Where are Kansas City’s ‘eviction hot spots’? These buildings are the top eviction filers

When new property managers took over the Harvard Court Apartments in Independence, many residents were forced to find a new home

“They put everyone out,” one former resident said of Iron Door Management. The resident asked not to be named in fear of retaliation during an ongoing negotiation.

“They told us all they would abide by the leases, but then they told us ‘No, we’re just going to give you all 90 days to get off our property.’”

The Harvard Court Apartments are among Kansas City’s top “eviction hot spots” according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which gathers and analyzes eviction data across the country.

While thousands of evictions are filed against Jackson County tenants each year, with an average of more than 150 filings per week, a large number of those filings come from a small number of buildings scattered throughout the county.

These are often large apartment complexes catering predominantly to lower income renters, often owned by businesses out of state.

Harvard Court Apartments — which has a slew of negative reviews and has made headlines multiple times this summer for issues with pests and lack of maintenance — is just one example.

Data shows that 107 evictions have been filed at 4035 Harvard Lane in Harvard Courts since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, making it the building with the 6th most evictions filed in Jackson County in that time.

Iron Door, the new management company, took over the Harvard Court buildings in May, and since then the company confirmed that they have filed 108 evictions between the 16 buildings at Harvard Court.

In the last eight weeks, the company has filed 32 evictions in building 4018 Harvard Lane alone, making it the Jackson County building with the most eviction filings between July and September.

Iron Door Management COO Jennifer Harrower said that when they purchased the property in May, the buildings were in serious disrepair, and a number of tenants had not paid rent to the previous owner.

What are eviction hot spots?

In Jackson County, 10 apartment buildings are responsible for filing 14% of the evictions filed in the past three months, according to data from Eviction Lab. Nearly 47% of evictions filed over the last three months— totaling more than 600 cases — came from just 100 buildings.

Eviction Lab has been tracking eviction filings in Kansas City since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and it has identified a list of these eviction hot spots with the highest concentration of filings.

Topping the list is an apartment building at 8700 Holmes Road, where the landlord, Ridge at Chestnut LLC, has filed 189 evictions since March 2020 — the most for any one building since the pandemic started.

A company spokesperson, Riley Combs, said that some of the filings are repeat cases for the same tenants. And even though the company has filed the highest number of evictions in the county, Combs said it has been working with tenants by connecting them to emergency rental assistance.

Not every eviction filing ends with the tenant having to leave their home. In some instances, the case is resolved before the court can make a judgment, especially since Kansas City launched its Right to Counsel program.

In addition to the buildings where the evictions were filed, Eviction Lab also tracked the plaintiffs, or building owners, for each of the hot spots.

Many of these building owners are listed as limited liability corporations, or LLCs, which are legal business structures that allow owners to keep their properties separate from their name and from other properties they own. This limits what the property owner can be held liable for, and can obscure their identity.

The Star looked at Missouri’s business registry and Jackson County property tax and real estate records to identify what states the top-evicting LLCs are based in, and Google maps to identify the name of the apartment complex the address is part of.

Top 10 eviction hot spots since March 2020

These buildings had the highest number of eviction filings in Jackson County since the start of the pandemic.

*VP Maple Hills LLC sold this apartment complex in June. It is now called Eastwood Crossings. The new owner, Eastwood TIC Owner I LLC, is based in Delaware, and the property is backed by a New York investment firm.

Six of the apartment complexes that were top evictors since 2020 are also in the top 10 eviction hot spots for the past three months.

Top 10 eviction hot spots from July to September

These buildings had the highest number of eviction filings in Jackson County over the last three months.

*These two apartment complexes are described as “sister properties” on their websites, and the LLCs have the same business address in New York for the real estate investment firm Olive Tree Holdings.

Why do these hot spots exist?

Tara Raghuveer, director of citywide tenant union KC Tenants said that eviction hot spots “tend to be in multifamily properties, typically, that are owned by companies that are not based in Kansas City.”

Carl Gershenson, Eviction Lab’s project director and Princeton University professor, said data shows that nationwide, these hot spots tend to be larger complexes. In some cases, he said filing a large number of evictions, or filing repeat evictions against the same tenants, can be a part of the company’s business model.

“Each time you file, you are able to tack on late fees, court fees, all sorts of things like that,” he said. “So in effect, you are raising the monthly rent that they pay to live in your unit.”

According to Raghuveer, some large complexes can actually save money by renting substandard units to tenants in desperate need of housing and will factor in the cost to evict once those tenants can no longer pay, or they decide they need the unit back.

“So these are landlords who, as a matter of their business, rent to people with evictions on their record, or people who are otherwise vulnerable in the market and don’t have a lot of other options,” Raghuveer said.

“It’s a money saver for a certain type of landlord,” she said, adding that not every large apartment complex or company relies on this practice.

Who is most impacted by these eviction hot spots?

Raghuveer said that many of these eviction hot spots have started to concentrate in the southern and eastern parts of Jackson County outside of the city center.

For example, many of the locations listed Eviction Lab’s top 100 eviction hot spots are in suburbs like Grandview, Raytown and Independence.

“That suggests some of the trends that I think we’re very familiar with, wherein, poor and working class folks have already been priced out of the city in some ways and have been displaced to neighboring communities, where there are equally predatory landlords, and actually fewer connections to services and support system,” Raghuveer said.

Evictions in general disproportionately affect lower income households. For poor and low-income families, evictions can affect employment, health and the ability to find new housing, according to Kansas City’s Local Investment Commission.

Evictions are also most likely to impact Black and Hispanic households, disproportionately affecting Black and Latino women, according to Eviction Lab.

“In a city like Kansas City, most of these [hot spot] properties are going to be in lower income and majority Black neighborhoods,” Gershenson told The Star.

In Kansas City, more than 44% of Black households are considered cost-burdened, while more than 36% of Hispanic households are considered cost-burdened, according to a 2019 housing study by KC Stat, a public performance monitoring program.

In September, Kansas City reported that nearly 20% of tenants — one in five — are “severely cost-burdened,” which means they pay more than 50% of their income toward housing.

This rent burden disproportionately affects Kansas City’s lowest income renters, who make 30% of the average median income or less, because the city does not have enough housing for its lowest income renters.

The September report found that Kansas City is more than 27,000 units short of being able to house renters in this lowest income group.

That pushes those tenants into more precarious housing situations, with more than 60% of lowest income renters paying more than 50% of their income toward rent, putting them at higher risk of eviction with few options of other places to live in Kansas City.

For most tenants, regardless of income, housing costs are rising much faster than incomes, Michael Frisch, urban planning professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, told The Star.

The median cost of rent rose 13% in Kansas City from July 2021 to July 2022. In certain ZIP codes, the median rent price went up by 42%.

What can tenants do if they live in a hot spot building?

Gershenson said if you are a tenant living in a building that is evicting a disproportionate amount of people, one way to protect yourself might be to join a local group that is working to educate tenants on their rights.

“Reach out to a local group that knows exactly what your rights are as a renter in Kansas City because rights don’t enforce themselves,” Gershenson said.

He added that buildings where tenants have organized to hold their property managers accountable often see less evictions or serial filing against tenants.

“In an organized building with a tenant organization, [tenants] can really force the property manager to meet them halfway and cut down on some of these practices,” Gershenson said, adding that tenants in Kansas City should reach out to the citywide tenant union KC Tenants.

Kansas City also recently launched its Right to Counsel program to get free legal help to people facing eviction. Here’s a guide on how to get representation and other housing help.