HUD shuts down Cloverleaf Apartments

By Ben McCarthy

Residents of Cloverleaf apartments, just off highways 71 and 150 in south Kansas City started receiving notices last week announcing that Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had stopped making payments to the rapidly deteriorating property. It was bringing in a third party contractor, Leumas Residential, that would be in charge of relocating all residents from the property by June.

But by end of day on Wednesday, February 26, the deadline had changed. Tenants had until Friday to relocate. Their belongings had to be out by Monday, March 3.

The Fire Marshall had decreed  everyone move after water was shut off due to a water main break on the property. On Friday, electricity, gas and cable were disconnected as well.

U-Haul trucks, busses, and vehicles from family and friends filled the parking spaces as beleaguered tenants loaded up their belongings. For those who didn’t have a place to go, HUD was picking up the bill for a month’s stay at a several hotels. Similarly, the cost of storage space was being underwritten.

“Police will be here all night to make sure that stuff is secured,” said Sixth District City Councilman Johnathan Duncan. “Some of them had to leave their stuff in their apartments because there aren’t enough storage units right now.”

Duncan was there Friday  ensuring tenants had a place to stay. City officials, the fire department, church volunteers and reporters added to the frenetic scene.  A woman with a bullhorn walked the premises shouting directions and updating residents on the approaching deadline.

“These people aren’t going to feel safe until they have a permanent place to stay,” said Duncan.

HUD suspended payments to Cloverleaf on February 1st.

“Because the Cloverleaf owner failed to maintain decent, safe, and affordable housing, HUD has ended its subsidy payments to the owner,” reads a statement from HUD spokesperson Brian Handshy. “[We are] working with all local parties to request a maximum of 91 vouchers to assist with the rapid relocation of eligible individuals and families living at the property.

 In addition to major infrastructure failings, the complex has also been plagued in recent years by crime, including shootings.

Diane Charity, a founding member of KC Tenants, was one of the group’s members (including her son, Michael) that canvassed Cloverleaf last weekend, attempting to contact residents and inform them of the severity of the situation. Sixth District Councilman Jonathan Duncan joined the group as they tried to help clear ice that covered the pothole-laden roads that circled the 17 buildings, and clean up trash in the complex.

“We were told they hadn’t had trash collected since before Christmas,” Duncan said. “It appears as though several rats had taken up residency in the trash piles.”

As Charity went building to building, she observed standing water on first floors, and upper floor units infested with mold. As she was absorbing the severity of the situation in one building, gunshots broke out outside. She thinks it was a vehicle speeding out of the complex. Duncan says he didn’t hear the gunshots, but trusts what she says she heard.

“There was a shooting there the night before we arrived,” Duncan said. “What I did see and hear over the weekend is the worst [living situation] I’d ever seen, and I’ve been in a lot of slums.”

Duncan and other members of KC Tenants, like Maya Neal, observed multiple buildings with the same unlivable conditions present, including the smell of mold once they opened exterior doors. Some residents invited them into their units, where Charity and others saw bathtubs caked with mold.

The sound of gushing water on the first floors of buildings was shocking to those canvassing the buildings, but has been commonplace for sometime to the residents, themselves.

One woman showed them her unit, where she and four children (all under the age of 10) lived, without running water or heat. She, like others in the complex, have been reduced to heating their apartment by maintaining an open oven.

“These living conditions are egregious,” Neal said. “No one deserves to live in these conditions.”

HUD and Leumas Residential finally held an in-person meeting (after canceling a session last week) about the relocation situation at the Red Bridge Public Library on Wednesday. The two sessions gave tenants of Cloverleaf the chance to meet representatives of Leumas, as well as the Housing Authority of Kansas City (HAKC).

Sources inside the meeting say that HAKC promised tenants that they would be distributing Section 8 vouchers once HUD (and Leumas) completed its obligations involved in the relocation process.

Over 50 residents emerged from the morning session.

Deanna Coleman has been living at Cloverleaf since 2017. The mother of a son, who recently celebrated his fifth birthday, appeared calm, but also resigned to the fact of where things are headed.

“The first floor of our building is flooded,” Coleman said. “We don’t have heat…we got through the winter with two space heaters, and using the oven to keep us warm.”

Coleman is on the third floor of her current building after being asked by the property’s previous owner to move there while they remodeled her previous unit elsewhere in the complex. Those promised improvements, like many others at Cloverleaf, never materialized.

What HUD and Leumas are now promising the tenants is up to $2100 in reimbursements associated with the costs of moving ($1000-1200), transportation ($300), application fees ($300), and other “miscellaneous” expenses ($300) incurred from the forced relocation.

An unidentified spokesperson for Leumas acknowledged that less than 100 people are being relocated from Cloverleaf. Duncan says that she’s only counting heads of households, and after his weekend work on the property, estimates that there’s closer to 250 or 300 people living there after children are tallied.

Cloverleaf’s leasing office now only lists an email for residents to contact with questions or concerns. That email belongs to Veronica Lopez of Lynd Living, based in San Antonio, Texas. The company said Lopez, who is listed as a Regional Manager, would not be on site in Kansas City.

Two years ago, Cloverleaf tenants settled a class action lawsuit against the then landlord and property manager (two Beverly Hills-based real estate investors).

Tenants had reported major leaks, lack of air conditioning, a lack of hot water for months, holes in ceilings and walls, mold and mildew and bed bug infestations. The tenants won $2 million when Cloverleaf’s-then owners, Stonebridge Global Partners and Cloverleaf
Apartments Investors, along with former property manager Seldin Company, settled a lawsuit filed by tenant Dorothy Simpson (who began living on the property in 2007) on behalf of herself and other tenants.

Attorney Gregory Leyh, who represented the tenants in the case, said the conditions were horrendous and uninhabitable for every tenant. Leyh, who practices law from his office in the West Bottoms, was cautiously optimistic at the time that NB Affordable (who is no longer affiliated with the property, and whose owners have been charged with felony fraud) would come in and make an honest effort to take care of the many low-income tenants at Cloverleaf.

“This industry (HUD, low-income tenants, slumlords) is all incentivized to strip assets of the LLC that owns a property and to take the money and run,” Leyh said. “We need statutory reform for these landlords, right now the only thing that holds them accountable is lawyers that sue them.”

Duncan says representatives from the Kansas City Fire Department want to condemn the property. He agrees that there’s no way that the structures are salvageable. After a meeting with HAKC on Tuesday, Duncan emerged convinced that the lack of communication on what’s happening at Cloverleaf is very much intentional, and the lack of urgency from HUD and Leamus must change quickly before things continue to spiral.

“This isn’t about a relocation, this is an emergency and needs to be treated as an evacuation,” Duncan said. “This has been a systematic failure, and I fear there will be more situations like this in the future.”