GARDNER, Kansas — When the city of Gardner in eastern Kansas ordered Aspen Place apartments closed for unsafe living conditions last May, Candice Montgomery came home to a frantic neighborhood.
She and other residents of the Gardner housing complex only had 48 hours to leave their homes.
“It was total chaos,” Montgomery said. “My neighbors are everywhere, people are crying. My elderly neighbors didn’t know what they were going to do.”
Gardner officials had warned the owners of the property dozens of times that the apartments were not safe, largely because of water and sewage issues.
The final straw came when a firetruck sank into a street in the complex while responding to an emergency. The city condemned the property the next day, and hundreds of tenants were homeless because their landlord failed to act.
Montgomery, who lived there with her two children, said they had nowhere to go. She spent thousands of dollars on hotel rooms while her children stayed with friends.
“The whole summer was hell for me,” Montgomery said. “I was homeless the entire summer.”
In the immediate fallout, community leaders rushed to help the residents. That included Republican Sen. Doug Shane, who represents Gardner in the Kansas Legislature.
He said he felt compelled to help residents try to find new homes. Now, he wants a change to state law that could hold landlords more accountable for conditions and potentially stop future apartment closures.
Shane proposes a plan to add the stiffer penalties from Kansas Consumer Protection Act to the state landlord and tenant law. That means a tenant or the state attorney general could sue a landlord for up to $10,000 for each violation, like failing to provide running water.
Shane said that may put more pressure on landlords to better maintain their properties.
“Hopefully it would be a risk deterrent,” Shane said. “We change the math on the decision to not fix things that really need to be fixed.”
That’s just one of a few new law changes that Kansas legislators are considering to help renters amid an ongoing affordable housing shortage.
Housing officials argue that gaps in Kansas statute make it difficult to enforce housing codes that are meant to protect tenants. Advocates for renters also contend that the state’s legal system is tilted to favor landlords in disputes like evictions.
About six months after she was kicked out of Aspen Place, Montgomery still has no home of her own. She currently lives in Topeka at her brother's place, even though she travels to work in construction laborer in Kansas City, Missouri. Her two children still live in Gardner with friends, just so they can continue to go to school.
“It’s a lot on my shoulders,” She said. “A lot of gas money wasted that shouldn't even have to be wasted.”
Small change, big impact
Shane’s proposal would not need to make significant changes to Kansas statute. He said it would only add a line to the Kansas Residential Landlord and Tenant Act to make it clear that the state’s consumer protection rules are also applicable.
That’s necessary because a 1979 Kansas Supreme Court ruling — Chelsea Plaza Homes, Inc. v. Moore — found that the Kansas Consumer Protection Act could not be used in a rental housing dispute.
The impact of that decision is that tenants can only receive compensation that is equal to the amount they lost, such as the sum of rent money they paid. They can’t seek compensation for costs of finding new housing on short notice.
Shane said the consumer protection act would provide for larger compensation — up to $10,000 for each violation.
“Paying back one month's rent is much different than having to pay one month's rent plus $10,000,” Shane said. “So you’re adding a multiplier.”
Shane said he hopes that the increased penalties will add a larger incentive for landlords to maintain properties so units comply with health and safety codes. He said that would balance the scales between landlords and tenants.
Former Aspen Place tenants have turned to a federal class action lawsuit that cites both the Kansas Residential Landlord and Tenant Act and the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. They are seeking compensation from KDR Realty, the listed owners of the property.
The lawsuit alleges the apartment complex suffered plumbing and waterline maintenance issues for a long period, and those issues were not disclosed to residents before they signed lease agreements.
The lawsuit argues the owners of the property benefited from collecting rent when they knew or should have known about the dismal state of the water system. And that the owners violated state law by repeatedly failing to comply with housing codes for health and safety.
It also alleges KDR Realty engaged in deceitful practices by marking maintenance requests as completed despite taking no action.
Attorneys for the owners did not respond to requests for comment. But in a recent court filing, they asked for the case to be dismissed.
Part of their argument is that KDR Realty did not deliberately provide unsafe housing. They also cited the Kansas Supreme Court Ruling that blocks the consumer protection law from applying to these kinds of cases.
Montgomery said she has joined the class action lawsuit. She is hoping she can get some sort of financial settlement so she and her children can move on with their lives — under the same roof.
“I would like to keep them here in Gardner because they really love the schools,” she said.
This could happen again
Situations like Aspen Place are not unusual. Just a few months after Aspen Place closed, dozens of residents were kicked out of a housing complex in Topeka for similar reasons.
Megan Foreman, housing coordinator for the Johnson County government, believes adding more consumer protection would help create fairer conditions for renters.
She said Johnson County has identified other gaps in state law that limit what cities and counties can do to enforce housing codes. For instance, counties can only enforce some nuisance and environment codes when it comes to housing, like when there are issues with the county sewer system.
“There's just really not enough accountability in that system,” Foreman said, “to protect tenants and make sure that housing is safe and quality.”
Cities have more authority to enact housing codes through fines, but they lack opportunities to inspect rental properties and address violations.
State law currently allows cities to inspect properties after getting consent from tenants. However, if a tenant moves or is kicked out of the property, the city loses the chance to enforce the codes.
Meanwhile, a University of Kansas study showed some Kansas renters will avoid maintenance requests or reporting poor living conditions to authorities because they fear retaliation, like eviction.
The Johnson County Post reported that Gardner city officials had few options for dealing with Aspen Place — they could either continue issuing citations or condemn the property. Gardner City Administrator Jim Pruetting said the city had no other choice.
“The city understands the hardship this causes and does not make this decision lightly,” he said in a news release. “However, continuing to allow residents to live in these conditions would be unsafe and irresponsible.”
Other proposals
When a housing complex is condemned, residents have few options.
Nick Blessing, an attorney for Kansas Legal Services, helped some of the Aspen Place residents get their deposits back. But that’s a drop in the bucket compared to how badly they’ve been hurt.
While he points his clients to join the class action lawsuit, Blessing said the state needs better renter protections because lawsuits take a long time. For instance, it could take years before the class action lawsuit is settled. But a landlord can evict someone from their home within a matter of weeks.
“I think it's just another one of these things,” Blessing said, “that contributes to this imbalance of power in favor of the landlord.”
Legislators from both parties are suggesting additional proposals that could provide more protection for renters.
Republican Reps. Cyndi Howerton and Leah Howell, both of the Wichita area, proposed a bill that would seal eviction notices and allow for eviction records to be expunged.
Howerton said at a recent housing policy forum in Overland Park that eviction notices — even those that are filed in error or are resolved before a tenant is removed from a property — remain on the renter’s record forever.
“We need to return to a presumption of innocence until proven guilty,” Howerton said, “because in the eviction process, there's really no due process.”
Kansas lawmakers might consider these changes in the upcoming legislative session. While it generally takes years to pass bills into law, Shane said he’s optimistic that the Republican-controlled Legislature will work quickly.
“Republicans are recognizing the importance of housing stability,” he said.
Dylan Lysen reports on social services and criminal justice for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at dlysen (at) kcur (dot) org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
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