KSHB 41 reporter Rachel Henderson covers neighborhoods in Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties. Share your story idea with Rachel.
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Housing advocates say each year they watch Wyandotte County residents nearly lose their homes in the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas’ tax sale.
“Every time, we are scrambling to find money to help people right up until the deadline,” said Dustin Hare, who volunteers with the Community Health Council of Wyandotte County.
The group works to address the impacts of redlining on disenfranchised parts of Wyandotte County.
Hare said he was chatting with a member of Groundwork NRG, another KCK-based organization, about the implications of the tax sale.
“There was sort of an idea that maybe it was just vacant homes that were being sold in the tax sale, and she questioned that and said, ‘Are regular people maybe losing their homes?’' And so we started checking that out," Hare said.
Four years later, their findings aligned with the data they already had from the Community Health Council's annual Health Equity Action Transformation (H.E.A.T.) report.
“East of 635 is where we’ve seen the highest concentration of properties that are in danger of being sold in the tax sale consistently,” Hare said. “We continue to see not just disinvestment, but refusal to invest in those neighborhoods, even today.”
Since 2021, Hare and his team have identified 85 homeowners at risk of losing their homes in the UG’s tax sale and found funding for all of them.
“The first tax sale we saw, I think it was 85% people of color were in danger of losing their homes, and that’s sort of been [a] trend throughout,” Hare said.
This year, he identified 13 people. Two of them ended up seeking funding elsewhere, but an anonymous donor paid for the remaining 11.
“What we found is almost every single one of those people is on a fixed income,” Hare said. “Either they're disabled or are on social security. They've aged out of the workforce.”
Laura Kane is one of those people Hare's group has helped.
She’s been living in her Wyandotte County home for 23 years. A former bus driver, Kane had to stop working due to health concerns.
In June 2024, she was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
“I don’t get much on disability, so it wouldn’t really be much as far as paying rent and being able to survive,” Kane said.
She was eventually served papers warning her that her home was up for sale.
Kane owed approximately $8,000 in unpaid property taxes.
“I was asking for a miracle, praying a lot, and one Sunday afternoon, Mr. Dustin knocked on my door and told me about his program,” Kane said. “I cried because of the stress being relieved off of me.”
The Unified Government sends out eight different tax statement warnings for fourth-year delinquent taxes.
To get out of the tax sale, residents must either pay taxes in full or pay half of the taxes owed and get a payment plan with the UG through the Delinquent Real Estate Office.
Kane said she was on a payment plan but wasn’t notified she was supposed to pay the full amount owed.
“I was very stressed, very down emotionally,” Kane said. “I didn’t know where I was going to go.”
Kane said she wishes Wyandotte County had more programs to help people.
The Unified Government said it’s ready to help people who are having trouble paying their taxes.
Hare explained there are both municipal and state-level solutions that could help more people.
One suggestion is to alter the current Unified Government charter resolution CR-01-12, which says delinquent tax payments are applied to the most recent delinquent tax year instead of the year of the first missed payment.
Hare said that puts residents like Kane in a bind.
“They have to come up with this lump sum of cash all at once to make themselves whole,” Hare said. “A lot of bad implications come with being forced to come up with money that you don’t have.”
Hare is already bracing for the next tax sale.
“There will probably be another tax sale in the fall," Hare said. "Right now, we have no funding identified for that So, we’ll be doing this again, and if we can’t find funding, yes, people will lose their homes.”
Hare said the likelihood of people getting on their feet without homes to live in is slim.
“If you lose your home in the tax sale, there’s a good chance that it’s a death sentence,” Hare said.
His volunteering is work he wishes he didn’t have to do, but it’s necessary for the foreseeable future.
“I wish we lived in a system that would take care of our most vulnerable people and we wouldn’t have to do this work,” Hare said.
As for Kane, she wants her cancer evicted, not herself.
"That’s been my inside joke is I’m gonna evict it," Kane said. "It’s outta here."
She’s looking ahead with optimism and gratitude.
“Just don't give up hope,” Kane said. “There's hope out there.”
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