By Celia Hack/KMUW
An analysis by KMUW found the city fined fewer than 200 property owners it took to court between 2019 and 2023 for housing and building code violations.
When Kashmire Baker’s apartment at the Bradford Glen complex flooded in December 2022, she said she figured the pipes might have burst in the cold.
Then it happened again in January. And in April. Twice in May. A big flood in June.
Repeatedly, the water soaked the carpet and contaminated toys Baker’s 2-year-old had strewn across the floor of the apartment near Hydraulic and Kellogg.
Repeatedly, Baker said, she complained to the property manager and called the emergency maintenance hotline – which Bradford Glen’s own property manager didn’t know who monitored after hours, testimony in court later revealed. One voicemail Baker left informed staff that “human waste” was all over her carpet and flooring.
“We started seeing specks in the water,” Baker said. “We seen like black and yellow specks of feces in the water. And that’s when it was like, at this point, I can’t do it.”
The company that owns the Bradford Glen complex, Kansas Bradford Glen LLC, said that while it didn’t deny the sewage backups, staff took appropriate action to halt them and respond, according to court testimony last year. It had a plumber unclog the sewer line, which it said was clogged with baby wipes. And Baker’s carpet was cleaned with a “wet-vac” several times and shampooed at least once.
After the last flood, Baker escalated her complaints. She called the city of Wichita’s Neighborhood Inspections division, which visited the property in June and sent Kansas Bradford Glen a letter indicating it was in violation of Wichita’s housing code – a misdemeanor that can result in fines or jail time if the owner doesn’t fix the unit to the city’s standards. The city reinspected the unit in July, finding the plumbing issues remained. It sent a second notice to Kansas Bradford Glen, informing the company it could be taken to court if the unit wasn’t repaired by Aug. 3.
But Baker moved out at the end of July, after which the city never reinspected the apartment to check whether it was repaired to city standards.
And though Baker later successfully sued Kansas Bradford Glen for damages, the city of Wichita never took legal action against the property owner or manager for failing to comply with the city housing code.
That’s not unusual in Wichita: An analysis by KMUW found the city fined fewer than 200 property owners it took to court between 2019 and 2023 for housing and building code violations. In the same time period, the city’s Neighborhood Inspections division received more than 4,000 housing code complaints.
Representatives of the city’s Neighborhood Inspections division, which is housed within the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department, would not sit down for an interview with KMUW. But in a written statement, city spokesperson Megan Lovely said that the city resolves most code compliance violations with property owners voluntarily.
She added that the city also faces obstacles to enforcement such as bringing out-of-state landlords to court and accessing units without the tenant present. When asked via email why the city did not follow up on the code violations at Baker’s unit, Lovely wrote: “Without legal access to a tenant-occupied property (which means the tenant still must occupy the property and be available to allow entry), inspectors have no way to document current status of violations.”
But Baker thinks the city should take more steps to hold landlords accountable – including following up on the plumbing issues at her unit after she moved out.
“If you wanted to make people safe, all it takes is to make sure that that apartment was up to code for the next person,” Baker said.
Other cities agree. John Schardine, the property maintenance director for the city of Topeka, said he would “absolutely not” abandon a case if a tenant moves out. Topeka would need to reinspect the unit to confirm it’s repaired, even if that means getting a warrant, he said.
“Because there’s nothing that proves that whatever we wrote them up for has been fixed … unless we put eyes on it,” Schardine said.
In Wichita, landlords – even large ones – rarely fined
Kansas Bradford Glen is owned by an Oklahoma City-based company called Consolidated Capital Investments LLC, which is owned by Lew McGinnis, according to 2023 court records. Property records indicate Consolidated Capital Investments owns upward of 3,000 apartment units in Wichita via more than a dozen LLCs.
The city gets numerous complaints about these units: between 2019 and 2023, Wichita’s Neighborhood Inspections division opened at least 144 cases in response to housing or building code violations at properties whose ownership can be traced to McGinnis.
None resulted in fines, according to a review of a public database of code enforcement cases and the city’s municipal court database.
In 2022, companies owned by McGinnis were responsible for one-quarter of all eviction filings in Sedgwick County.
