Most of the time, landlords win. When I was evicted from my Chicago apartment in 1999, I had no legal rights to defend myself against all my furniture being thrown to the curb, leaving me, my daughter, and baby grandchild out in the cold.
This year though, my fellow tenants and I at Bowen Tower Apartments in Raytown, Missouri won.
After a four-month long rent strike where we withheld over $110,000 in payments, our union was able to secure lower rents and utility bills along with commitments to fix long-term issues in the 10-story building outside Kansas City.
I don’t want to mislead anyone though: the fight wasn’t easy. I was intimidated, bribed, and almost forced out of the building. But we didn’t budge, and now I hope our victory will inspire tenants elsewhere to fight.
I first moved to Bowen Tower in April of 2023. My situation seemed good at the start — the building was accommodating for older tenants, close to transportation, and had a responsive manager.
Things started to turn toward the end of 2024, especially in September when my apartment flooded. The water ruined my furniture and most of my clothes — the total damages were around $13,000 — but all management would do is come up and put towels on the floor.
At this point I was smelling mold everywhere, but they still wouldn’t help. Around the same time I got really sick and I lost my job. I had been carefully documenting all the problems in my apartment, calling every city service, but nothing was changing.
Thankfully, I wasn’t the only person in the building with issues. I’d hear other tenants complaining in the elevator, and eventually I started inviting them to meetings upstairs. We managed to get city employees to come look at the building by coordinating our calls, but they didn’t do anything either.
Around that time I came across a video of tenants celebrating at Independence Towers, another complex in our area, after a successful eight-month long rent strike. I had already been personally withholding rent for a few months at that point but realized we needed to do something similar at Bowen Tower.
So I contacted KC Tenants, which helped organize the Independence Towers strike.
The tenant union helped us get organized — and then, in October 2025, we went on rent strike. The response from management was harsh: 27 eviction notices were filed, including for me. Some of our neighbors dropped the strike because of intimidation and harassment or straight-up bribery.
But personally, I’m not scared of anything but mice and God. They never managed to intimidate me, even when the cops were called on me four times. I was attacked in the building. Sometimes I’d come back to my apartment, shut the door, and just cry. But I was never going to give up. It just made me angry. And with my anger, I wanted to fight more.
Eventually the building’s owners, a company from California called Alta/CGHS Real Estate Investments, folded. We’re only going to have to pay back 35 percent of what we withheld. We won good cause eviction protections and two-year leases, and they promised to make major needed repairs to the building.
But the fight doesn’t end here. I’m going to keep fighting not only for myself — not only for the tenants at Bowen Tower, but for tenants all around Missouri and around the country.
It’s time for landlords to take accountability for their actions. As tenants, the only way we can make sure they do is by forming unions and sticking together, no matter how tough the fight gets.
