A federal lawsuit filed against the Kansas City Kansas Housing Authority alleges that a mother was forced to hand over her food benefits so she could get public housing.
Andrea Randle, a Kansas City, Kansas, resident and mother to three boys, filed the civil lawsuit late last year, saying housing authority employees illegally used the federal benefits for themselves. The suit says the authority's director, Andrea Tapia, knew about the scheme and did nothing to stop it.
While she and her sons went hungry, Randle says she watched online while her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program card was used all over town to get thousands of dollars worth of groceries. She believes federal housing funds were often used to cover some of her expenses in exchange for her SNAP benefits.
Randle's lawsuit was filed under the Federal False Claims Act, a whistleblower law that allows private citizens to sue anyone who is defrauding the government and to recover damages on the government's behalf. Randle says her civil rights were also violated and that the housing authority committed offenses against the Federal Fair Housing Act and the Kansas Consumer Protection Act.
"As the lawsuit states, the KCK Housing Authority and its employees extorted vital federal benefits, food stamps, from the most vulnerable of their residents, parents with no other choices," Randle's attorneys, Cheryl Pilate and Anthony LaCroix, said in a statement to KCUR.
"Ms. Randle looks forward to presenting her claims in court, which she hopes will establish an important precedent and prevent such abuses from happening again."
The housing authority is a nonprofit that operates the public housing program in Kansas City, Kansas, with board members appointed by the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas. Tapia did not return a call and email request for comment.
In 2022, Randle decided to move home to Kansas City, Kansas, from Las Vegas and was desperate to find housing. She went to the authority and talked to Deborah Thompson, then head of tenant selection, who told her she was on the "banned list" because of a complaint filed by Randle's former mother-in-law.
But Thompson then used that complaint as leverage against Randle, the lawsuit says, and told her to hand over her Electronic Benefit Transfer, or EBT, a card people can use for their SNAP benefits. Thompson talked about her daughter's upcoming wedding and said the EBT card would "help with the wedding," the lawsuit alleges.
Feeling she had no other options and fearing homelessness, Randle gave Thompson the food stamp card, and found that Thompson and others were passing it around to buy food for themselves, according to the lawsuit. Randle believed she saw other tenants also handing over their EBT cards and staffers would pay them back by using federal funds to buy them gas or pay a month's rent, the lawsuit says.
When Randle reported to Thompson that she didn't have enough food to feed her children, she was sent to the local food bank or told to come to the housing authority office, where Thompson would "hand her a bagful of burgers and fries from a fast-food restaurant," the lawsuit alleges.
"Other times, Thompson gave Randle leftovers from an office party or would give Randle a small amount of cash at the office," the suit says.
If Randle resisted handing over her EBT card, she would be threatened with eviction or inflated rent invoices, the lawsuit says.
"Whenever Randle tried to stop the ongoing extortion of her family's food stamp benefits, KCKHA employees retaliated, charging her bogus fees, threatening her verbally in public, and taking steps to evict her, and filing lawsuits to evict her and collect money," the lawsuit says.
Finally, Randle complained to Tapia, and Thompson and another staffer were later fired. But other housing authority employees then blamed Randle, calling her a snitch and telling her to "watch her back," the lawsuit alleges. Ultimately, Randle left public housing, despite not having another place to live.
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