photo by: Nomin Ujiyediin/Kansas News Service

Kansas law is supposed to protect tenants and landlords from each other. But some tenants say landlords come out on top too often.

Two-thirds of Douglas County renters surveyed last year by advocates and KU researchers said their rents had risen over two years, and many of them said it took them several months and multiple applications to find a place to live.

That’s according to the recently released report on the Tenant Experience Survey, which KU’s Life Span Institute and the LiveWell Sexual Violence Prevention Work Group conducted from July to October of 2023. The survey was intended to find out more about renters in Douglas County at a time when more and more Lawrence residents are renting.

Citing previous Douglas County Community Health Assessment statistics, the report says that 48% of area households are renters, and that roughly 49% of area renters are “cost-burdened,” meaning that a third or more of their income goes toward paying their rent.

The survey asked 1,051 renters in Douglas County about the quality of their housing, how much they pay for rent and how difficult it is to find rental housing in the first place. Two-thirds of them said their rent had gone up in the 24 months before they were surveyed, and 48% of those whose rent went up said the increase was $100 or more per month.

Not only did many respondents say their rents were rising, but many also reported difficulties in finding housing in the first place. It took an average of three months and five applications for survey respondents to secure a rental.

Additionally, 45.5% of respondents reported that they had felt unsafe in their rental home at one time or another, which could include feeling unsafe in the neighborhood or feeling threatened by their landlord and management.

Although the report found that 72% of the respondents had a respectful relationship with their landlord, Christina Holt, assistant director at the Center for Community Health and Development at the KU Life Span Institute, said 90 respondents — about 9% — said that their landlord had verbally harassed them, called them names, threatened or intimidated them. Holt noted the majority of those respondents had an annual household income less than $35,600 — well below Lawrence’s median household income of $66,000.

“The stories that came in through those surveys were just really heartbreaking,” Holt said.

Some of those stories are presented in the report in the respondents’ own words. Some wrote about having difficulty finding an accessible apartment that would accommodate their disabilities; others reported feeling anxiety and fear about asking their landlord for repairs; one even said they had to sell personal belongings online to afford their rent.

“It is becoming untenable, and I may have to leave Lawrence permanently because I can no longer afford to live here,” one respondent’s quote reads.

In addition to breaking down the survey results, the report also made some recommendations for helping renters in Lawrence, including adding a rent control or stabilization ordinance, creating a Tenant Bill of Rights and implementing more inclusive screening practices.

The Sexual Violence Prevention Work Group is a local coalition of advocates, people with lived experience, government representatives and other stakeholders which has advocated for improved rental protections. The survey effort received additional funding support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.