From the Kansas City Star, December 12, 2021
Special Report | Land grab remakes Kansas City’s East Side, upending neighborhoods, Star investigation finds
by reporters Eric Adler and Kevin Hardy
In Kansas City’s largely Black neighborhoods east of Troost Avenue, residents say they are once again being exploited and left behind as the area becomes an active hunting ground for mostly white investors and speculators from across the Kansas City region, all 50 states and at least a dozen countries as far off as Australia and Ukraine.
The Star, as part of a monthslong investigation, analyzed thousands of real estate and tax records, charting and mapping out city parcels and ownership data east of Troost — Kansas City’s de facto racial dividing line for three generations.
Real estate buyers call it “investment,” that will improve blighted parts of the East Side, fix abandoned or dilapidated houses, raise property values and slowly bring diversity.
But Black residents and advocates have a different view of the change: exploitation. They are troubled by the apparent fallout: rising home prices and rents plus evictions.
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