How a small Kansas city stole Christmas; family targeted for illegal eviction | Opinion
There are no Christmas lights at the home of Amber Huffman, Dallas Marlow-Engelhardt and their three children.
There are no lights at all.
Nor is there any heat.
Last week, the city government shut off electricity and water to the family’s rental home after their landlord, Ron Johnson, died and his heirs decided they didn’t want them there anymore.
And the city won’t turn the utilities back on.
It’s a Christmas kick in the head.
“I have three kids, a 4-year-old, an 8-year-old and a 9-year-old, and now we’re staying in somebody’s upstairs, and they’re not used to having so many kids in their house,” Huffman said. “I feel like we’re wearing out our welcome and it just terrifies me. I’m scared. I don’t want to be homeless with kids. I had to do that before, I don’t want to do it with kids. This isn’t the first time that I’ve struggled, but when my babies are involved, I don’t know what to do.”
Illegal eviction
What the family is experiencing is called a “self-help eviction,” where landlords help themselves evict an unwanted tenant by cutting off vital utilities and rendering the home uninhabitable.
It’s blatantly illegal, according to Michelle Ewert, a professor at Washburn University School of Law and director of its legal clinic.
“Kansas law clearly prohibits landlords from engaging in illegal eviction by cutting off tenants’ electricity, gas, water, and other essential services,” Ewert said. “If a landlord wants to evict a tenant, they have to serve proper notice, (and if the tenant doesn’t leave) file a lawsuit, and then take steps to properly enforce the judgment. They can’t engage in self-help measures like illegally cutting off services. These illegal evictions are especially dangerous in the winter, when temperatures drop and tenants need heat to keep their homes warm.”
Huffman found out about her landlord’s death on Dec. 13, a Wednesday. The next day, she got a shutoff notice from the city and on Friday the power was disconnected.
Stafford city government can sure move efficiently when it wants to.
The day Huffman got the shutoff notice, “less than 10 minutes later I was at the city office trying to see if there was a way to get it switched into my name,” she said. “Deana (City Treasurer Deana Eisenhour) told me ‘No, that’s not an option.’ They told me it was by family request, that all of the properties (formerly Ron Johnson’s) have the utilities shut off, because they can’t afford to pay them, and all premises be vacated.”
So far, the city’s set on doing what the family says.
“This lady was living in this house rent-free,” asserts City Attorney Don Knappenberger. “And the son got tired of paying the utilities. We have no contract with the tenant and she is kind of a squatter, really.”
It’s more complicated than that. The family has lived in the house for four years, always with permission of the now-deceased owner.
According to Huffman, there was a rental agreement, and she’s been tearing the house apart searching for it.
Huffman works as a home-care attendant. Marlow-Engelhardt is currently looking for a job and tends their three children while she’s at work.
The rent is technically $450 a month, utilities included. But Ron Johnson understood the family was in financial straits and payments were essentially what they could afford, when they could afford it.
Beyond being generous and compassionate, it’s smart, because there’s a certain value to having someone living in a house, even if they’re not the perfect tenants.
For one thing, it keeps meth makers from sneaking into the abandoned house, cooking up a batch, and then burning the place to the ground to cover their tracks, which is not at all uncommon in rural Kansas.
The house is nothing to write home about. About a fourth of the siding is either missing or haphazardly patched because of a fire that happened years ago, before the family got there.
The inside is disarrayed from the combination of poverty, having to vacate without notice, and having two medium-size dogs there during the day, because the family couldn’t take them to their temporary home.
The only electricity on the property right now runs a small space heater for the dogs and it comes through a long extension cord from a neighboring property, owned by Daniel Wallach. Wallach’s had problems of his own with the city and sympathizes with the family’s plight.
You may remember Wallach from a column I wrote in August about the city mowing down a budding nature preserve that he was developing on his property, and the police arresting his partner for chasing off the mower man with a brush knife.
I took a road trip out to Stafford this week to find out what I could.
Riding along with me was state Rep. Leo Delperdang, R-Wichita and chairman of the House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications Committee.
Delperdang wanted to do some fact-finding of his own and try to determine whether there’s a legislative solution to the Stafford mess and problems like it. Delperdang owns rental properties himself and is well aware of the law against forcing tenants to leave by cutting off utilities.
Delperdang said he was thoroughly unimpressed with the not-my-job non-answers we got at City Hall.
“It’s wrong what they’re doing,” Delperdang said. “You can’t just randomly shut off the power to a family like that.”
Who’s in charge?
Huffman and Marlow-Engelhardt could sue whoever’s controlling the property for relief under the law against self-help evictions.
Huffman said she’d rather just talk to the family about making a more orderly exit from the property, but she can’t find out who’s controlling it.
I can’t either.
When a person dies without a will, as Ron Johnson apparently did, an executor is supposed to be appointed to wrap up the estate and distribute the assets to the heirs. That’s supposed to be a matter of public record, but in Stafford, apparently not.
The city refuses to disclose who’s calling the shots and ordered the utilities shut off.
There’s no probate record available at the Stafford County Courthouse. As in most county courts, the computers used to search records statewide have been down since October, so search requests have to be forwarded to Topeka for action.
Huffman’s gone to Ron Johnson’s former house twice since his death, trying to find one of his heirs. But nobody answered the door, even though there was a car in the driveway and lights on in the house, she said.
The law against self-help evictions is one area where Kansas law and simple human decency intersect to protect people who need protection.
Another example is the Kansas Cold Weather Rule, which generally prohibits shutoffs of vital utilities from November to March and sets up payment plans so cash-strapped Kansans can survive the winter.
But that rule only applies to private-sector utilities regulated by the Kansas Corporation Commission.
“They (Stafford officials) told me they don’t have to follow the Cold Weather Rule because it’s a municipal city, so they don’t have to abide by that, and honestly, it kind of seems like they do whatever they want here,” Huffman said.
Kansas Gas Service, the only KCC-regulated utility serving Stafford, agreed not to shut off gas when Huffman called and offered to pick up the bill, she said. But that’s a small consolation because the heater can’t run without electricity.
Delperdang noted that municipal utilities were regulated by the KCC until the 1990s, when the law was changed and they were cut loose to regulate themselves.
If Stafford can’t straighten the current situation out, “I may have to run a bill (at the Legislature) to bring them back under the KCC,” Delperdang said.
That might be the best Christmas present ever for poor people being forced out of their homes and into the street by illegal evictions in the dead of winter.
At the very least, the municipal utilities should have to follow the Cold Weather Rule, like investor-owned utilities do.
Because whether you freeze or not shouldn’t have to depend on where you live and who you have to buy your electricity from.
