Marlborough Neighborhood Partnership Highlighted in The Kansas City Beacon Article

04.12.2022

The Kansas City Beacon article, "This South KC neighborhood takes on blight and generational wealth — one house at a time," highlights the firm's pro bono representation of the Marlborough Community Coalition (MCC), led by Partners Richard Cook and Jere Sellers, and details the partnership between the MCC and the Marlborough Community Land Trust (MCLT).

Since 2009, in collaboration with Legal Aid of Western Missouri and their Adopt-a-Neighborhood project, the firm has represented the MCC and its residents to help facilitate quality new development and redevelopment projects, encourage rehabilitation of the neighborhood's housing through the Abandoned Housing Act and nuisance actions, and restore access to health care, healthy food and recreational spaces. The MCLT was created as a separate entity and serves to stabilize low income communities and create quality, well maintained homes while ensuring access to quality homes by low-and-moderate income home buyers sale after sale.

"There's a lot of concern about redeveloping neighborhoods that are on the precipice of revitalization," Cook said. "Community members ask, 'What's going to happen to my neighborhood? Can I afford to stay there?' Through the coalition's and land trust's partnerships, the goal is to alleviate those concerns about revitalization, one property at a time."

Over the course of the partnership with the MCC, Stinson attorneys and paralegals have donated nearly 6,000 hours of pro bono service to the coalition and individual residents of the Marlborough neighborhood valued at almost $2 million.

Read the full article.