Tenants Target FHFA and Landlords With Rent Strikes
Kansas City area tenant unions say they’re tired of bad living conditions and uncooperative landlords.
A couple of tenant unions in the greater Kansas City area have started a rent strike over housing costs for alleged poor living conditions at two properties owned by different landlords. It’s the largest rent strike in the region since 1980, according to the Kansas City Star. Union members of Independence Towers and Quality Hill Towers told the newspaper that they are withholding a total of $60,000 for October.
These rent strikes are supposedly the first to directly and intentionally target the Federal Housing Finance Authority, which oversees Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Tenants pay the loan guarantors. However, their rent payments allow the owners to pay the property mortgages, and the tenants are looking to push the agency into action.
Rents are high having grown faster than the Consumer Price Index even with the heavy increase in inflation during the pandemic, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Inflation of all costs but shelter between August 2019 and August 2024 was 20.7%. The inflation of shelter alone was 26.3%.
Even with rent growth rates moderating, there is a cumulative increase since pre-pandemic times that has been one of the main drivers of inflation. An analysis by Zillow and StreetEasy found that rents have grown on average nationally 1.5 times faster than wages since 2019. In some areas like New York City, the difference has been seven-fold.
“There’s been a real issue of allowing for decades of neglect and disinvestment,” Victor Monterrosa, an adjunct professor and the managing director of the Housing Justice and Tenant Solidarity Clinic at the Rutgers School of Law in Newark, N.J., told MarketWatch.
Rent strikes like these aren’t legal and as MarketWatch noted, carry the risk of eviction and possible arrest. But this being an election year, it seems likely that an administration would quietly go along with disastrous PR.
The FHFA told the Kansas City Star in an email that “they are committed to doing everything within their power to work with Fannie Mae and make repairs to the properties.”
Sentinel, the owner of Quality Hill Towers, called the strike “misguided and short-sighted” as part of a “friendly fall reminder” to pay rent, the Star reported. Independence Towers was foreclosed and is under receivership by Trigild, which reportedly has not engaged with the striking tenants.