment or home here drop to being poor. And the poor in our communities would then likely drop to being homeless.

"Affordability" is not a universal, objective condition, it is a function of how much money a person has. It is great that the Midwest is affordable to you. There are people for whom it is not. KC already has homeless people all on its own -- you do not need to transfer KC's housed poor to San Francisco to create a homeless person. KC also has people with precarious housing situations who are not yet homeless and would like very much not to become homeless.

[CrossroadsUrbanApts]

OK so now we are back to being asked to accept the framing that developing vacant buildings and empty parking lots along a transit line is playing Sim City with people's neighborhoods and inflicting poverty on others?

I support a lot of what KC Tenants asks for when it comes to tenants' rights and curbing slumlords. But they know they get more attention and clout when they attack new development, no matter how many economic studies show that new development (new supply) actually helps tenants by reducing the bargaining power of landlords. So yes, I think they are worthy of criticism when they take actions that undermine what they say they stand for.

[Anthony_Hugo98]

I suspect that they are using your whiteness as shorthand to refer to the fact that you have no real skin in the game…. Maybe you have good intentions now, but other white people with bad intentions… Your economic arguments appear sound to you.

Wow. Did we not just celebrate the birthday of THE prominent civil rights leader of the U.S. who had a quote about this? "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

How is it not at all disturbing to you the fact that this group is basically saying “well because white people in the past have had Ill intentions with their development, your opinion on this matter is nothing, and you’re not allowed to bring issue into the public realm.” Can I not take a vested interest in this city because I’m white? Does that mean I can’t revitalize abandoned, arson damaged, derelict prosperities to provide safe, clean, respectable housing to families in our community?

Finally, the beauty of an economic argument is the fact that it doesn’t matter how one person or another feels about it. It’s not a subjective feeling issue, it is an objective, factual point. New units suppress rental rates in an area, and prevent slumlords from monopolizing areas. It’s a factual, data driven stance, but people refuse to hear or try and understand it because “wHitE dEvElopEr mAn bAD”.

[herrfrank]

So is KC Tenants
1. A do-good organization looking to increase affordable housing opportunities
2. A disruptive anti-capitalist organization looking to deter all development
3. Something else

The city government can certainly handle more than one opinion at a time.

I suspect a lot of the political noise is coming from an economic fact -- rents are going up in the KC metro. Since the 1960s, US housing prices (including rents) have tended to go up in a "burst - glide" pattern. A big increase (50%-100% increase) in two or three years followed by a decade of steady pricing. Prices almost never go down for housing (2009 single-family homes in certain sunbelt metros being the obvious exception) -- economists will tell you that housing pricing is sticky. Landlords in particular would rather leave properties unrented than take a significant discount to previous rents. Sometimes they will offer "N months free" promotions for new tenants, where n represents the inverse of the economic conditions, but the underlying rent never decreases.

We are just coming out of the burst pattern now. Housing and rental prices increased by 50-70% or so from 2018 in the KC metro. They will now glide within this range for 10 years. Some people will make do by increasing their income/ reallocating budgets, etc. Others will move to cheaper locales. This has been happening on the coasts for decades.

[Chris Stritzel]

I think it's weird to make a political fight personal, particularly when the people on the other side of that fight are complete strangers to you. I think that you should question your impulse to look up what kinds of legal judgments have been entered against a group largely comprising people of color. And I definitely think you should think carefully about what it says about you that, having looked the judgments up anyway, you uncritically accepted them as evidence that these people can be dismissed because they're all just criminals out for "revenge" anyway and then published them on a message board with insinuations to that effect...

Though I have not clicked the link to see the tweet that has so ruffled your feathers, I suspect that they are using your whiteness as shorthand to refer to the fact that you have no real skin in the game. You are playing Sim City with their neighborhood. Maybe you have good intentions now, but other white people with bad intentions have been playing Sim City with their neighborhood for decades. Your economic arguments appear sound to you, but they are fundamentally the same economic arguments that people with power (that is, white people) routinely trot out to justify inflicting poverty on others, to justify taking whatever they want (such as newly-desirable urban neighborhoods) or throwing away whatever they don't (in generations past, undesirable urban neighborhoods, and all the non-white people living in them), so it should really not come as any big surprise to you that these arguments, whatever their academic validity, now fall on deaf ears. And I suspect that the frustration that you are feeling right now and that many others on the board are feeling right now has less to do with what they believe and more to do with the fact that, for once, you have been forced to listen to them. So instead of fretting about why they won't recognize the "validity" of your colorblind opinions and arguments, you ought to be working to build genuine trust between your community and theirs. But it's a lot easier to rant on a message board and look up people's legal histories.

