When KC Tenants began organizing against housing injustice in Missouri, they were already mad as hell. Even before the wrecking ball of Covid-19, Kansas City was a terrible place to be a tenant. Landlords were evicting over 9,000 people a year. And that’s just a fraction of the true number, with many more evictions occurring informally outside of the court system.
The organizers who led the founding of the group in 2019 each had a horror story: from getting evicted after a cancer diagnosis to homes with no heat or sanitation to HUD funds squandered by local landlords, the list went on. And it sure wasn’t a coincidence which communities were losing their housing. In Kansas City, race is the number one predictor of eviction.
Women of color in Kansas City, especially mothers, have long felt the system is stacked against them. So when a charismatic young organizer presented the opportunity to fight back, they swung into action. WE, THE TENANTS follows the story of how a group of tenants, accustomed to shame and silence, harnessed a fierce political power no one could have expected. This film will follow their journey as they fight to make housing a human right in America, once and for all.
