Kansas City Rent Strikes Return Ahead Of Midterm Elections

Tonight we share a glimpse at low-income organizing and street level tactics ahead of upcoming elections and amid arguments about affordability. 

Caveat & TKC word of caution . . . 

Rent strikes don't always work when there's high demand for living space. In 2024 KC Tenants left many supporters out in the cold when they were forced to pause their collective bargaining catastrophe at Quality Hill following tough bargains sessions, several evictions and no real progress.  

Here's the word and progressive reporting that informs arguments targeting landlords . . .  

"The rent strike is part of a strategy that housing activists have started to replicate in midsize cities across the country. Tenant organizing is more common in liberal coastal metropolises like Los Angeles and New York - which recently elected Zohran Mamdani, a former tenant organizer, as its mayor.

"But rent strikes have been almost unheard of in places like Kansas City, Missouri, where according to Zillow the median rent increased 4.4 percent in the last year, twice the rate of the national average. Now, tenants in at least three buildings around the city have formed unions."

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

How a landlord responded when tenants formed a union, stopped paying rent

RAYTOWN, Mo. - In the two years she has lived at Bowen Tower, Cynthia Barlow's apartment has flooded, been plagued by mold and been infested with cockroaches. The building's heat stopped working. When the elevators broke over the summer, emergency workers carried a sick neighbor down 10 flights of stairs.

Related: 

NPR: Why some tenants in Raytown, Missouri, are on a rent strike  

Developing . . .