KC, like many other Midwestern cities, does not have an affordability issue. You can certainly get by here and in St. Louis, Detroit and other places. Whereas in other cities across the nation, middle class folks who can afford a great apartment or home here drop to being poor. And the poor in our communities would then likely drop to being homeless.

"Affordability" is not a universal, objective condition, it is a function of how much money a person has. It is great that the Midwest is affordable to you. There are people for whom it is not. KC already has homeless people all on its own -- you do not need to transfer KC's housed poor to San Francisco to create a homeless person. KC also has people with precarious housing situations who are not yet homeless and would like very much not to become homeless.

Ok. Here's the deal. The moment you bring race into the discussion, I completely throw everything else you say out the window. Most people nowadays do not look at people and determine that they are of lesser importance because of their skin color. I know I certainly don't and a majority of the U.S. doesn't. Only a small minority of race supremacists do. And when you go on and on about white people this and white people that, it makes me question if you fall into the minority category that believes that everything white people do, and have done, is a bad thing. So your hold argument is invalid, in my view, as you brought race into the picture. Are you part of KC Tenants for being condescending? If not, I highly recommend you join. You'd fit right in on their social media team for "dismissing other's arguments that we don't like".

As you illude to it, this is political. In politics, things like this are brought up. Yes, it can be ugly but when it is relevant to what a group is discussing, then yes, I will post it. But don't you ever go and put words in my mouth by saying "as evidence that these people can be dismissed because they're all just criminals out for "revenge". I did not call the heads of KC Tenants "criminals", you did. What I said was clear that their past likely lead to them doing what they're doing today out of revenge. They're not criminals, rather they're a group of individuals who had a bad experience as a result of their previous actions. In my view, you're only considered a criminal when you commit an extremely heinous act (like hate crimes, domestic violence, assault, armed robbery, rape and murder). Not paying your taxes, rent, getting a speeding or getting a parking ticket does not make you a criminal.

By the way, I've never seen anyone knowlingly want to push poverty onto others. That's a fantasy.

It would be nice to create dialogue between us and KC Tenants but when an organization doesn't want to hear anything that challenges what they believe, then what's the point? There's no room to build trust when the other trots out the racist tropes you turn to in an argument.

Lastly, I know that there are homeless people in the midwestern cities I mentioned. I know it's not affordable for everyone but it's certainly better than in other places around the country. Here, we need to communicate with the homeless and address the reasons why they're homeless (do they have a mental disability, do they have a drug addiction, etc). We can take positive steps to getting the homeless off the streets and into transitional and/or permanent housing if we take the needed steps. Maybe this can be something KC Tenants can push for - house our homeless and help them transition back into normal lives that are safe, clean, and bring in money. On the last bolded point in your long statement, I think it's important that the olive branch that would be extended to the homeless needs to be extended to those people as well. If they're borderline ready to be homeless, then steps can be taken to keep them in their homes whether that means charitable donations, helping them fight their mental problems (if they have any), and maybe even help them get into a better job if possible. Demanding rent control and free housing isn't the way to go.

[phuqueue]

Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I think it suggests a, uhh, problematic underlying thought process when a white person encounters a group of people of color and thinks, "Hm, I wonder what sort of run-ins with the law they've had," and I think that with the tone-deaf follow-up protestations invoking MLK (oh, sorry, are we not supposed to say his name for some reason?) or claiming that nobody really cares about race anymore, you all are really just telling on yourselves.

I am not really interested in rehashing any arguments about the fundamental merits of new development or what effects new developments have on existing neighborhoods, prices, etc. We just did that a couple months ago. But it's laughably simplistic to think that there is any single "objective, factual" truth about a complex socioeconomic phenomenon like gentrification; to assert that it is so cut and dry only reveals how poorly you understand both the specific issue and also the broader susceptibility of squishy social sciences to ideological manipulation. The latter, in particular, is the real problem. When economic arguments are routinely used to undercut any efforts to relieve the present material conditions of the poor, when they are routinely used in support of efforts to worsen those conditions, you shouldn't be surprised when poor people don't trust economic arguments in general, whether they are "right" or not. You ought to try to divorce yourself from notions about which arguments are "objectively" correct and instead try to understand how the other side sees the world. But that would require you to stop taking everything personally, which, I realize, is a tall order.

[Anthony_Hugo98]

and I think that with the tone-deaf follow-up protestations invoking MLK (oh, sorry, are we not supposed to say his name for some reason?) or claiming that nobody really cares about race anymore, you all are really just telling on yourselves.

I think it’s more telling when a group claiming to be an anti-racist organization for housing security of poor individuals makes broad and sweeping generalizations about white people, merely for presenting an opinion challenging theirs. Also says something for those defending the groups actions.

