Prominent Wichita landlord won’t accept city’s rent assistance; tenants face eviction

She says she lived with spiders in her apartment last summer and no heat this winter. And now a Wichita woman has been threatened with eviction by a landlord who won’t accept payment from the city’s emergency rental assistance program.

Melissa Behrens, 47, lives at Water’s Edge Apartments at 400 W. Central, one of the largest apartment complexes in Wichita. Last week, she received a three-day notice of eviction. She was told she has to come up with $747 of her own money for back rent payments, plus interest penalties, or move out, she said.

City officials said at least two other tenants at Water’s Edge rely on city assistance to pay rent. Court records show landlords have filed evictions against at least 23 renters at Water’s Edge this month.

Behrens said she worries about other renters across the city whose apartments have the same owner — Oklahoma City-based Lew McGinnis, who owns Eucalyptus Real Estate.

McGinnis, through a complicated network of shell LLCs, owns apartment buildings across Kansas and Oklahoma, including at least 25 in Wichita. None of those properties is renewing landlord agreements with the city to accept emergency rental assistance payments.

City officials say landlords do not have to accept Wichita Emergency Rental Assistance Program (WERAP) payments. They confirmed to The Eagle that they have received several complaints from renters and offered to help relocate tenants who are facing similar circumstances this month. They would not say how many people have been affected or how many landlords are refusing to accept WERAP payments.

The federally funded WERAP program, which launched in February 2021, offers up to 18 months of rent and utilities assistance for low-income tenants who have suffered economically during the pandemic.

Jason Rogers, a lawyer for Eucalyptus Real Estate, said Water’s Edge and other Eucalyptus properties would be happy to accept the WERAP payments but not under new terms added to the agreement by the city’s housing department.

Rogers said extended delays in the processing of government rent assistance payments are nothing new. But the recent change in the city’s landlord agreement specifying that tenants cannot be evicted within 60 days for failure to pay rent goes too far, he said.

“Obviously, that is not something that any landlord would find attractive because that would then essentially let a tenant live rent-free for a period of months and be contractually bound to do that,” Rogers said.

Na’shell Williams, program coordinator at the Wichita Sedgwick County Community Action Partnership, said she thinks some property owners are misreading the terms of that agreement. She said some landlords have interpreted that to mean the government program gives tenants immunity from eviction, which isn’t the case.

“I think they’re just misinformed,” Williams said. “From what I’ve been told, they reviewed our landlord certification where it tells you that you cannot evict a tenant for 60 days. Most landlords are thinking that you can’t evict them for 60 days for any [reason], which isn’t the truth.”

If tenants are damaging property, failing to meet curfew, or otherwise violating the terms of their lease, they can still be evicted.

“You shouldn’t evict them for payment because we’re paying you,” Williams said.

“Last time I checked, it was all green and had presidents on it no matter who it came from.”

Rogers said Eucalyptus will still accept rental assistance money from tenants. They just won’t sign any more WERAP agreements with the city that carve out a two-month grace period.

City spokesperson Megan Lovely said paying tenants directly is an option. It would require additional paperwork and potential delays.

“Typically, we do pay landlords directly but there are exceptions,” Lovely said. “In the event that the landlord does not want to participate, but indicates they will accept payment from the tenant directly, WERAP will move forward with remitting payment to the tenant directly and request a receipt of payment to the landlord prior to queuing or remitting any future rent payments.”

Some of the larger apartment complexes owned by McGinnis include Barclay Square, Villa Del Mar, Magnolia Woods, Kingsborough, Chalet, Rockborough, Eastborough, Park Vista, Cedar Lakes, Twin Rivers, Village Park and Elms.

A horrible year

Behrens and her husband, Jeramy, fell on hard times when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March 2020 — and things have only gotten worse since then.

Behrens, who was a bartender, and her husband, who was a mason, both lost their jobs because of COVID-19 business shutdowns.

They began tapping into the city’s financial aid to make rent payments in 2021. Without the assistance, Behrens said she will have to move in with a relative.

