The tenants of North Lawn Avenue just took something from Yisroel Levovitz that he cannot refinance his way out of.
On Friday morning, the KCMO Health Department officially suspended the Chicago landlord’s rental license, a direct result of organizing by the North Lawn Tenant Union, which now represents 94 percent of occupied units across his properties in the Historic Northeast. The suspension protects the families living there now and bars Levovitz from renting out a single new unit until critical repairs are made.
But before the news, I want to give you a refresher on the man. You cannot understand what these tenants just won without understanding exactly who they took it from, and the kind of landlord he stands in for.
The people who live in Yisroel Levovitz’s buildings are Burmese refugees, Mexican immigrant families, and Black working-class Kansas Citians, many of them elderly, many of them sick. A blind father. A mother with cancer who cannot breathe in her own kitchen because the vent over her stove has been broken for years. A man on dialysis, exhausted after every treatment, who still patches the holes where the rats come through because no one else will.
These are the tenants Levovitz left without heat through Kansas City winters, without hot water for weeks while a son boiled pots on the stove to bathe his parents, without power for a month of summer heat that can kill an old body in an afternoon, until families were sleeping in their cars and sending their children away.
He knew who lived in those buildings. He knew what the cold and the heat and the sewage do to people in such conditions. Call it neglect and you flatter him, as neglect is passive.
This was a decision, made season after season, that the people in his homes were not worth the cost of keeping alive. He left them to die and called it business.
Just yesterday, the City showed up to the apartment complex in force. Six councilmembers, Wes Rogers, Eric Bunch, Crispin Rea, Darryl Curls, Andrea Bough, and Johnathan Duncan, walked the property alongside City Manager Mario Vasquez, Assistant City Managers Diane Binckley and Lace Cline, and a dozen other City staff.
They heard from tenants who have been sleeping in their cars since a June 10 electrical outage left six families without power, many whom remain displaced today. They heard from tenants who have paid out of their own pockets to keep their units livable while Levovitz pulled $1.7 million in cash out of the buildings through a 2025 refinance.
It has been a month of open warfare on North Lawn.
As The Defender reported in June, the union marched Levovitz to the bargaining table on June 11 and won terms: new leases, rent freezes, a binding repair timeline. The ceasefire lasted two weeks. On June 25 he tore up the agreement, declaring he would make no repairs and that every tenant needed to leave. So on Monday, the eight original tenant families who won collectively bargained leases in 2023 opened a second front in the courts, filing the union’s first breach of contract lawsuits against him, with more legal action promised.
Then came the City’s most shameful hour. On Tuesday, KCMO’s Public Safety Task Force arrived with police and swept door to door, telling families to pack and be out within 24 hours. Officials posted a red DO NOT ENTER sign on the door, then took it down. Then the City retreated, confirming to the union that the buildings were never being condemned and no one had to leave. But the panic was already loose in the halls, in homes where elders with cancer and blindness had been told they had a day to disappear.
The tenants held the line. At an emergency meeting that night, they answered the way they have answered for three years, in Burmese, in Spanish, in English: Ma Twa Bu. No nos iremos. We won’t go.
Levovitz, for his part, is in retreat, trying to unload all 100 units in his Kansas City portfolio, marketing rotting buildings with AI-generated photographs of bedrooms that do not exist. The union has a message for any interested buyer, and a set of demands still on the table: no condemnation of the North Lawn buildings, the tenants’ right of first refusal in any sale, and a face-to-face meeting with Mayor Quinton Lucas and City Manager Vasquez no later than July 15.
The license came down Friday. The tenants are still home.
This is a developing story.
Questions About This Story
On July 10, 2026, the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department suspended the rental license of Yisroel Levovitz of Wiser KC LLC following sustained organizing by the North Lawn Tenant Union, which represents 94 percent of occupied units at his North Lawn Avenue properties. The suspension bars Levovitz from renting out new units until critical repairs are made and protects the tenants currently living in the buildings.
The North Lawn Tenant Union is a tenant union in Kansas City’s Historic Northeast, organized with KC Tenants. Eight original tenant households won collectively bargained leases and the strongest lease protections in Missouri in 2023, then tripled their membership in 2026 by organizing neighbors across every occupied building under Wiser KC LLC’s ownership on their block.
On July 6, 2026, the eight original tenant families who signed collectively bargained leases in 2023 filed breach of contract lawsuits against Yisroel Levovitz, covering his failure to provide habitable conditions and language accessibility required by their contracts. The union says these lawsuits are the first step in a broader legal strategy.
On July 7, 2026, KCMO’s Public Safety Task Force arrived with police, told tenants to pack and vacate within 24 hours, and posted a DO NOT ENTER sign that was later removed. The City then confirmed the buildings were not being condemned. On July 9, six councilmembers, City Manager Mario Vasquez, two assistant city managers, and a dozen City staff visited the property and heard directly from tenants. The Health Department suspended Levovitz’s rental license the next morning.
The union is demanding that the City commit to not condemning the buildings at 135 through 137 and 118 through 148 North Lawn Avenue, that it exhaust all avenues to hold Levovitz accountable including securing tenants’ right of first refusal in any sale, and that Mayor Quinton Lucas and City Manager Mario Vasquez meet with tenants no later than July 15, 2026.
