After years of contention, Johnson County to consider a long-needed homeless shelter

After years of inaction, stalled plans and tense debates, Johnson County is finally poised to consider a proposal for a much-needed emergency homeless shelter.

Olathe Pastor Lee Jost and Lenexa City Councilman Joe Karlin on Thursday announced an early-stage proposal for a 50-bed shelter, where homeless adults would have access to several support services, as well as 20 transitional, affordable apartments.

It’s the first step in a lengthy process. Jost said a full feasibility report will be completed as early as next month. County officials expect the board of commissioners to hold a study session on it in August.

Advocates and faith leaders have long pushed for the establishment of a permanent shelter in Kansas’ most affluent county with a growing homeless population. Neighborhood opposition and strict zoning laws have made it difficult for advocates to operate a temporary, winter shelter over the years, let alone move forward with opening one year-round.

While homeless families have a few options for shelter in Johnson County, only a handful of beds are available for single women. And no permanent shelter exists for single men.

“If you only look at emergency shelter for someone whose first and foremost issue is that they are experiencing homelessness, in our community of 600,000 people, we’ve got about 60 beds. And none of them are for adult men without minor children. So this really addresses the need to invest in a solution,” Julie Brewer, executive director of United Community Services of Johnson County, told The Star.

City and county leaders have shown a stronger desire to address the need in the past couple of years. Some cities changed their laws to allow for and regulate homeless shelters. And last fall, the Johnson County Board of Commissioners allocated $60,000 of federal COVID relief funding toward studying the feasibility of opening a shelter.

In December, commissioners also approved using nearly $4 million in federal dollars for establishing a homeless shelter. The American Rescue Plan grant funds are administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Jost, executive director of the nonprofit NCircle, and Karlin, who owns a consulting firm, have led the feasibility study, which is being conducted by Overland Park-based iBossWell. The duo began talks for creating a public-private partnership to build a shelter a few years ago.

The team presented early plans for the project to the Johnson County Board of Commissioners at its Thursday meeting. They include a shelter with as many as 50 beds, depending on the property size, with adults expected to stay 90 days on average. While there, Jost said he wants to provide access to several resources, both on and off site, including food, transportation, workforce development, housing assistance, case management and health services, including dental and behavioral health.

He also proposed 20 apartments that would provide an immediate place for people transitioning out of the emergency beds to live. County leaders also has been working to attract and incentivize the development of more affordable housing, something that leaders say is severely lacking as home prices surge.

The shelter is aimed at serving as a “front door to getting individuals experiencing homelessness on a path to placement in transitional housing, supportive housing, and ultimately, permanent independent housing,” according to a county memo.

“Homelessness is a solvable issue in Johnson County,” Jost told commissioners.

According to last year’s “point in time” count — a one-night snapshot tally of the homeless population conducted by agencies across the country and locally — the number of people experiencing homelessness jumped by 35% from the year before. That’s likely partly due to the count being lower during the COVID pandemic. But it’s in line with a steady increase over several years.

One night in January 2022, the report showed, 212 people in Johnson County were living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, in tents, cars or on the streets. That’s up from 130 people in 2017, and 180 people in 2020.

Over the past decade, the number of families with children experiencing homelessness has been dropping, while the number of single adults who are homeless has skyrocketed. Last year, 80% of those counted were adults without children.

About 52% of the adults were employed, and 44% of those counted were experiencing homelessness for the first time, according to United Community Services.

“The mental picture of someone who is chronically homeless in Johnson County, while present here, is not necessarily the majority of those who are experiencing homelessness,” Jost said.

The preliminary report left several questions unanswered, including potential locations for a shelter, as well as estimated costs and what else it would take to get the shelter started. It does say the shelter would need a director, several case managers and possibly security, with annual staffing costs estimated at more than $1.3 million.

Some commissioners requested that the team provide more specific details and a business plan before the work moves forward. Jost said the full report, expected to be done next month, will provide much more detail on how the shelter could work and what it would take to run it.

Since 2015, Project 1020 has been running a temporary shelter out of churches during the winter. But it has only been able to house a small fraction of the people in Johnson County who need it. City regulations made it difficult for the temporary shelter to keep operating over the years.

In 2019, Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church sued the city of Lenexa for denying its request to shelter the homeless that winter. Out of the legal battle, both sides came to a three-year agreement, allowing the church to shelter up to 30 adults each night from December through March.

Most Johnson County cities do not have written rules stating when or where homeless shelters would be permissible, leading to heated neighborhood debates.

Following the lawsuit, Lenexa began exploring adding homeless shelter regulations to its city code. And now city law allows the shelter to operate each winter indefinitely, as long as it meets new regulations.

And an organization could propose opening a permanent homeless shelter in a commercial district in Lenexa, but a special use permit would be required, along with other restrictions. Shawnee also approved regulations for homeless shelters that year.