“Some landlords seem to be able to skirt things and use our court system to evict people that don’t pay but … don’t seem especially concerned about maintenance,” said Steve Minson, a lawyer with Kansas Legal Services who helped Baker sue Kansas Bradford Glen. “Anything that leads to more robust enforcement against chronic offenders would be a good thing, in my view.”
When asked about the lack of fines for McGinnis and his companies, the city wrote in an email that “uniform criminal complaints are not issued to out-of-state property owners” because there isn’t a way to serve the documents to the owners or to compel them to attend municipal court.
But in the past, the city has prosecuted Lew McGinnis and several of his companies. In 2016, the city opened 28 cases against McGinnis himself for violating building and housing codes. All were dismissed without fines, according to the city court records.
KMUW contacted Lew McGinnis as well as his daughter, Megan McGinnis. Megan McGinnis is the president and founder of Eucalyptus Real Estate, a property management company based at the same Oklahoma City address as Consolidated Capital Investment. She is also frequently named as an authorized person on the annual filings of the Kansas LLCs that own Wichita apartment complexes. Neither Lew nor Megan McGinnis responded to KMUW.
A review of municipal court cases show the city of Wichita rarely fines any property owners for housing or building code violations. From 2019 to 2023, the city inspections department opened about 4,700 cases in response to complaints about housing issues. In that same time period, the city took about 860 property owners to court for housing and building code violations – and fined 174 of them.
It’s unclear how many property owners the city fined were landlords versus homeowners. But the majority were individuals as opposed to businesses.
Most code enforcement cases are not sent to municipal court: In 2023, the city’s code enforcement rate of voluntary compliance was 89%. Those cases that do end up in municipal court are seldom complaints about landlords with large properties, said municipal administrative judge Jennifer Jones. More often, the court hears complaints by neighbors about neighbors, which is one reason fines aren’t frequently dispensed, Jones said.
“We experience many neighbors who are indigent, who are on fixed income, who are elderly, who have no other family support,” Jones said. “And as a result of that, then they cannot do what needs to be done simply because they don’t have the financial resources.”
The Apartment Association of Greater Wichita declined to comment on the city’s enforcement of building and housing codes.
Kevin Kimmell is a board member of the local landlord group Rental Owners Incorporated. He said the city’s level of stringency over housing and building codes often depends on the inspector: Some, he said, are too strict. Others give landlords a heads-up before a violation notice is written.
Still, he said the city prioritizes the tenant.
“No matter what the landlord tries to say, the landlord doesn’t count,” Kimmell said. “The tenant’s always right in the city’s eyes. This is the attitude that I’m just trying to change down at City Hall.”
In particular, he thinks the city should call the landlord before inspecting a tenant’s unit, which it isn’t required to do.
How the process works
Wichita’s Neighborhood Inspections division works like this: residents reach out with complaints about anything from a neighbor’s peeling paint to raw sewage flooding their apartment.
An inspector then visits the property. If the building has code violations, the city will give the owner three to 90 days, depending on the severity, to fix the problem before a reinspection. The notice often includes a warning: The owner will be taken to court if no action is taken.
In reality, though, the city sometimes gives property owners more than the initial time period to fix the problem before taking them to court. Assistant City Manager Troy Anderson acknowledged this in a 2023 presentation to the City Council.
“Sometimes this can get caught up in a wash cycle: ‘OK, we’ll give you another abbreviated cure period, might be a follow-up inspection to that,’” Anderson said. “We might do this two, three times, but eventually what’ll happen is further action will include a uniform criminal complaint.”
When dealing with out-of-state landlords, documents show inspectors can mail criminal complaints. The city also has the option of hiring a process server or driving to the owners’ location to deal with absentee property owners. The city doesn’t use the latter two options.
“Current MABCD management has determined that attempting to serve out-of-state property owners to appear locally in environmental court is not an efficient use of staff time or resources,” the city wrote in a statement.
Once the case is brought to court, the city’s prosecutor and the property owner often sit down to discuss a timeline to bring the property back up to code, said Jones, the municipal court judge. The judge often agrees to follow the timeline on which two parties agree, Jones said.
If progress on improving the property stalls, Jones said the prosecutor can request to move the case to trial. At trial, the judge determines whether the party is guilty and can assess a fine.
