Mental Health Coalition says state needs strategy to help unsheltered homeless population
By RACHEL MIPRO
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Advocates say unhoused Kansans need more support from state and local governments.
The Kansas Mental Health Coalition held a Wednesday meeting to begin discussing goals for legislative action on the state’s homelessness problem. Mary Jones, coalition president, said she wanted to focus on creating more resources in cities for people who are struggling.
“How do we broaden funding?” Jones said. “How do we broaden services that go along with it?”
Kansas city governments struggle to adequately deal with homelessness, a problem that has grown in urgency in recent years due to higher cost of living, scarce mental health resources and the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic forcing more Kansans out onto the streets.
Around 1,798 people are homeless on any given night in Kansas City, according to a Kansas City advocacy group. Wichita’s annual homeless count showed 702 unhoused individuals, the highest number recorded by the yearly survey since 2011. In Topeka, an annual survey showed 412 individuals experiencing homelessness in the city in 2023.
The spike isn’t unique to the state; a March paper released by University of Chicago researchers reported that more than half a million people in the U.S. were unhoused in January of 2020, with people of color facing greater risk of homelessness.
Thirty-nine percent of unhoused people and 50% of unhoused families with children surveyed in the research paper were Black.
The paper also found people experiencing homelessness have significantly higher mortality risks than their peers. An unhoused 40-year-old has a similar mortality risk to a 60-year-old with housing or a 50-year-old person living in poverty with housing.
State lawmakers have acknowledged the need to address the spike, but the only legislation on the topic in the 2023 legislative session was House Bill 2430, a measure that would make it illegal to use state or local government property for unauthorized sleeping, camping or long-term shelters.
After widespread backlash from Kansans who had dealt with homelessness and other concerned citizens, the House Welfare Reform Committee tabled the bill and pivoted to a one-day community discussion of the issue. Critics said the one-day meeting wasn’t enough to gain a complete picture of the situation, and more of a substantial game plan needed to be formed.
Amy Campbell, lobbyist and coordinator for the Kansas Mental Health Coalition, said there hadn’t been time to discuss potential solutions or followup at the roundtable, due to the time constraint.
Campbell said a comprehensive framework for Kansas’ homelessness problem needed to be made and implemented.
“Part of the problem has been that it’s such a big picture to have that comprehensive solution,” Campbell said. “So what has been preferred by most policymakers is to pick and choose pieces of the continuum to establish. And so that makes it a little more difficult.”
Ahead of the Legislature’s next scheduled meeting on homelessness, which will take place in November, community advocates and those working with the unhoused population pitched their thoughts on the matter.
Andy Houltberg, CEO of Wichita-based social services organization Breakthrough, said cities needed to have both temporary and long-term shelter plans. While he and others support the Housing First model, an approach that prioritizes providing permanent housing to those in need, he said more shelter beds should also be provided.
“I’m a huge proponent of Housing First, but I do think you need a mix,” Houltberg said. “I think that every city probably needs a healthy amount of long-term supportive housing and some emergency shelter crisis intervention type beds.”
Houltberg said Wichita was struggling with a scarcity of hospital beds.
“Right now we’re just seeing more and more folks die on the streets, and it’s pretty sad,” Houltberg said. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”