A split Wichita City Council rejected proposals Tuesday to protect tenants from income discrimination and to establish a registry of landlords with serial housing code violations, but will consider an updated property enforcement code.
A split Wichita City Council rejected proposals Tuesday to protect tenants from income discrimination and to establish a registry of landlords with serial housing code violations.
The proposed ordinances were defeated on 4-3 votes after hours of passionate public comment from landlords, property owners and tenants.However, the council did vote 4-3 to move forward with consideration of an updated property enforcement code, which will return to council on Dec 9. The regulations would mandate sanitary conditions in rental units. Until then, a taskforce including landlords, tenants and other stakeholders will convene to weigh in on the ordinance.
Councilmembers suggested that the taskforce could still address adding income to the non-discrimination ordinance and the landlord registration, but, as of today, only the consideration of establishing a new international code will see a vote in December.
Councilmembers Brandon Johnson, Mike Hoheisel and Maggie Ballard were out-voted on the first two suggested ordinances. Mayor Lily Wu, Dalton Glasscock, J.V. Johnston and Becky Tuttle opposed them.
Hoheisel, who during the meeting spoke about his frequent visits to constituents’ substandard homes, said he hopes the next several weeks of discussion will give the city tools to help tenants and target neglectful landlords.
“I hope that we get real results. I hope that we can come back with something that will actually affect our ability to really crack down on the bad actors,” he said. “So there’s hope that with all the voices at the table, that we can drive something that’s not overly burdensome, but will actually also give us the tools that we need to address the issue.”
Landlords and property owners repeatedly stated that their opposition came from what they said was a lack of engagement prior to the ordinances’ introduction last week. Several said that they saw the ordinance changes as punitive and that it didn’t give landlords enough time to address property issues.
Tenants, and some councilmembers, advocated for the ordinance as an effort to sustain quality, accessible housing and how inhabitable conditions – and retaliatory landlords – hurt renters and sometimes push them into homelessness.
The failed proposals would have prohibited landlords from refusing applicants with housing choice vouchers and created a registration of units with multiple maintenance violations, which would have listed property owners and landlords with continuous violations to register with the city for two years. Serial offenders would also have been fined per violation, a particular point of contention from several landlords that spoke during the meeting.
Toni Porter, the vice president of government relations and military affairs at the Wichita Regional Chamber of Commerce, said the changes would hurt property owners.
“While we support efforts to improve neighborhoods, this ordinance introduces sweeping changes as unintended harm to Wichita’s housing market and business climate,” Porter said. “The rental registry adds bureaucracy and fees for landlords, even those who promptly address minor issues. This discourages reinvestment in older neighborhoods, and that’s unnecessary administrative burden.”
There was room-wide consensus on one thing: not enough is being done today to keep delinquent landlords accountable.
For years, the city has struggled to keep landlords and property managers accountable for maintenance issues and substandard living conditions. The city fined fewer than 200 property owners between 2019 and 2023 for housing and building code violations – in the same time period, the neighborhood inspections division received more than 4,000 housing code complaints. Most code enforcement cases are also not sent to municipal court: In 2023, the city’s code enforcement rate of voluntary compliance was 89%.
Johnson and Hoheisel shared their experiences visiting constituents’ homes and finding substandard conditions, black mold, and landlords retaliating against tenants who submit formal complaints.
Addressing the large number of property owners in the room, Johnson emphasized that the proposed changes only target serial violators who need a heavier hand.
“There are some people that probably need some much more assertive penalty for what they’re doing and forcing people to live in those conditions,” Johnson said. “But when you go into a space where there’s a pregnant woman who has been to the emergency room eight times, and they can show you how many times they’ve reached out to try to get something addressed, or get something remedied, and it gets ignored… What do you do with that person? What happens to justice for that young lady?”
Wu and Glasscock expressed concern that there wasn’t enough effort to directly engage with landlords and property owners. City manager Robert Layton said that the idea of these ordinances was first introduced in 2023 and that city staff had attended advisory board meetings for each district in the past few months.
“I think this room is evidence that we did not properly engage people,” Glasscock said, referring to the full chambers. An overflow room was opened early in the morning to accommodate guests.
Who makes up the task force is yet to be determined. Layton said he would speak with the council next week with suggestions on how to decide who can join it.
ICT Tenants, a newly formed tenant rights group, had several members speak during the meeting in favor of all three ordinances.
One, Dakota Horner, said she was there on behalf of “future renters and all workers who couldn’t make it here today because they can’t afford to miss a day of work.”
“Most renters are the working class of Wichita and the backbone of the city that is keeping things moving, yet they are being taken advantage of. Everyone deserves safe and affordable housing,” she said. “If you can’t apply that as a landlord, then why are you renting out your home, forcing people to live in a home that you wouldn’t consider fit to occupy for yourself or your family? I am speaking from personal experience, not only from living in uninhabitable conditions, but being treated as though my safety was not a concern.”
Adalia Carter, co-founder of ICT Tenants, said the ordinances were not extraordinary requests to make.
“These are not radical demands. They are common-sense protections that could keep people housed and stop the bleeding in a city that’s already bleeding out.”
“Homelessness doesn’t just happen. It’s caused – by eviction, by discrimination, by slumlords who refuse repairs, by policy failures at every level. We see the consequences every day. And we see who’s responsible.”
This article was republished here with the permission of: KLC Journal