The process can quickly turn lengthy, which sometimes grates on both tenants and neighbors. Some neighborhood associations get frustrated that property owners get “multiple allowances to try and get it into compliance before you start really cracking down on people,” said City Council member Mike Hoheisel.
That’s what happened at another property owned by Lew McGinnis in Wichita. The Rosemont Apartments – previously known as the Battin Apartments – near Harry and Edgemoor are made up of more than two dozen low-rise apartment buildings. The Wichita Eagle reported in 2012 that the units were vacant, and the East Mt. Vernon Neighborhood Association has been complaining about the property since then. In recent years, some renovation work has been completed at several buildings on the property’s north side that are now occupied — but the majority of units are still boarded-up. The address’ property tax hasn’t been paid since 2019, records show.
In the fall of 2021, the city sent numerous notices of housing code violations to Rosemont Apartments LLC and, in early 2022, to Lew McGinnis. The notices said the structures needed to be secured and their walls weatherproofed within 30 days.
But when repairs weren’t made by the initial reinspection deadline, the city ultimately gave the company six more months before it took Rosemont Apartments LLC to court in May 2023 for failing to meet code. The court then gave four more opportunities for reinspections until the property was deemed in compliance in December 2022. The case was dismissed, and no one was fined, according to court records.
Years later, neighbors say, the apartments are still often unsecured and broken into. The apartments caught fire in 2021 and 2023.
“I think they should force their hand to do something,” said Cheryl Escue, who lives in the East Mt. Vernon neighborhood.
The city also brought 15 court cases against the complex in 2014, on charges of leaving the properties unsecured. All charges were dismissed, without fines, in 2019.
Photo by Celia Hack / KMUW
Photo by Celia Hack / KMUW
Obstacles to enforcement
Bradford Glen, where Baker lived, did not receive months upon months to fix up her unit.
That’s because the city gave up after she moved out. During Baker’s civil suit, the city neighborhood inspector assigned to her unit, John Germann, was asked whether he knew if anything was done to make the apartment compliant with housing code.
“I do not know because I did not go back and do a final inspection,” Germann said, adding that the property manager had told him she would take care of the issue and Baker had moved out.
“And so the pressing issues still need to be fixed, but as far as like a reinspection, it can be done any time, as long as there wasn’t an active leak going on.”
Tenants moving out is a common obstacle to building and housing code enforcement, city officials told legislators in November. That’s because state law doesn’t allow cities to enter a property without permission from its occupant.
“I have no authority to look anywhere other than where I am granted access by either the landlord or tenant or is a public commons area,” said Chris Labrum, director of the city-county Metropolitan Area of Building and Construction Department, in testimony to legislators. “That often slows us down to the point that it’s too late for the tenants.”
Hoheisel told legislators another challenge is enforcing city codes when a property is sold.
“Even when we’ve found the violation of health codes, once it switches hand, the violations are wiped clean, even when we know they still exist,” he said.
What do other cities do?
In March, the city of Topeka fined Eucalyptus Real Estate LLC – whose ownership can be traced to Lew McGinnis – $61,148 over issues of overflowing trash at various apartment complexes throughout town. Fines like this are meant to act as a deterrent to repeat code violators, said Schardine, Topeka’s property maintenance director.
“Folks like Lew McGinnis and other large landlords that are in front of the judge more than two or three times a year, they’re going to start getting these huge fines,” Schardine said. “… This is going to get very aggravating and very expensive very quickly.”
Schardine said Topeka has a special ordinance that helps the city hold out-of-state landlords accountable. The city can file a lien against the property if the company’s owner or registered agent doesn’t show up in court.
Other cities in Kansas, including Overland Park, Lawrence and Kansas City, Kansas, have rental licensing programs. Though state law doesn’t allow cities to mandate interior inspections, Overland Park’s program requires exterior inspections for rental properties every two years.
And the program offers another pathway to enforce interior housing issues.
“Let’s say a tenant makes a report about a property and the city finds that there is this violation, and then that it is not fixed,” wrote Meg Ralph, a spokesperson for the city of Overland Park. “The city has the authority to suspend the rental license associated with that property.”