“I had a horrible year,” Behrens said.

Behrens suffers from congestive heart failure and had a massive heart attack earlier this year that required surgery.

In September, Behrens’ husband — who was 39 — died of heart failure. Behrens and her sister, Cindy Hicks, say they suspect his death could be linked to a spider infestation at Water’s Edge Apartments.

Jeramy Behrens’ autopsy report lists his official cause of death as atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease but notes that he “had recently been examined for spider bites at an emergency department” and in the past two or three days had been experiencing congestion, vomiting, fever and breathing problems. He tested negative for COVID-19, according to the autopsy.

“In the months prior, the apartment complex was overrun with spiders, and he had been getting a whole bunch of spider bites and eventually got so sick that he had to go to the emergency room,” Hicks said.

“So the night before he died, he was bitten by a spider again, and he had heart disease, but he had no symptoms of it. No shortness of breath, no tingling arms, no chest pain,” Hicks said. “But he just suddenly died the next morning.”

“It wasn’t due to spiders, but spider bites contributed to it,” Behrens said. “Everybody there was trying to get them to exterminate, and they wouldn’t come exterminate.”

Spiders aren’t the only problem at Water’s Edge, Behrens said.

“I went the entire winter heating my apartment with a little bitty one-foot space heater because the landlords couldn’t get the heater fixed,” she said.

Rogers said Water’s Edge has a pest control policy and takes regular pest control measures at the apartment complex. He said management tries to address any renters’ complaints about heating and air within 24 hours.

Behrens said the landlords are making her choose between paying for heart medicine or paying rent that the city has already offered to cover.

Lew McGinnis and his daughter and business partner, Megan McGinnis, did not return repeated requests for comment Monday.

Reports of poor conditions at McGinnis-owned apartments are not new. The Topeka Capital Journal reported last year that tenants in McGinnis’s roughly 35 Topeka complexes have routinely dealt with maintenance issues, including mold-covered vents, rotten floor boards and faulty heating and cooling units.

Housing stability

Hicks has been helping her sister navigate the eviction, which Behrens plans to fight in court. She said her sister and others on the city’s rental assistance program make easy targets for landlords and may not understand their rights as tenants. She worries others may not be able to fight back.

At least 23 renters at Water’s Edge were served with eviction notices this month, with unpaid rent ranging from $277 to $1,490, according to Eagle research of Sedgwick County court filings.

“If you evict somebody, you have to give 60 days after the last payment,” Hicks said. “They received her (Behrens’) last payment on February 28, so they could have illegally evicted all of these people. But they’re poor, and don’t have counsel, so how do they know that? They’re just thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I’m so scared. I have to get out of my place, I have to find a place to live, what am I going to do? Am I going to live on the streets?”

Hicks said her sister didn’t know that she could fight to stay in her apartment.

“In her mind, her only choice was to get out,” Hicks said. “And I’m like, no, that’s not your only choice.”

“I can always move in with one of my kids until I get a place,” Behrens said. “But there are people out here that don’t have those options.”

Williams, with Wichita Sedgwick County Community Action Partnership, agreed that renters do not have to move out within three days of receiving a three-day eviction notice.

“A three-day eviction notice doesn’t hold,” Williams said. “A three-day eviction notice is just a notice saying I’m going to start filing for an eviction in three days. You still have to go through court proceedings. You still have to go in front of a judge.”

Once a landlord files for eviction, the tenant is served by an officer and has to appear before a judge.

“It usually allows you about 20 to 30 days,” Williams said.

She said the Water’s Edge owners aren’t the only landlords who have refused to accept WERAP money from the city. Some have said they don’t want to renew the tenant’s lease. Others aren’t willing to wait for a government check to process.

If landlords won’t accept the rent assistance, WERAP can still pay tenants’ utility bills. And if that doesn’t work out, Williams said the city’s housing stability program can help them find somewhere else to live.

“It’s not an end all of, if your landlord is not willing to take payments then you are out on the street,” Williams said.

This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 4:10 PM.