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Independence's Twin Drive-In, owned by the B&B Theatres chain, is shutting down after its landlord increased its rent by 350%. Its absence will leave just one drive-in movie theater in the Kansas City region.
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At the risk of eviction, tenants at Quality Hill Towers and Independence Towers launched a coordinated rent strike over what they say are poor conditions and rising prices. They're recruiting more residents to join, and pushing for help from federal housing authorities.
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Tenants at two apartment complexes in the Kansas City area are now withholding rent payments, in the city’s first rent strike since 1980. Rent strikes are illegal in Missouri, but residents say it's worth the risk, after dealing with deteriorating living conditions and a lack of maintenance.
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KC Tenants announced this week that it is a founding local of the Tenant Union Federation, a national union of unions that aims to organize for renter protections at the federal level.
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The Kansas City, Missouri-based tenants rights advocacy group joined other tenants unions in Illinois, Connecticut, Kentucky and Montana to form the Tenant Union Federation. TUF hopes to create more effective organizing practices among tenants nationwide and push for federally regulated rent control.
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Nationwide, rents and the cost of living are increasing. Eviction filings are "a great indicator of housing insecurity," says a researcher from Princeton University's Eviction Lab.
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New federal rules will adjust Section 8 subsidies so that Kansas City families can gain access to neighborhoods they've been essentially shut out of, including downtown neighborhoods like Quality Hill and midtown neighborhoods like Hyde Park.
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Kansas City residents who want to buy a single-family home have to bid against mega-corporations that own hundreds or even thousands of properties. That shrinks the number of houses available for people to actually live in, and raises prices for homebuyers and renters alike.
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Housing in the Kansas City area, and in Missouri overall, is quickly becoming unaffordable. The city and state are seeing some of the fastest rent increases in the country, and local housing experts and advocates say Kansas City needs to do more to protect residents.
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Over the past six months, rent prices have decreased in every region except for the Midwest, where a housing shortage and a competitive market are keeping rent high.
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University City-based Matthew Chase is one of the busiest eviction attorneys in the St. Louis region — as evidenced by the fact that many of the area’s biggest landlords have picked them as their go-to guy. Chase files around 450 eviction cases in a typical month.
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Eviction filings have always come fast and cheap in Missouri — a legacy of Missouri’s long history of weak tenant protections. Now, eviction filings are happening faster than before the pandemic.