The Wichita City Council is set to consider rental property reforms Tuesday, but the proposals are already receiving some pushback.
The proposed ordinances outline a number of changes, including adopting a property maintenance code that requires sanitary conditions in rental units, prohibiting landlords from refusing applicants with Section 8 vouchers and requiring landlords with repeat offenses to register with the city.
“It’s just simply, we are finally able to potentially take some steps to address everything we’ve been hearing,” council member Brandon Johnson said. “Everybody deserves decent housing, and right now, not everybody gets that opportunity.”
The actions have been discussed for years as the city contended with poor conditions at some apartment complexes and was unable to hold those landlords accountable.
“We don’t want to crack down on people who maybe their grass is a little too long or anything like that,” council member Mike Hoheisel said. “It’s property owners who continuously show up on our radars time and time and time and again, that we can act on that a lot more quickly than we have been in the past.”
A memo distributed by attorneys Garrett Holmes and Kurt Holmes, who represent several landlords, encourages property owners to attend Tuesday’s meeting to give input about the proposed ordinances.
The Eagle obtained a copy of the memo. The attorneys are concerned that the ordinances would “fundamentally change property rights in our city.”
“Each measure increases regulation, weakens due process, and opens the door to subjective enforcement against landlords, small businesses, and employers alike,” the memorandum read.
A newly formed tenants rights group, ICT Tenants, advocated for the changes on social media.
“These are commonsense protections — but landlords are organizing to stop them,” the group said in a Facebook post. Some council members are questioning some of the proposed actions. “I think there will be plenty of points of conversation and disagreement on Tuesday,” council member Dalton Glassock said Friday as the council reviewed Tuesday’s agenda. County Commissioner Jeff Blubaugh, a former city council member, also spoke out against the proposals at a recent county agenda review.
“I requested that before they go through with such aggressive ordinance changes you do the community engagement,” he said. “Go out to the public, get both sides of these issues before you just go and pass these ordinances.”
Johnson pushed back against Blubaugh’s comments, saying the proposals went through district advisory boards, several workshop meetings and other city meetings before they were brought to the council.
“While I appreciate the sentiment surrounding public engagement, had he been more attentive in his final year as a member of the Wichita City Council and not so focused on improving his image for the coming County Commission race, he would recall the numerous conversations he had with Council Member [Mike] Hoheisel that outlined the meetings we had with a number of the groups he mentioned and others as well as private landlords,” Johnson said in an email to The Eagle.
Johnson brushed off concerns by landlords about the proposals.
“There’s a lot of really good landlords out there, property managers doing the right thing,” he said, “but our focus is the people who continue to make people live in bad spaces.”
Kylie Cameron covers local government for the Wichita Eagle. Cameron previously worked at KMUW, NPR for Wichita, and was editor in chief of The Sunflower, Wichita State’s student newspaper.