Izaiah Flores and his neighbors haven’t had electricity since June 10. Their food has spoiled and they haven’t been able to run fans or air conditioning in their apartments, which are unbearably hot in heat indexes that have climbed higher than 100 degrees.
The heat has meant Flores has been stuck sleeping in his car. When it gets too hot, he drives his children to sleep with relatives to stay cool.
Flores estimates that he’s spent hundreds of dollars on gas and car repairs in the past two weeks to keep his family cool, get his children where they need to go and drive himself to work.
“I've been having to make it work inside my vehicle,” Flores said. “Trying to make sure that my kids are stable, and that they have a decent environment to be in while I stay here and figure out what's going on with my apartment.”
The power outage isn’t the first time Flores and his neighbors have dealt with unlivable conditions at their complex off North Lawn Avenue in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast neighborhood. Pests, water outages, sewage backups and break-ins have plagued the apartments.
Residents say the landlord has not secured the property and believe this most recent outage was caused by vandals stripping the wiring for copper.
Residents organized through citywide tenants union KC Tenants in May 2026, and negotiated with their landlord, Yisroel Levovitz, in early June. But they say he’s not completed the promised repairs and is instead trying to force the residents out so he can sell the building.
Neither Levovitz, who owns the buildings through Wiser KC LLC, nor his lawyer responded to KCUR’s request for comment.
Tenants at the three buildings Levovitz owns struck a tentative deal signed by both parties earlier this month, just one day after the power went out in Flores’ building.
The contract, obtained by KCUR, stipulates that Levovitz will begin the crucial maintenance necessary at the properties. Those improvements include HVAC repairs, pest control and sewage remediation, freezing the rent for current tenants, installing window air conditioning units and paying the tenants a relocation fee of $3,000 if they need to move because of the maintenance issues.
According to the signed tentative agreement, Levovitz and his team were supposed to reach a final agreement by June 19. Mary Allison Joseph, an organizer with KC Tenants who’s been working with the North Lawn residents, said the union hasn’t heard anything from Levovitz about the contract since.
Instead, residents allege property management has been offering residents varying cash payments to move out, some as low as $900.
Joseph said Levovitz’s attorneys have also requested a list of all the names of the tenants in the union, which KC Tenants has not provided because they believe it will be used for retaliation.
“They're sort of hiding behind this bureaucratic excuse while they are having staff pressure tenants to try and create chaos and division on the property,” Joseph said. “He (Levovitz) would like to not invest another cent in these properties, make a quick sale, wash his hands and have it become somebody else's problem. We're not going to let that happen.”
Neighbors helping neighbors
While the union works to get in contact with Levovitz and restart negotiations, neighbors have been working together to survive the power outage and heat.
Rochelle Lee has lived in the building since 2023. She said the conditions have gotten worse in the last year and a half. Lee’s husband is 75, and she said it’s a struggle to care for him and help her neighbors in these conditions.
“Half the time, there are no lights,” Lee said. “The bugs are terrible. I've seen a lot of raccoons, my house is full of roaches, mice and gnats. It's just disgusting. If I'm in the kitchen, I can barely cook because of the gnats. No matter what you do, they're everywhere, they're coming out of everywhere. There are roaches coming out of the sockets.”
Even with the pest issues, Lee lives in one of the only units in the building that still has power. She’s been letting her neighbors use her apartment to store and warm up food, and to shower. Lee keeps popsicles tucked away in the freezer door for the children in her building.
KC Tenants has also organized hotel rooms for residents who want to leave the property and meal drop offs for those who stay. Often, the food from the meal train winds up in Lee’s fridge for safekeeping.
Flores said the way the neighbors in the tenant union have worked to help each other has been heartening. Still, he wants Levovitz to begin repairs immediately, and to compensate him and his neighbors for the issues this most recent outage has caused.
“The neighborhood has definitely come together,” Flores said. “We're trying to strive towards one thing that we all deserve, and it's made us closer. But we're all still very frustrated, and also dealing with all the stress and the heat coming with it.”
In 2023, residents at North Lawn lost heat during one of the coldest weekends of the year after an electrical fire knocked out utilities. The residents organized with KC Tenants and got the utilities turned back on. When the property was sold to Levovitz and Wiser KC LLC, the tenants won lease protections and rent stabilization made possible in part by Kansas City’s rental assistance program, which subsidized the rent of the original eight households that unionized.
It’s been three years since Wiser KC LLC bought the buildings, and now Levovitz is trying to sell the property, Joseph said. With the expanded union that represents 94% of the occupied units that Wiser KC LLC owns, Joseph said the union wants to be able to decide who buys it.
“These buildings have changed hands multiple times in recent years, and each new private landlord comes in and says, ‘I'm going to fix the place up, I'm going to make this nice,’ and they don't do it,” Joseph said. “What they do is they don't invest a cent in a property, and they move new tenants in and raise the rent anyway.”
The tentative contract between the union and Levovitz gives the tenants the right of first refusal for any deal that Levovitz makes. That would allow the residents to give a competitive offer for the property or facilitate the purchase of the complex through a third party. Joseph said the union is looking for a buyer that members will put forward as their chosen option.
In the meantime, Flores said the union wants Levovitz back at the bargaining table to make critical repairs to the property. He’s looking forward to having electricity again, so he and his family can sleep under one roof regardless of the weather.
