Renter Revolt: Housing and Human Rights in America’s Heartland documentary sheds national spotlight on KC Tenants

Jenay Manley at a KC Tenants rally // photo by Adrian Herrera

The efforts of KC Tenants received national attention in Isabel Evans’ documentary, Renter Revolt: Housing and Human Rights in America’s Heartland, made for TIME in partnership with the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and Pulitzer Center.

Evans, a documentary filmmaker based in New York, initially wanted to get into print journalism. But during her time at VICE Media straight out of college, she realized that she was more passionate about video and film media, and liked how it could be used to bring something to life with all of the senses.

“I’ve loved stories that are really, you know, people-focused and the characters drive the narrative,” says Evans. “And the other projects I’ve worked on tend to be very much kind of letting characters speak for themselves . And there’s so many incredible characters in Kansas City and among KC Tenants and the opponents of the tenants and the landlords. It’s a very, like, dynamic mix of people with very passionate opinions. So it was very easy to kind of become obsessed with the people as characters, which is always kind of weird in documentaries to think of people as characters.”

She’s mostly worked as a producer, frequently working with documentary filmmakers Jesse Moss and Erin Lee Carr. This makes Renter Revolt the first documentary that she’s directed herself.

KC Tenants logo at a rally // photo by Adrian Herrera

Evans did work on the second season of the Netflix series Dirty Money, and the episode “Slumlord Millionaire” was about Kusher Companies’ predatory practices against renters. This episode specifically sparked her interest in the housing issue, along with just seeing how housing affects people.

“I’ve found the political discussion is a very interesting one, because there’s always the hot topics when you go into an election, you know, it’s always like reproductive rights, of course you know, the economy, foreign policy, but housing is kind of always seen as like an unsexy subject,” says Evans. “But it’s such a critical issue that everyone is impacted by.”

She’s been aware of KC Tenants for some time, as she went to college with cofounder Tara Raghuveer. However, she started following them more closely during COVID when she saw the actions they were taking around the eviction moratorium at a time when people were worried about housing, and she was inspired to make a documentary about them.

“Everyone always talks about New York, San Francisco as sort of the forefront of the conversation about housing and renting,” says Evans. “And I live in New York, and it feels like being in Missouri specifically—which politically, people think of as a very red state—seeing Kansas City, this blue-dot hub of renter activism was, I thought, especially interesting.”

Evans first started filming in June 2021 but didn’t come back to it until she was able to secure funding, with the bulk of the filming taking place between November 2022 and June 2023. She worked with the KC Film Office and the whole crew was KC-based.

The documentary dives into the rental issues in KC, telling the stories of Kansas Citians and what they’ve dealt with, and what KC Tenants has done to combat those. The documentary also follows Jenay Manley, one of the leaders with KC Tenants, and her story and eventual run for a seat on City Council. Though Manley lost to Lindsay French in the 2nd District, she won 48.44% of the vote, proving a point in showing just how much power KC Tenants has accumulated in the last few years.

Jenay Manley and her children campaigning // photo by Kevin McKinney

Evans hopes that this documentary inspires larger projects on the subject and leads to change.

“I want people to come away and have a conversation about how we view housing in America,” she says. “There’s been such an emphasis for so long on homeownership and there’s this real tension happening right now between renters landlords, renters and, you know, homeowners, and I think having that conversation just to like, first of all, just open it up and have people share their experiences is really powerful. And I think to that end, and not like, in a way that pits people against each other.”