It seems hard to believe that we’re only a month away from the start of a new year, and a new legislative session. Pre-filing opens for the Missouri legislature today, a process where legislators from both chambers can begin filing their bills ahead of the 2024 session. Bills that are filed on December 1st are...Read More

Darlene S. has faced challenges in housing her entire life, but things have gotten progressively harder in recent years. After experiencing two evictions, the most recent being a decade ago, she has faced mounting barriers to housing. Combined with increased rents and requirements of 3 times rent in income, renting anything became impossible. Darlene has...Read More

Early this month we launched our first Housing Justice Fellowship, in partnership with Springfield Tenants Unite. For our pilot cohort, we brought together 12 tenants with varied experiences renting in Springfield. Some have prior experience with tenant organizing, some do not, but all are committed to learning how to organize their community to win policy...Read More

A Brief Overview of America’s Housing Crisis in 2023 The scale of America’s housing crisis, like everything else these days, is unprecedented. The most recent numbers on our country’s housing and homelessness crisis are sobering: Nationally, there is a shortage of 7.3 million affordable and available apartments for Extremely Low Income (ELI) households – that...Read More

How much would a person have to earn to afford rent and utilities on a modest 2 bedroom apartment in Missouri today? According to this year’s Out of Reach Report, released by our partners at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Missouri’s average fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $964 a month. Working...Read More

The 2023 legislative session will end today at 6PM, so there’s only a few hours remaining for the legislature to pass any final bills before the clock runs out.  There will be several opportunities over the next week to debrief the session with Empower Missouri.  On Monday, look for a special email with our end-of-session...Read More

In 2022, we saw the worst inflation in nearly 40 years. Inflation, rising property taxes and rising rents are leaving many of our neighbors, particularly seniors and individuals with disabilities, on the brink of ruin. The economic uncertainties following 2020 have made it more likely for the costs of day-to-day living to exceed the income...Read More

Missouri has a severe affordable housing shortage. Our partners at the National Low Income Housing Coalition show 72% of very low income households in Missouri overpay for their housing, and are housing cost burdened. Cost burden occurs when a household pays more than 30% of their income towards housing costs alone, leaving very little for...Read More

As we wrap up the year, we’re already deep into planning for the next legislative session that starts in January. Our December Friday Forum covered the highlights of what we’re expecting and prioritizing this coming year, but today, we want to give you a deeper dive into some topics that we expect will come up...Read More

Evictions are one of the more visible symptoms of the compounding issues plaguing housing as we know it today, most glaringly the housing affordability crisis and the dismal state of tenant rights and protections currently afforded to renters in Missouri and  across the country. Evictions are a major contributor of homelessness within our communities. A...Read More