By Maleah Evans/Wichita Journalism Collaborative
A new group is geared toward informing Wichita tenants of their protections and educating them about their rights.
Members of ICT Tenants Union spoke at a recent City Council meeting, in which a proposal for greater renter protections and a landlord registry was voted down.
Instead, City Council members created a task force that will further deliberate on city building codes.
Without the proposal, some of the people who spoke at the meeting say that landlords will still be able to discriminate against tenants who are on Section 8 or Social Security or retaliate against tenants who speak up about poor conditions.
Landlords who spoke against the proposal talked about negative experiences with Section 8 tenants and why they no longer accept Section 8 in their homes. Section 8 is a government- funded, low-income housing program for families, the elderly and people with disabilities.
“We have never had a Section 8 tenant that did not cause damages far exceeding their deposit,” landlord Lisa Hatrop said at the meeting. “Our last experience … was a tenant who deliberately vandalized our property.
“Every single Section 8 tenant that we have had caused damage, and that comes out of our pockets.”
Adalia Carter, the media liaison for ICT Tenants Union, said it was formed because she and its members saw what other tenant unions were achieving across the country and wanted to try to achieve the same in Wichita.
“What stood out to me the most was the fact that it felt like local landlords were unwilling to address the issues that were putting so many of our neighbors in danger, that were damaging their health, their financial safety, their children, until they got what they wanted from the city and from the tenants,” Carter said.
“They didn’t want accountability on their end until they had some satisfaction for their own grievances … ”
Carter stressed that being a landlord is a business, especially when they own and rent multiple properties.
“It’s their business, but it’s tenants’ lives,” she said. “We have heard the callous response, ‘Well, they can just go and get their own houses, and to that we say, ‘No, they can’t’ … their financial conditions are such that all of their wages go towards rent.”
In addition to pushing for rent caps on a city- and state-wide level, the union hosts events and training to help tenants in Wichita understand what rights they and their landlords have.
“How they can make the system work for them … a lot of these tenants that we’ve been talking to door-to-door, they aren’t aware that they have any options at all,” Carter said.
Steve Minson, a Kansas Legal Services attorney who represents tenants in eviction proceedings, discussed some options tenants have legally when it comes to an unresponsive landlord.
He mentioned a 14-30 day notice, which allows tenants to tell their landlords that they have 14 days to fix an issue or they will end their lease 30 days from the next rent payment.
“It’s a way to get out sooner, but that’s not a great remedy,” he said.
“Say it’s like the second or third (of the month), and you get a 14-30 day notice, the landlord has 14 days to make a good, safe effort to repair; it doesn’t have to be a completed repair. If the landlord ignored that, you would still owe November rent.”
Another option he mentioned was calling the Wichita Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department, which would send out building inspectors. If found in violation, the landlord receives a notice telling them they have a number of days to fix the violation.
The third option is suing the landlord, which he said was easiest in small claims court. But small claims has less authority than larger courts.
“Suing your landlord in small claims, you don’t get the ability to ask for a court order to make repairs … (it) doesn’t have that authority,” Minson said. “It’s also dicey to sue your landlord in the middle of the lease while you’re still living there because that’s not going to make the relationship better.”
The proposal discussed by the City Council would have protected tenants who experienced landlord retaliation for submitting formal complaints about poor living conditions.
With the proposal’s failure, it leaves some tenants asking what protections remain for renters and what they should look out for before renting a property.
Minson said that for first-time renters, Google reviews and research before signing a lease are important.
“One of the things is to not rush into a lease because you should know who you’re leasing with on the other side,” he said. “Do your research … look at the Google reviews, drive around the complex, see what the people living there look like. Is the maintenance done? Is there trash around?
“And you can’t rely only on Google reviews because one complex told tenants, ‘If you give me a five-star Google review, I’ll knock 20 bucks off your rent next time,’ … and then the property didn’t knock $20 off the rent.”
He also recommended documenting everything when you move in, especially if landlords won’t allow you to do a pre-rental inspection.
“You want to inspect your apartment before you move in,” Minson said. “If they give you any trouble about that, that’s a bad sign, and I’d run away.”
At the meeting, council members Brandon Johnson and Mike Hoheisel talked about their experiences visiting the homes of constituents and seeing black mold and other substandard living conditions. They also were told of instances of landlord retaliation.
Johnson said that the proposal considered by the council would have only targeted serial violators who need more supervision.
Gail Clark, who owns several properties in the Wichita area, said that the proposal is “making an issue out of a non-issue … that’s a really bad idea and if it passes, I would like to see a registry of tenants who have willfully damaged our properties.”
Attorneys Garrett Holmes and Kurt Holmes — whose firm represents several landlords in the WIchita area — sent out a memo to their clients, encouraging them to attend the meeting and expressed concern the ordinances would change property rights in Wichita.
They claimed the proposal, if passed, would weaken due process and expand the city’s control over private property.
Neyla Beyouth, who owns Cedar Mills Property Management, said that despite her opposition at the meeting, she thinks the proposal has important merits that need to be discussed.
“We need to have a more strict process to deal with folks who are not complying because it makes the rest of us (landlords) look very bad,” she said.
Maleah Evans is the fall 2025 intern with the Wichita Journalism Collaborative. Maleah is a senior at Wichita State University and is studying journalism and history.