Kansas City renters and their advocates celebrated last January, cheering as the City Council approved new protections targeting discrimination on the basis of someone’s income or criminal history.

The rules may not survive another year.

Missouri Republican lawmakers want to overturn the Kansas City ordinance amid a backlash from vocal landlords, including some who have warned they would stop renting out their properties. Lawmakers who oppose the local rules say they hamper the ability of landlords to vet prospective tenants and risk exacerbating the region’s affordable housing shortage. Their logic is that if enough landlords stop renting out their properties because of the local ordinance, fewer housing options will be available to tenants.

The General Assembly thwarting the Kansas City ordinance would mark another instance of the GOP-controlled legislature stripping away local control from the largely Democratic city. Local officials have long chafed when Jefferson City imposes its will on Kansas City, whether on police control or firearms.

Democrats, tenant advocates and local officials say the ordinance, which took effect in August, offers crucial protections for renters as they search for housing in a tight market. The ordinance, they say, represents one more step in ensuring everyone in the city has access to housing.

Lawmakers who oppose the city ordinance have already laid the groundwork to fight it. The Missouri House last March passed a bill in a 103-33 vote that would have effectively blocked the ordinance. The measure died in the Senate amid that chamber’s dysfunction, but virtually identical bills have been introduced for the 2025 session, which began last week.

Landlords are also challenging the city ordinance in federal court. A hearing on a request for a preliminary injunction against the rules is set for Jan. 21.

“I look at this bill as a way to create, literally, a better environment for housing providers and people who need affordable housing,” said Rep. Chris Brown, a Kansas City Republican who introduced one of the bills.

“I’m just worried that what Kansas City has done with their recent ordinance related to this is they’re simply going to drive housing providers out of Kansas City by just making it much more difficult to conduct business in Kansas City,” added Brown, who co-owns a family real estate business.

Brown’s bill – and another offered by St. Louis County Republican Rep. Ben Keathley – would stop any city or county from prohibiting landlords from refusing to rent to individuals whose income includes federal housing assistance, including Section 8 vouchers.

Cities would be blocked from restricting landlords from using credit scores or eviction history in evaluating renters. The legislation would ensure landlords have a free hand to request criminal records from prospective tenants.

It would gut the core of the Kansas City ordinance. The city ordinance prohibits landlords from discriminating on the basis of a person’s source of income, such as gig work, or denying housing based solely on a credit score or criminal history, with violent and sexual offenses excepted.

“We should all be working to make it easier for someone to put a roof over their head, not making it easier to deny someone a roof over their head,” Rep. Emily Weber, a Kansas City Democrat who voted against the bill last year, said in a text message to The Star.

Will landlords flee?

While landlords are still allowed to ask about an applicant’s criminal history, credit or rental history under the ordinance, they are prohibited from denying an application on the basis of that history alone. Landlords must weigh additional information provided by a tenant, such as personal references, evidence of rehabilitation or attempts to resolve past evictions.

Kaylove Edwards, a leader with the renters’ union KC Tenants, said blocking the ordinance would only intensify existing concerns related to homelessness and housing.

“Having this (ordinance) ensures that landlords have to consider tenants’ entire application while screening them and that has really wide-reaching benefits for not only our families but the community overall,” Edwards said.

The Kansas City ordinance was met with loud opposition from some landlords, who warned repeatedly that the rules would result in less available housing. Small “mom and pop” operators would be especially pressured, they have argued, asserting that renting to individuals with Section 8 vouchers is expensive for landlords. Under Section 8, the federal government pays a landlord a portion of a tenant’s rent each month. In order to receive the government payments, owners need to adhere to certain restrictions, inspections and paperwork.

“I am tired of being called racist, and for my peers to be called racist if they don’t accept the housing choice voucher – the Section 8 voucher. It is not accurate,” Stacey Johnson-Cosby, president of the KC Regional Housing Alliance, a leading opponent of the ordinance, told lawmakers last year. “We are in the business of making money. We are a business and not a charity.”

Johnson-Cosby didn’t respond to a call last week seeking an interview.

Brown said he had heard from several landlords who had stopped renting in the wake of the ordinance. Exact figures are difficult to determine since the non-discrimination rules have been in effect for less than six months.

“If you put restrictions on landlords that simply will cut into their profitability, right?” Brown said. “They’re going to pack up and go home. They’re not going to invest in Kansas City.”

Mayor Quinton Lucas said the City Council worked with both property owners and renters to craft a policy that struck an appropriate balance between housing more families regardless of their source of income and enhancing protections for housing providers. He noted as an example that the city has allocated $1 million for a property owner support program, slated to launch this month.

“Our housing income anti-discrimination ordinance is working, expanding opportunities for families without burdening landlords, and enjoying public support,” Lucas said in a statement. “Jefferson City lawmakers should respect local control, our community’s will, and the broad consensus that we forged.”

The Missouri House will likely pass Brown’s bill if it’s put up for a vote, given that the chamber approved it last year. Less clear would be its fate in the Senate, which has been bogged down by Republican infighting in recent years.

For their part, GOP senators appear eager to minimize internal conflict this year, potentially easing the way for the legislation if it clears the House. Some top Republicans have indicated they support the measure.

Federal lawsuit ongoing

The legislative debate will play out as a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri is ongoing.

The lawsuit, filed in October by property owners Kennedy Jones and Stephen Vogel, alleges the ordinance requires them to participate in the Section 8 housing program, which they say violates their constitutional rights and incorrectly trumps federal guidelines.

Jones has two rental units in Kansas City and used to accept Section 8 vouchers but stopped because the terms of the program “were unjust and financially unconscionable,” the lawsuit said. Vogel owns three rental units and has never accepted the vouchers, in part because of what he described as the burden of complying with federal inspection requirements.

In court documents, lawyers representing the city say Jones and Vogel have made an “incorrect assumption” that the ordinance requires landlords to participate in Section. The city says the property owners haven’t shown they have properties that would require Section 8 participation.

A judge could rule on whether to grant a preliminary injunction blocking the ordinance as soon as next week, following a hearing in the case.

Brown indicated he wants lawmakers to move forward on legislation overturning the Kansas City ordinance regardless of the status of the lawsuit.

“We’re just going to go ahead and do our path here,” Brown said, “and we’ll see how everything else plays out.”

The Star’s Kacen Bayless and Mike Hendricks contributed reporting.

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