The water comes up through the bathroom floor in Tina McDonald’s apartment, seeping into the hallway where her father walks. He has Alzheimer’s. The floor stays wet. McDonald watches him constantly, terrified he’ll slip, fall, crack his skull open on the tile.
“Every month, I pay $1,079 for my apartment with roaches and holes in my daughter’s ceiling,” said tenant Lean Nelson, “and just this week, I received a notice from management threatening me with eviction.”
Six floors up, Shelley Bell counts the stairs. One, two, three… forty-two, forty-three. She has bone cancer. Both elevators are broken again. She needs groceries. Her legs scream. This is what it costs to eat when you’re sick and your landlord is Charles Hill.
This is Bowen Tower in Raytown, Missouri, where 92 families, most of them Black, elderly, and disabled, are waging the first rent strike in the city’s history. Where a California-based real estate investor has turned a apartment building into a pressure cooker of neglect, extraction, and retaliation. Where tenants have said enough.
And where, as of Wednesday, October 22nd, that landlord escalated to open warfare: filing 11 new evictions in a single day against striking tenants, adding to 15 evictions already in motion. Twenty-six families now face homelessness for the crime of demanding heat in winter, water that doesn’t flood their homes, and rent they can afford.
This is a story about corporate landlords who brag about “changing the tenant profile”, a euphemism so transparent it insults the intelligence. This is a story about what happens when poor Black people are priced out of Kansas City and pushed to Raytown, only to find the same extraction machine waiting for them there. This is a story about elder abuse as business model.
But it’s also a story about power. About 64% of a building standing up together. About $34,000 in withheld rent every month. About 100 people in the street chanting while tenants burn their late-fee notices. About what happens when people who are supposed to disappear quietly decide instead to fight.
THE EXTRACTION MACHINE
Charles Hill doesn’t live in Bowen Tower. He doesn’t live in Raytown. He doesn’t even live in Missouri. Hill operates out of California as the principal of Alta Real Estate Investments, also known as CGHS Real Estate, a private equity firm that specializes in what they call “value-add” properties.
Their website is admirably honest about what this means. Alta Real Estate boasts about their business model, which “relies on ‘changing the tenant profile.'” They buy “distressed properties”, buildings full of poor and working-class tenants paying below-market rent, then systematically drive out the existing residents to bring in tenants who will pay more.
The playbook is simple: Let maintenance collapse. Raise rent 15%. File evictions. Wait for people to leave. Renovate empty units. Rent them higher. Repeat.
Alta purchased Bowen Tower and began executing this strategy with ruthless efficiency. Last year, Hill raised rents by over 15%—$193 more per month for McDonald, enough to choose between food and lights. Then the building started falling apart, or more accurately, Hill stopped fixing what broke.
No heat in winter. No air conditioning in summer. No hot water for a week. Broken elevators, sometimes both at once, stranding disabled and elderly tenants on upper floors. Flooding. Mold. Bedbugs. Roaches. Holes in ceilings. Water seeping through floors.
According to a recent Local Initiatives Support Corporation report, out-of-state corporate ownership of apartment buildings has devastated the Kansas City region, with firms like Alta extracting wealth from working-class communities while providing substandard housing. For tenants priced out of Kansas City—where median rents have skyrocketed—Raytown was supposed to be a refuge. Instead, they found the same predatory capital waiting for them.
For Bowen Tower’s tenants, many of whom are disabled, elderly, and Black, displacement from Raytown would mean having nowhere else to turn in the metro. This is the endgame of “changing the tenant profile”: Black elders on the street, investment property values up, another neighborhood conquered by capital.
“WE WERE FORCED TO LIVE WITHOUT HOT WATER FOR OVER A WEEK”
The breaking point came in May 2025.
Charles Hill forced every tenant in Bowen Tower to go without hot water or gas for over a week. No showers. No cooking. No hot water to clean dishes or wash hands properly. In a building full of elderly and immunocompromised people during a pandemic era, this was more than an inconvenience. It was a health crisis.
Tenants started talking to each other. Then they started organizing.
By July 5th, 2025, with support from KC Tenants—the citywide tenant union that’s become a powerhouse in regional housing justice fights—Bowen Tower Tenant Union officially launched as Raytown’s first-ever tenant union. Within weeks, 52% of tenants had signed union cards. That number would grow to 64%, representing 47 of the 73 occupied units.
Their demands were not radical: permanent repairs to plumbing, HVAC, and elevators; regular maintenance; a cap on rent increases; recognition of the tenant union; protection against evictions and lease non-renewals. They wanted what everyone deserves: safe, stable, affordable homes.
