Picture the largest, most dominating and highest valued private residences around the University of Kansas campus — they are greek houses.

Representatives from KU’s most well-established fraternities have formed a business league to help protect those sizable investments, the Kansas Fraternity Landlords’ League.

“We are only successful if we have good houses as tenants,” said Aaron Racine, executive director and legal counsel for the League. “They are big, expensive assets. Let’s say a chapter gets disbanded or suspended, or whatever happens to them, what do you do with this big multimillion-dollar property?”

At this time, the League represents landlords for 10 KU fraternity houses that are home to nearly 1,000 students.

The 10 members’ real estate is worth an estimated $35.7 million, based on a combination of assessed valuations and market appraisals, Racine said. Member houses currently pay about $306,000 in property taxes, he said.

Racine said the Kansas Fraternity Landlords’ League, a nonprofit organization akin to trade associations and business leagues, is the only such group for fraternities that organizers know of in the region or country.

At KU, the university recognizes fraternities and sororities as student organizations but all their houses are located off campus and aren’t owned or operated by the university. Most of KU’s greek houses are owned and operated by corporation boards, primarily populated by alumni.

Racine, of Overland Park is not a KU alumnus — that’s one of the reasons he was picked as director, he said — but was in a fraternity at Stanford University. He went to law school at the University of Illinois.

Fraternities have a lot of assets, and they must ensure their business models support them, Racine said.

The League represents the fraternities’ landlords, not the undergrads who live in the houses. Some goals intersect, and at other times undergrads might not like what the League is pushing, Racine said.

“We want academically successful, well-behaved tenants in our houses, because if kids want to be there and parents want to pay for them to be there, then our business model flourishes,” Racine said.

The League’s plan for helping protect fraternity landlords’ investment is multipronged.

A major issue the group plans to lobby against, if it emerges, is the possibility of KU requiring all freshmen to live in on-campus dorms and delay fraternity pledging until second semester freshman year. That would hurt KU fraternities’ business model because most freshmen live in the houses and houses depend on their rent income, Racine said.

Those were among formal recommendations of the KU Sexual Assault Task Force, which met during the 2014-15 school year. KU administration said at that time the university was not implementing those recommendations.

Regarding the dorm requirement, KU said in a September 2015 news release: “This is not feasible for a number of reasons. For example, the University does not have adequate housing to make this possible.”

Regarding delayed initiation, KU said at that time: “We have discussed this with the greek community every year for many years, but the greek community has opted to not change its practices. We will continue to have these conversations and encourage fraternities and sororities to consider our suggestions.”

Another goal of the League is providing a place for local fraternity landlords to talk about best practices and ideas, from who’s providing their cable and maintenance to how much they pay their house mothers.

“Instead of everybody reinventing the wheel,” Racine said.

The League also wants to publicize good news coming out of fraternities, such as academic success, community involvement, charitable giving and lifelong friendships.

“Our group kind of felt like fraternities were a convenient punching bag,” Racine said of media coverage. “There is a stereotype that greek fraternity men are out of control and all these terrible things happen.”

Racine said the League wasn’t there to legally defend students or chapters accused of wrongdoing but would help provide a “centralized source of information” and help ensure due process is followed in those cases.

The Kansas Fraternity Landlords’ League formally incorporated in fall 2015, Racine said. He said after spending the following year connecting with interested chapters and solidifying an agenda, the League is looking to become more active this semester.

Kansas Fraternity Landlords’ League members

The following University of Kansas fraternity chapters are members of the Kansas Fraternity Landlords’ League. All have chapter houses near the KU campus.

List source: Kansas Fraternity Landlords’ League, spring 2017