The following email from Debra and Ben Rubin, residents of Leawood, describe the costs to them of the shoddy home building they suffered. Note in particular that they lost forever $30,000 in legal fees, and in addition spent $100,000 of their own and then had to go to court to force the builder to repay. Seven years of their lives dealing with this travesty.

And the Kansas and Missouri Legislative Committees which have done nothing about these problems for years, continue to bottle up legislation this year.

This is but one of many letters that have recently been sent to NeighborhoodNet, Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings (HADD), and, most importantly, the members of the Kansas House Committee on Business, Commerce, and Labor. The hope is that the heart felt letters from homeowners, along with the publicity (see articles in the Johnson County Sun and the Kansas City Star) will persuade legislators that they need to do something immediately. Representative Ray Merrick has submitted bill HD2835 to begin addressing these problems. Representative Al Lane, Chair of the Committee, has stated that there is not enough time to do anything about this legislation.

We fervently hope that Representative Lane and his Committee will find a way to address this legislation after all - that they will understand that the time has come to do their duty.

Regarding HB2835:

PLEASE pass legislation on this as soon as possible to help PROTECT homeowners against bad and/or unresponsive builders.

In brief, our personal experience was that after 5 years of promises by our builder to "fix " our problem, we had to contract with someone else ourselves, spend approximately $100,000 out of our OWN pocket to redo our entire exterior, and sue the builder in the 5th year in attempt to reclaim our out-of-pocket expenses. Fortunately we were able to retrieve our $100,000 in the 7th year after all those years of aggravation. However, because the statute of limitations on the Kansas Consumer Protection Law is only two years (which we did NOT know), we were NOT able to retrieve the $30,000 in legal fees. What about poor homeowners who could not afford to do this?? The builder needs to be made RESPONSIBLE, and the statute of limitations for the Kansas Consumer Protection Law needs to be EXTENDED.

PLEASE pass legislation on this immediately to help homeowners!

Thank you very much.
Debra and Ben Rubin
Leawood, KS