The city of Wichita does have the ability to prevent properties with serious health and safety issues from being occupied, which the city can and has used on landlords.
Overland Park also fines landlords a $140 failed inspection fee if they don’t correct violations by their required re-inspection date – and continues to do so with each failed inspection until the property is in compliance. The city provides some leeway to those who say, in writing, that they are struggling with weather conditions, financial difficulties or other legitimate circumstances.
The city of Tulsa doesn’t require rental licenses. But Brant Pitchford, the city of Tulsa’s code enforcement manager, said that property owners are required to prove that a code violation is fixed before a case is closed – even when the tenant who originally complained moved out.
Pitchford said that’s important because the office often hears from tenants in the midst of eviction or who are moving out.
“Probably the biggest thing we push to everybody is once our staff sees the violation, we become the complainants,” Pitchford said. “…The last thing we want to do is just close our case because the tenant left. And then now you’re subjecting the next tenant to the exact same violation, if you haven’t proved that it’s … been remedied.”
Baker goes to court
By the time Baker moved out of Bradford Glen in August 2023, she estimated she’d lost thousands of dollars in clothing, toys and towels to the floods – not to mention the mental and physical toll it took on her.
“I have to take off days of my job to stay here to clean up the issue before my kid comes home,” Baker said. “That’s a lot of sacrifices on someone that is paying.”
Baker contacted Minson at Kansas Legal Services, which offers free or low-cost legal aid to low-income Kansans, to sue Kansas Bradford Glen LLC for damages.
An attorney for Eucalyptus Real Estate, Charles Hill, represented Kansas Bradford Glen in court. Hill argued that the amount Baker was asking in damages for personal property was excessive. He said there wasn’t enough evidence the floods damaged her property – and that Baker herself could have prevented loss that occurred.
“I don’t know about you, but if it was me and I’d had two floods in my apartment, and I wanted to avoid problems, I’d quit leaving stuff on the floor,” Hill said. “But she never did.”
The judge ultimately granted Baker $6,150 – finding the landlord realized there was imminent danger to Baker and her daughter, but recklessly disregarded it. The judge said that was based on the property manager’s testimony.
“At some point she testified, ‘Yeah, it should have probably placed her in a new apartment after the second backup,’” said District Magistrate Judge Kathleen Watson. “She agreed multiple times that … it wasn’t fair to the plaintiff what was going on.”
Hill said in court that the landlord’s actions were “at worst” negligent – a legal step down from willful and wanton conduct.
Baker says she’s proud that she sued for damages in court. But she said civil suits aren’t a solution to housing quality issues in Wichita – not everyone has the money for a lawyer, and the number of cases Kansas Legal Services can take is limited.
“At the end of the day, if the issue is not fixed in the literal apartment, then that issue is going to happen again,” Baker said. “And that’s just going to be another person on the hamster wheel.”
During Baker’s trial, the city inspector testified that he saw water flooding out the front door of the apartment next door to hers. The city opened a case.
This story was produced in collaboration with freelance data journalist Janelle O’Dea, who has shared her expertise with the Wichita Journalism Collaborative through a grant from the Wichita Foundation.
Methodology
KMUW used several sources to gather this data and information.
To access an accurate number of housing complaint cases opened by the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department, KMUW requested “a database or other similar electronic copy of all building and housing condition code complaints initiated with the MABCD from Jan. 1, 2019 through the present date of 2024.” The database provided shows “case complaints” the department filed between Jan. 1, 2019 and Feb. 29, 2024.
To learn how many fines the city charged property owners for housing and building code violations, KMUW requested a database of municipal court cases related to building code violations from 2019 to 2023. Specifically, KMUW requested court cases that alleged property owners violated Title 18 (city building code), Title 20 (city housing code) or the Unified Building and Trade Code. KMUW then checked to see which cases had resulted in an environmental fine, a criminal fine or a court fine. The municipal court system often charges defendants fees for the cost of appearing in court; KMUW did not include the levying of these fees in its analysis.
In addition to the municipal court data, KMUW also reviewed city inspections reports, city inspections policies and county court records. KMUW also sat in on the trial between Kashmire Baker and Kansas Bradford Glen LLC.
This article was republished here with the permission of: KMUW