Tenants at Quality Hill Towers in KCMO unionize due to living conditions

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Fifty-three tenants at Quality Hill Towers are unionizing with the of KC Tenants, demanding a solution for what they’re calling horrible living conditions.

“We have plumbing issues constantly,” said Brenda Jones, a tenant at Quality Hill Towers. “If you go in there now, you will smell it. If you were to take this interview inside the building, we’d have to come outside. Fortunately, we’re outside. The smell is horrendous.”

Tenants said they’re living in apartments with rodents, roaches, black mold, broken appliances and water leaks.

“And now, we have mice,” added Jones. “We have elderly people in the building who shouldn’t have to put up with this.”

The landlord, Sentinel Real Estate Corporation, has six properties in Kansas City. We left multiple messages with the company. They did not immediately respond to our request for comment.

“We canvassed, came up with demands, came up with solutions that we wanted as a unit,” said KC Tenants organizer Mason Andrew Kilpatrick. “We got over 53 petitions from folks who are deeply aggravated with conditions here and are ready to organize to do something about it.”

The Quality Hill Towers Tenant Union sent those demands to the vice president of Sentinel Real Estate Corporation, along with an invitation to negotiate with the union by the end of June.

Kilpatrick said the union is ready to escalate if their demands are not met.

“Cockroaches are literally hopping off of couches,” added Kilpatrick. “It’s pretty disgusting here. I think it’s possible we can get some serious wins and victories in cleaning these places up. Is it going to be a fight? Of course it will be a fight.”

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