[Chris Stritzel]

Phuqueue, say it aint so! There you go again prefacing your whole comment on the color mine and other's skin because you disagree with what we said. Your post is a pretty long and drawn-out way of saying, "eh, I don't agree with you so let me bring up his race because I have nothing else to base my argument on". This whole debate was never about race until YOU invoked it. I simply pointed out how the heads of KC Tenants seemingly started this "union" as a way to get revenge on private property owners, landlords, and developers over their past actions while trying to sweeten the deal by pushing for reasonable things like good landlords and so on. It had and has nothing to do with race and never will.

I'm dismissing you on this. As long as you continue to invoke race as an explanation for myself and others for "not understanding" this issue, then I don't have to listen to you. Move along while some of us actually make the community a better place.

[TheLastGentleman]

Wow. Did we not just celebrate the birthday of THE prominent civil rights leader of the U.S. who had a quote about this? "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Not sure how big a fan MLK would be of this forum's approach to social and economic problems though..........

[Anthony_Hugo98]

Wow. Did we not just celebrate the birthday of THE prominent civil rights leader of the U.S. who had a quote about this? "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

Not sure how big a fan MLK would be of this forum's approach to social and economic problems though..........

Agreed, he would absolutely be in disagreement with our stances in regards to development trends. Doesn’t mean his words ring any less true on not being prejudice

[TheLastGentleman]

Agreed, he would absolutely be in disagreement with our stances in regards to development trends. Doesn’t mean his words ring any less true on not being prejudice

[CrossroadsUrbanApts]

Phuqueue, you say that I am peddling something that is " laughably simplistic", that "there is [not] any single "objective, factual" truth about a complex socioeconomic phenomenon like gentrification." And that it shows that how "poorly I understand both the specific issue and also the broader susceptibility of squishy social sciences to ideological manipulation." That's some pretty, pretty good projection on your part (and KC Tenant's).

Honestly, the race stuff you and KC Tenants are saying doesn't really bother me. The history is pretty shitty and as a white guy I'm not going to claim any kind of high ground because that would be stupid. But the bullshitting from you and them about "complex socioeconomic phenomenon" and the economic illiteracy should absolutely be fair game for criticism. It's really just garden-variety NIMBYism that you can find said by people on Twitter and Facebook in nearly every city in the country.

Sure, I support some kinds of social housing (specifically, publicly-owned). But the attitude of KC Tenants that we have to shut down all private development until magically social housing starts to appear is infuriating. I'm out here actually helping the issue by building new apartments on former parking lots and vacant ground. That actually helps tenants, not fighting developers. Save your ire for landlords who abuse their tenants, and don't fight new development.

[kenrbnj]

The problem with all this baloney is simple:

The more constraint/onerous demand on development; the less development occurs.

Less development means less inventory/greater scarcity. In all frames of reference, scarcity yields higher prices.

The socialist-types under the auspices of "social equality" are actually hurting their own cause.

My personal opinion is some of those know this, though live in denial.

[earthling]

On a tangent, another form of anti-development crowd are those who moved to KC from a large city to get away from it all. Some friends in Hyde Park moved from LA to KC for the slower pace and want KC to stay that way. They want KC to keep up with modern amenities and hot retail (like Trader Joes) but don't want much growth. Can't really have it both ways w/out gentrification.

[chaglang]

On a tangent, another form of anti-development crowd are those who moved to KC from a large city to get away from it all. Some friends in Hyde Park moved from LA to KC for the slower pace and want KC to stay that way. They want KC to keep up with modern amenities and hot retail (like Trader Joes) but don't want much growth. Can't really have it both ways w/out gentrification.

There is no new gentrification in Hyde Park because statistically it happened a about 2 decades ago. Places like Longfellow, all the Hyde Parks, OHP, and the Westside all fall into this category. Squier Park is more recently gentrified but definitely in that category. I would wager that people moving from LA to KC wouldn't even consider moving into an area that wasn't already gentrified (whether they are aware of that fact or not).

So it doesn't specifically apply to HP, but this is an interesting phenomenon - people participating in the gentrification of an area but not recognizing that they are the ones doing it, and fighting further development. It's a little like people complaining about traffic while they're in traffic. Seeing a lot of that from places like Center City and Manheim Park. Probably a matter of time before Ivanhoe is on that list.

The bigger point is that KC Tenants is fighting gentrification in an area that by any measure is already gentrified.

[earthling]

^Didn't mean to imply gentrification specifically to HP but to the general urban core. The LA friends in HP don't particularly want KC in general to boom as that is what they were escaping. Pointing out there is another type of crowd that leans anti-development, though they aren't activists. Gotta have some to keep the city moving forward.