Tenants speak out as they struggle to make ends meet

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    KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV/KSMO) — A number of people from KC Tenants are making their concerns known loud and clear downtown.

For many Kansas City residents out of work, rent will be due this weekend.

On Thursday, KCTV5’s Greg Payne took a look at the level of concern they’re feeling as they struggle to make ends meet.

“Evictions are an act of violence! Evictions are an act of violence! Evictions are violent and we are not standing for it anymore!”

That was the message expressed by members of the affordable housing advocacy group KC Tenants outside the Jackson County Courthouse.

“There are landlords still coming down and filing evictions on their tenants in the midst of this pandemic,” said Ashley Johnson with KC Tenants and the Reale Justice Network.”

Many like Johnson are wondering how they’ll get by next month and in the months to come.

Both bans on eviction locally and now federally have come to an end, the CARES Act unemployment benefits end this weekend, and rent is due this weekend.

KC Tenants fears many won’t have the money to pay.

“It’s still okay to tell these people they have to go out of their homes when they don’t have a job of no fault of their own, their employer closed, the list goes on and on,” said Johnson.

It’s a concern that the vast majority of the protestors kept outdoors.

However, some did go inside the Jackson County Courthouse to make their voices heard during scheduled court hearings.

According to a Jackson County Court statement, they said: “Several members of the group attempted to disrupt scheduled hearings by chanting over the judge, the plaintiffs and the defendants who were talking during their hearing.”

Those were actions that eventually led to some arrests.

While many fear the impacts of not having an eviction moratorium, landlord and president of the KC Regional Housing Alliance, Stacey Johnson-Cosby, fears what would happen to tenants if there was an extension.

“They are going to owe thousands of dollars when it’s over after all of these months of unpaid rent and they are not going to be able to pay for it,” said Johnson-Cosby.

That leads to her next concern: Tenants’ credit being damaged ultimately, making it harder to get quality housing and jobs in the future.

“We need to focus on helping them stay in their original units at this point and we can do that by helping them get the rent paid,” Johnson-Cosby said.

She said those within the landlord industry will be holding a virtual job fair Aug. 6 in hopes that it will help connect the community and tenants with jobs starting at $15 an hour.

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