Across rural Missouri, tenants face moldy ceilings, unfair rent hikes, and investor landlords that benefit from no one pushing back. But when neighbors get organized, they can win repairs, stop harassment, and make housing safer and more affordable for everyone.  Empower Missouri created “Standing Together: A Simple Guide to Tenant Organizing in Small Towns and...Read More

Empower Missouri strongly condemns President Trump’s Executive Order (EO) on “Ending Crime & Disorder on America’s Streets.” The order is riddled with misleading statements, prejudicial language, and outright lies about our neighbors who are unhoused. We seek to correct this misinformation and encourage our partners to stand ready to mitigate, and then be prepared to...Read More

Every year, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) releases its Out of Reach report—an eye-opening look at what it actually costs to rent a modest apartment in America. The 2025 edition confirms what many Missourians already know from experience: affordable housing is increasingly out of reach for working people across the state. At the...Read More

Over the last three months, we have published a series of blog posts investigating the housing crisis in the United States. In our first piece, we defined the current crisis. In the second post, we examined the economic factors that created and are sustaining the problem. And in our most recent post, we looked at...Read More

“We Are Here to Stay”: The Fight for Cedarwood & Rosewood Tenants Jami has spent her life fighting for dignity in a world that often seems to forget people like her. Born with spinal muscular dystrophy and diagnosed at the age of four, doctors predicted she wouldn’t survive beyond five years old. But Jami defied...Read More

Zachary’s story begins in Topeka, Kansas, where he was born into a world shaped by poverty and housing insecurity. For Zach, housing justice is deeply personal. His parents divorced shortly after he was born. So he, his younger brother, and two older sisters primarily lived with his mother in Central Topeka, a neighborhood dotted with...Read More

The Missouri Housing Trust Fund (MHTF) has played a pivotal role in addressing the housing needs of the state’s most vulnerable populations for more than 30 years. Administered by the Missouri Housing Development Commission (MHDC), the MHTF provides essential funding for various housing-related services, including rental assistance, emergency aid, home repairs, and the construction and...Read More

The past two installments of the four-part housing education series have defined the housing crisis and the economic policies that sustain it. Restrictive zoning laws, a struggling construction industry, and decades of a lack of investment in affordable housing have brought us here, but current policies continue to deepen the crisis. Today, we’ll look at...Read More

Last month, Empower Missouri launched a new educational series on the American housing crisis.  In our March piece, we focused on sharing statistics on the decrease of new home builds across the country and the resulting impact on both renters and aspiring homeowners. Today, we’re going to look at some of the underlying factors that...Read More

The Housing Crisis: A Community Issue Affordable housing is one of those phrases that is often seen as a problem for families earning low incomes; however, all Missourians have felt the impacts of the housing crisis. In 2024, Missouri experienced the largest rent increase in the country, and the cost of homeownership continued to rise....Read More