On August 1st, after tenants held a rally outside the building, Charles Hill agreed to meet with union members. In that meeting, Hill made a promise: he would return to the bargaining table for formal negotiations over the union’s demands.
Joe Mount was sitting right next to him when Hill said it. Mount remembers every word.
Hill never came back.
THE GHOSTING
August became September. The union tried to schedule meetings. Hill didn’t respond. Property management offered platitudes but no negotiation. Meanwhile, conditions deteriorated.
Multiple units flooded. Water outages continued. The elevators kept breaking. Maintenance requests went unanswered for days, sometimes weeks. The mold spread. The bedbugs spread. And every month, rent was due—for homes that were barely livable.
On September 3rd, tenants held another rally and took “escalated action” to pressure Hill into negotiations. He filed evictions on over a dozen tenants instead.
Alta Real Estate’s management company called the police on tenants for organizing. They sent letters claiming tenants couldn’t hold union meetings on the property. They threatened evictions for anyone who spoke up.
“Charles Hill and his company are doing everything they can to beat us down from calling the police on us to trying to evict us,” said Cynthia Barlow, a tenant leader. “They have been trying to evict me since February. I am never going to stop fighting, and I am going to stay in my home.”
On September 29th, the Bowen Tower Tenant Union held a vote. Silent ballots. Elected bargaining teams. Democratic process. They authorized a rent strike—organized, collective withholding of rent to force the landlord to negotiate.
The union sent notification to Hill on Monday, September 30th, giving him one final chance to come to the table before close of business Tuesday. The message was clear: negotiate, or the rent strike launches October 1st.
Hill’s response came from property management: corporate doublespeak, no commitment to bargain. Not sufficient to call off the strike.
On Wednesday, October 1st—the day rent was due across America—Raytown made history. The Bowen Tower Tenant Union launched the city’s first-ever rent strike. A majority of tenants committed to withhold at least $34,000 in rent. That evening, over 100 community members rallied outside Bowen Tower. Tenants burned their retaliatory late-fee notices in defiance.
“Kids lie, men keep their word,” Joe Mount told the crowd, calling out Hill’s broken promise. “Charles Hill, we demand you fulfill your commitment to negotiate with our union.”
THE RETALIATION
For 17 days, the strike held.
On October 17th—day 18 of the strike—over 75 tenants, neighbors, and allies picketed outside Bowen Tower, protesting Hill’s campaign of retaliation. Hill had been filing evictions, adding $160 late fees, refusing to negotiate. The union held the line.
Then came Wednesday, October 22nd.
In a single day, Charles Hill and Alta/CGHS Real Estate filed at least 11 new evictions against striking tenants. Combined with the 15 evictions Hill had previously filed, that’s 26 families facing displacement—over half the building’s occupied units.
This is what retaliation looks like when a landlord has the full weight of property law behind him: mass eviction filings designed to terrorize tenants into submission, to break the strike, to restore the extraction machine’s smooth operation.
But the Bowen Tower Tenant Union isn’t breaking.
“Charles Hill and Alta/CGHS Real Estate have repeatedly violated our leases by failing to maintain safe and livable homes,” the union said in a statement released Thursday. “Mr. Hill broke his promise to meet with our union and negotiate in good faith, despite our multiple attempts to schedule. Our goal has always been a prompt resolution to the strike that results in the safe and affordable homes we deserve. Every single day is an opportunity for Mr. Hill to meet with us and come to an agreement that can de-escalate the strike.”
The union has called for an escalated direct action on October 30th at 6pm to protest the eviction filings. The fight continues.
“THIS IS OUR HOME. WE ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE.”
Elijah Brink has lived in Raytown his whole life. His family has owned and operated their business here since 1970. This is not a waystation or a temporary address. This is home.
“Charles Hill and Alta/CGHS Real Estate want to displace poor and working class tenants from Raytown,” Brink said at the October 17th picket. “I have lived in Raytown my whole life. My family has owned and operated our business here since 1970. This is my home, and I am not going anywhere.”
That refusal—I am not going anywhere—is the foundation of the Bowen Tower Tenant Union’s power. It’s the same refusal that animated the Harlem rent strikes of 1963-64, the same refusal that drives tenant organizing from Los Angeles to New York. The refusal to be disappeared. The refusal to accept that housing is a commodity rather than a human right. The refusal to let capital decide who belongs in a community.
