The KC Tenants are shifting their work to confront the emergency needs of locals across the metro.
While this group express frustration with the dearth of City Hall enforcement funds to protect tenants in Kansas City; COVID-19 hardship inspires activists to consider even more radical ideas in hopes of transforming how the public views housing.
As Amazon workers strike today, working-class advocacy in Kansas City and across the nation is clearly on the rise.
Checkit:
New Republic: Rent Strike Nation
"Interest in tenant activism has surged in the face of the coronavirus. Organizers are trying to seize the moment and build a movement"
Here's the local angle:
"Tara Raghuveer, the director for KC Tenants in Kansas City, told The New Republic that a rent strike only addresses one concern in a deluge of housing woes that have flooded her organization’s inbox in recent weeks. “In Kansas City, our work has shifted dramatically since the state of emergency was declared. We were in the middle of a budget accountability campaign, and basically all of that got discontinued as we have shifted to support the immediate needs of our tenants.”
An important clarification as to how KC Tenants approach the coronavirus crisis and possibly a preview of an upcoming emergency action campaign . . .
"The need for those kinds of concretes, and experienced organizers familiar with the landscape, is urgent right now: Raghuveer said that the terms used to discuss rent strikes have grown murky as language surrounding the strike passes through distorting cycles of social media. “On the more conservative side of the spectrum are calls for rent assistance. These have largely come from the housing lobby, urging government assistance to put cash in renters’ hands so that it can then go straight on into landlords’ pockets,” Raghuveer said. “Then you have a ‘rent freeze’—like what they recently passed in Berlin—preventing rent increases in order to block price-gouging and stabilize precarious renters from hikes. You also have the most essential term, which is ‘rent moratorium,’ which suspends rent, sometimes with no expectation of paying it back, and sometimes calling for it to be paid back with a 0 percent interest rate.”
You decide . . .
More stimulus yes but a rent strike or even a moratorium is really just an attack on people worked hard to buy property and improve to provide a service for tenants. Do they know that they'll be hurting more families by telling people to stop paying their rent? That's that's question I'd like to pose to them.
ReplyDeleteThey were used as a prop to get Quinton Lucas elected and then thrown away. I hope they are helping people but their ordinance wasn't worth the paper it's printed on and proved they were outwitted.
DeleteYet they still made more impact than your dumb-ass! Weird.
DeleteWhat impact have they made? All they are interested in now is getting a cut of the City budget to get their buddies (3or 4 folks) some City jobs paying high five figures for the Tenants Rights project. It’s always been about OPM: Other People’s Money.
DeleteThese people do not understand that landlords still have to pay property taxes, insurance and a mortgage. When landlords don't have pay these items they can reduce the rent.
ReplyDeleteSee what happens when you give these fools one thing?
ReplyDeleteThey come back demanding even more.
To hell with them, make'em live in tents and eat fish heads.
^^Ugh huh. Why are all alone today?
ReplyDeleteOh Chimpy. Words fail you. Actually, you fail words.
DeleteKeep at it, clown.
ES&D Tara. You are setting the free rent crowd up for economic failure. The vast majority of people honor the contracts they enter into. Landlords now are getting so good at self-filing, the legal expenses they incur are minimal.
ReplyDeleteThe current landlord told me the rent houses would be off-loaded, with the exception of the rent houses occupied by people that pay rent. Odd concept, rent a house and pay the rent. Nothing is free.
ReplyDeleteSo sad Mayor Selfie used Tara and her minions as a prop to get elected and then dropped her and her minions without a second of hesitation. Neither Mayor Selfie nor Tara have the best interest of the tenants or the citizens of KCMO.
I agree with 10:00, if these people think they should live rent free then erect tents down on the river banks and they can live down there for nothing. More BS from the we don't want to work in the first place crowd. Kansas City is quickly filling up with clones of Byron. They want it all and expect you to pay for it while they sit home and watch daytime TV and attend rally's demanding more free shit.
ReplyDeleteWe need to stop letting mortgages being bundled and sold in the stock market, that way mortgages can be suspended and so could rent. Italy was able to suspend mortgage and rent because they don't have their mortgages bundled up in the markets.
ReplyDeleteBlow that money you're not spending on restaurants and bars making Amazon even bigger with your boredom shopping.
ReplyDeleteTara is working from home in Mission Hills
ReplyDelete10:00 am is exactly right.
ReplyDeleteOnce "activists" somehow get their current "DEMAND met, they just mosve on down the endlessly long list of whatever they want.
Because if an "activist" ever gets everything, their celebrity from just marching around with signs, selfies, and appearing on local TV disappears.
And the hard work of actually ACCOMPLISHING SOMETHING might start.
When you're all big-time talk and no serious accomplishment, the last thing you want is to actually reach a goal.
Sad and a total; waste of time.
Only homeless people live for free. The rest of us pay rent. Even a homeowner pays rent in the form of property taxes, insurance, utilities, a mortgage, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt's just the way it is.
My employer is a private company. The owner is a bit paranoid as he pisses people off and they quit. He is also a cheap ass. So we have NO provisions for working at home, so now I dont have to work at all! I claimed unemployement. He screwed himself by not trusting people and allowing us remote access. We have just 1 email address and he is the only person that checks it. He will lose alot of money on this one!
ReplyDeleteThey have very expensive, professional banners, expensive bullhorns........hmmmmmm......
ReplyDeletelooks like they are being paid to stir up trouble.
Try working at a job like the rest of us. Teach your kids to wait until their 20's to have kids,
Nobody is giving 100% loan forgiveness, you’re just delaying payments, they still have to be paid no matter what.
ReplyDeleteHow stupid are these people???
That stimulus check is coming off your taxes next year, this is just an advance payment.
11:14, right, they are not grass roots, they are astroturf. The dark money that buys those expensive signs and bullhorns, and pays the organizers, comes ultimately from Soros.
ReplyDeleteeverybody needs to take the dave ramsey course, or an equivalent, because the temptations to live beyond one's means are so many, especially with credit cards.
ReplyDeletethere is a kernel of truth, oblique though it may be, in saying that lots of regular folks are treated unfairly by the system.
Pay your damn rent. There is NO free lunch. There is reduced lunch. It’s called Section 8.
ReplyDelete