KANSAS CITY, Mo. — On Tuesday, KSHB 41 News reported that the city of Kansas City, Missouri, fined a property owner in the Historic Northeast neighborhood multiple times for storage and dumping issues.
Less than 24 hours later, the city decided to return to the property and talk with those who have decided to take up wrongful residency.
“We’re not turning a blind eye to it,” John Baccala, a KCMO spokesperson said.
Baccala said the problem with enforcement is no cooperation from property owners.
They city has cited a property near Benton Boulevard and east 12th Street since 2015.
“It’s unfortunate, we have a lot of properties like this throughout the city,” Baccala said. “I don’t know if it’s a situation where it’s out of sight, out of mind, like this one is 'out of town LLCs.' So, they don’t see it, they don’t think about it [and] they don’t care about it.”
Josh Henges, KCMO’s Houseless Prevention Coordinator, is looking into this property.
“Homelessness in Kansas City is very visible right now,” Henges said. “This specific camp has been attended to quite a bit and our goal is to build a relationship with the folks that are in there while we teach them what services exist.”
He said getting people out takes time and they need more places to put people in and outreach volunteers.
But how long is too long for a homeless camp to stay up?
“Yeah, a year is way too long no question for a variety of reasons,” Henges said. “It’s got to be really frustrating for neighbors who are experiencing the negative effects of encampments.”
Henges said it's difficult to put a timeline on when the encampments can be taken care of.
“I don’t want an artificial timeline put on that encampment because I don’t have time, I got 210 of these things,” he said.
KSHB 41 News asked if the fines are reaching the property owners. The city says it depends on which property.
Often, mail fines bounce back to the city, but not yet for this address associated.
The city says by law, out-of-state owners are supposed to have a local contact provided to the city, but that’s not happening.
“I think we are at 30% compliance, which is just ridiculous because we can't do our job,” Baccala said.
Baccala said if the property owners continue to not comply, there's not much the city can do.
“We don’t like situations like this either, but if we don’t have anybody that’s going to stand up and take responsibility on a local level for the property, our hands are tied," he said. "And no one likes to hear that, but there’s not much we can do when the owner of the property is 1,000 miles away.”
Henges said on Wednesday that a discussion will be held on the next steps for this specific camp.
