GOP-controlled MO House passes bill banning local governments from halting evictions

The Republican-controlled Missouri House on Monday passed a bill that would ban local governments from issuing eviction moratoriums as lawmakers take aim at housing laws in Kansas City and St. Louis.

The legislation, filed by Rep. Chris Brown, a Kansas City Republican who also co-owns a family real-estate business, enjoys the support of landlord and realty groups, such as the Missouri Association of Realtors. It would prohibit county and local governments from imposing or enforcing a moratorium on eviction proceedings unless approved by state law.

The House approved the bill in a 111-26 vote with 15 Democratic lawmakers voting “present.”

Rep. Chad Perkins, a Bowling Green Republican who voted in favor of the bill, said on the floor Monday that municipalities enacted eviction moratoriums “the first time they got a chance,” an apparent reference to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Like a thief in the night, those municipalities swept in and took those authorities away from the property owner,” Perkins said. “This is a property rights bill at its base.”

The legislation comes nearly four years after the Jackson County Circuit Court temporarily halted evictions amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar bills in Missouri have long faced resistance from tenant advocacy groups that argue the legislation places landlord profits over renters’ lives.

“It is regressive,” said Tara Raghuveer, the director of KC Tenants, a group that advocates for renters. Raghuveer pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that eviction moratoriums were an important life-saving measure at the time.

“It shows a concerning lack of learning from a time that I think could have taught us very important lessons about how to care for one another and our neighbors and our communities,” Raghuveer said.

Health Forward Foundation, a Kansas City-based health care advocacy group, testified against the legislation last month saying that it limits local governments’ abilities to meet the needs of their communities during public health crises.

“Because of the moratoria across the US in place during the COVID-19 outbreak, people who may have been otherwise exposed to the virus were safely sheltered in homes,” the group said in written testimony. “It had real, beneficial outcomes for people’s health.”

The organization said that eviction moratoriums were also a key tool to help reduce health disparities by race.

The legislation now heads to the Missouri Senate, where its future is unclear as senators have yet to pass a single bill this year amid GOP infighting.

Monday’s vote comes as Missouri Republican lawmakers are also pushing separate legislation that would ban local governments from requiring landlords to rent to people who pay rent with federal housing assistance.

Lawmakers held a hearing on that bill, filed by Rep. Ben Keathley, a Chesterfield Republican, late last month. It comes on the heels of a new Kansas City ordinance that requires landlords to rent to people who pay the bulk of their rent with federal housing assistance vouchers. The federal government’s Section 8 program pays 70% of the rent for low-income people who qualify.

Seventeen states, 21 counties and 85 cities had laws as of September 2022 prohibiting landlords from refusing to accept housing choice vouchers or from discriminating against renters based on their source of income, according to previous reporting.

“I don’t think it’s right for government to be injecting itself and telling landlords you must accept these types of voucher systems and all the regulation and controls that go along with them,” Keathley said in an interview.

While much of the debate on the two Missouri bills has centered on landlord groups and tenant organizations, critics say they’re also the latest example of Republican-led legislation that attempts to strong-arm local officials in Democratic-leaning cities.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas in a statement on Monday said that the Kansas City housing assistance ordinance, which goes into effect in August, struck a balance between housing more families and securing protections for housing providers.

“Kansas City will be a better place because of this policy,” Lucas said. “I urge lawmakers in Jefferson City to respect the broad consensus this compromise policy secured at the local level.”

But Stacey Johnson-Cosby, the president of a coalition of landlord groups called the Kansas City Regional Housing Alliance, pushed back against the Kansas City ordinance. She predicted it will cause landlords who offer affordable housing to sell their properties, resulting in rent skyrocketing.

“It is ridiculous for the government to overreach and try to put limits on small local businesses,” said Johnson-Crosby, who supports both Missouri bills. “That, to me, just doesn’t make sense. It’s an anti-business law.”

Eviction moratoriums in Missouri

More than 25,000 eviction filings have been made in Kansas City since mid-March 2020, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. There were 9,051 filings in the past year.

The legislation targeting eviction moratoriums comes in response to local agencies such as the circuit courts in Jackson County and St. Louis that temporarily halted evictions in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In March 2020, Jackson County Circuit Court temporarily suspended the issuance of writs for two months to protect the health of the public and court employees. In landlord-tenant cases, writs are delivered by process servers to tenants requiring the tenant to be evicted from the property, according to previous reporting.

St. Louis Circuit Court suspended eviction proceedings from mid-March 2020 through July 2020. The St. Louis City Council later passed a 15-day eviction moratorium in December 2021.

Missouri never implemented a statewide eviction moratorium.

Brown, the bill sponsor, said little about the legislation on the floor on Monday other than clarifying that local governments would only be able to enact eviction moratoriums if allowed by state law or an order from the governor.

The bill, he said, appeared to have support from some members of both parties.

But for Raghuveer from KC tenants, both Missouri housing bills lay the groundwork for overreach of state government into local matters. They both come, she said, from an industry that’s trying to “preempt progress” by taking local issues to state lawmakers.

“They’re deeply related,” Raghuveer said of the two bills. “When tenants and local communities are making moves in the direction of sound policy and progressive policy, they’re taking their complaints to the state.”