The Bowen Tower strike is the third rent strike supported by KC Tenants, following strikes at Quality Hill Towers and Independence Towers that launched on October 1st, 2024. The Independence Towers strike was a resounding victory: tenants withheld rent for eight months and negotiated a signed agreement with their new landlord in June 2025, winning permanent repairs, rent stabilization, and eviction protections.
That victory was a combination of strategy, solidarity, and the willingness to withhold the one thing landlords need: rent money.
Now Bowen Tower tenants are deploying the same strategy. They’re organized, 64% union density is extraordinary. They’re strategic, $34,000 monthly is enough to hurt Hill’s bottom line significantly. They’re public, press releases, rallies, direct actions that shame the landlord and build community support. And they’re clear about their demands: permanent repairs, rent caps, eviction protections, and tenant right of first refusal if Hill tries to sell.
“We started organizing the Bowen Tower Tenant Union because we refused to live in squalor,” said Cynthia Barlow. “We are on rent strike today because we want to show Charles Hill we are not just numbers on a spreadsheet, we are people. We refuse to let Charles Hill displace us from our homes for his own profit.”
THE STAKES
What’s happening at Bowen Tower is a microcosm of a national crisis.
Corporate landlords, many backed by private equity, have spent the last decade buying up affordable housing, raising rents, cutting maintenance, and displacing working-class tenants, particularly Black and brown tenants, to maximize returns for investors. They call it “value-add investment.” Tenants call it violence.
In Kansas City and across the metro, this violence accelerates as the affordable housing stock disappears. Tenants priced out of KCMO move to Independence, Raytown, Grandview. But corporate landlords follow them there, buying buildings, raising rents, starting the displacement cycle again.
For Black elders at Bowen Tower, many on fixed incomes, many with disabilities, displacement from Raytown could mean homelessness. It could mean moving hundreds of miles from family, from doctors, from community. It could mean dying far from home.
This is why Alta Real Estate’s business model, “changing the tenant profile”, is not just extraction but elimination. It’s a strategy to remove poor and working-class people, especially Black people, from communities where land values are rising. It’s state-sanctioned social cleansing through market mechanisms.
And it’s why the Bowen Tower Tenant Union’s resistance matters far beyond one building in Raytown.
Every tenant who stays is a disruption of that model. Every dollar withheld is a redistribution of power. Every eviction defense fought is a refusal to let capital have the final word on who belongs where. Every victory won, like Independence Towers, proves that organized tenants can win against corporate landlords.
The Bowen Tower strike is an abolitionist fight: a fight to abolish housing as a commodity, to abolish the landlord’s power to extract and displace, to abolish the logic that says people like Charles Hill should profit from the desperation of people like Tina McDonald and Shelley Bell.
THE FIGHT AHEAD
As of this writing, the Bowen Tower Tenant Union is 23 days into the strike. They face 26 eviction cases. They have an escalated direct action planned for October 30th. And they show no signs of backing down.
Charles Hill could end this strike today. He could sit down with the union and negotiate in good faith as he promised on August 1st. He could agree to make permanent repairs, cap rent increases, and stop filing retaliatory evictions. The tenants have made clear that every single day is an opportunity for Hill to de-escalate.
But Hill seems intent on a different path: escalation through eviction, betting that the courts will restore his power to extract and displace. It’s a strategy that’s worked for corporate landlords across America, backed by a legal system that treats housing as property rather than as a human right.
What Hill may not have accounted for is the tenants’ refusal to be broken. Or the organizing power of KC Tenants, which has built a track record of winning seemingly impossible fights. Or the growing movement of tenant unions across the country that are transforming how working-class people fight back against landlord abuse.
“While we stand up and fight for our homes, Charles Hill and his company are doing everything they can to beat us down,” said Cynthia Barlow, who has been fighting an eviction since February. “They have been trying to evict me since February. I am never going to stop fighting, and I am going to stay in my home.”
That’s the message Charles Hill needs to hear. These tenants are not leaving. They’re not backing down. They’re not numbers on a spreadsheet.
They’re the Bowen Tower Tenant Union. And they’re not going anywhere.
The Bowen Tower Tenant Union will take escalated direct action on Wednesday, October 30th at 6pm at Bowen Tower Apartments (6140 Raytown Road, Raytown, MO 64133). Community members are invited to show solidarity.
For more information or to support the strike: KC Tenants, kctenants.org
The Kansas City Defender stands in solidarity with the Bowen Tower Tenant Union and all tenants fighting for housing justice.
