Frustrated residents of Raytown high-rise begin organizing tenants union

RAYTOWN, Mo. (KCTV) - Residents at an aging Raytown high-rise apartment complex say they’re fed up with things breaking down.

Friday, they met with KC Tenants to begin organizing to put the pressure on.

KCTV5 first visited Bowen Tower Apartments in January when they had no heat. Maintenance crews were ing out space heaters. Now it’s something else, and they’ve had enough.

About 10 tenants out of the 90 occupied units gathered under a tree across the street from Bowen Tower Apartments with about 10 KC Tenants organizers to talk about the last four days and all the problems that came before.

“I have no cooking, no gas for my gas stove, no hot water to bathe and then my air is not working,” said Sandra Midgette, who has been living there for three years.

STARTING TO ORGANIZE

KC Tenants organizer Justin Stein had been working with one resident who’d been organizing on her own since January.

“It is the landlord’s responsibility to give you a safe and healthy place to live,” he told the group. “It is the landlord’s fault that you were in the situation that you are in.”

Stein and fellow organizers ed out clipboards with scripts and offered advice as they prepared to go door to door to get more tenants to their effort.

“It’s not a sale. You’re not trying to convince anybody of anything,” he advised. “You’re asking a lot of questions and you’re connecting with them.”

They were planning to door knock until 6 p.m. They were cut short when police arrived with a tresing complaint and explained they can’t walk the halls unless they’re on a lease.

RESPONDING TO COMPLAINTS

Property manager Cheyenne Reid told KCTV5 she’s been doing the best she can since she started in December, but she can’t fix all of them at once.

“This building is old,” Reid said, “and it was neglected for a long time, but we’re doing everything that we can to fix what’s going on.”

She said the gas was out because there was a large gas leak. She said valves on approximately 30 tenants’ stoves were leaking, so she had the gas shut it off on Monday as a safety precaution while they work to get the leaks repaired.

“We’ve been working every single day to fix it,” she said. “Until every single one is fixed and the gas pressure is holding, we can’t turn it back on.”

She’d said it’s a process they thought would take two days, but it’s proving to be more difficult than she expected.

“We had the gas company come out and they tested every single unit, and then our plumbers have been in everybody’s unit eight times this week,” Reid said

She said the accusation about no air conditioning was “a lie.” She had a window unit in the office. KCTV5 could hear air blowing in the lobby, but the thermostat read 83 degrees.

A large hole down the wall by the emergency exit on the first floor, which KCTV5 saw on a visit in January, was still there. In January, water was leaking out of the exposed pipe. Reid had explained the hole was made to repair the leak. The pipe was no longer leaking, but the hole remained.

Reid described frustration with keeping up with tenants who struggle with housekeeping resources. She described one tenant with 300 bags of trash in an apartment. She said she eventually moved him to another unit and cleaned out the first one, because he had no one in his corner.

“I mean, I have some residents that are living in awful conditions, but not because of us,” Reid said. “I mean, they can’t take care of themselves.”

She said some tenants have vouchers from non-profit health organizations to cover part of their rent and the social services organizations that provide the vouchers also provide caseworkers to assist with life skills.

Several tenants described receiving notices this week that they had three days to pay their rent before eviction proceedings would begin.

Stein called it an intimidation tactic. Reid said it was an effort to give the tenants advance warning. She said she’s currently has $58,000 in arrears rent on the books.

“You have people who want to complain nothing’s being done, but you don’t pay any of your rent for no reason,” Reid said.

Stein countered that by asking, “Would you pay rent if you had no heat, no working stove, no air conditioning?”

MORE THAN PROTESTS

KC Tenants has been involved in some high-profile protests and court actions. They secured made waves at Quality Hill Towers in Kansas City.

But Stein said there are other instances not heard about in the news, because in some cases they have been able to get results before it comes to that.

“Tenants coming together, identifying the issues that they want to fix or address and getting a line of communication as a tenant union with their landlord can actually get a lot done,” Stein said.

Bowen Towers tenant Joseph Mount left the first gathering, hopeful that the added would make a difference.

“How they talk and explained things today, they’re not going to sit on their backside and I’m not going to either,” Mount said.

The Bowen Towers residents and KC Tenants organizers plan to meet next week at a library to discuss next steps.

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