Kansas
Kansas weighs investing millions in shelters after years of increased homeless populations
On a single night in Kansas last year, there were about 2,636 homeless people living in the state, including about 400 in Shawnee County, according to the statewide Point in Time Count that likely undercounts the total number.
But there are less than a thousand shelter beds available statewide.
The House Committee on Welfare Reform is tasked with finding ways to address the growing homeless population in the state, which reached the highest levels it has seen since 2014 after six consecutive years of rising homeless populations.
The committee heard a bill, House Bill 2723, which would establish a $40 million grant fund that would go to communities around the state that create a plan to create more shelter beds. Grants would only go to cities that do the following:
- Provide the same amount of money they receive.
- Submit a building plan to create or improve a shelter.
- Collect data on the populations the shelter serves.
- Enforce laws criminalizing vagrancy and public camping.
- Prioritize Kansas residents who’ve lived in the state for more than eight months.
- Provide “wraparound” housing service.
Those wraparound services aren’t defined in the bill, which several legislators and advocates raised concern about. But legislators got a better sense of what those services include at a March 14 briefing from homeless service providers and cities seeking to expand their services.
Shelters, services and statutes
Of the 2,636 homeless people identified in the latest Point in Time Count, 943 resided in rural areas. Several legislators on the reform committee raised concerns about equitably distributing funds to address both categories of homelessness. McPherson Housing Coalition runs a non-congregate shelter in the 14,000-population town, hosting up to 10 families in separated tiny homes.
To get the shelter up and running cost around $1 million, said MHC’s executive director Chris Goodson. The most important part, though, is the social services included to help get families back on their feet.
“You can build affordable housing, but if you don’t offer social services of some sort to help families work through those roadblocks, it’s not going to work,” Goodson said.
City officials from Wichita presented their idea of addressing homelessness in a much larger City. Their proposal is to refurbish Riverside Hospital into a complex that includes a congregate shelter, where people share rooms for an overnight stay, as well as solo non-congregate rooms, low-income housing, space for homeless services, dining rooms and classrooms.
“The more that we can bring under one roof,” said Troy Anderson, Wichita’s assistant city manager. “There are efficiencies of scale, there are efficiencies in trying to achieve that functional net zero because there’s not a lack or a confusion of trying to connect one resource to another.”
The “functional net zero” of homelessness is effectively getting more people out of homelessness than are becoming homeless. Anderson said if they can consistently graduate people toward housing stability, it’d eventually mean that the homeless population is almost entirely temporarily displaced people, rather than chronic homelessness, which accounts for about 25% of Kansas’s homeless population.
Wichita has the largest homeless population in the state, and its proposal may have the highest price tag. The city said it would likely be asking for $20 million, half of the total grant money available in HB 2723, to construct the complex.
Advocates from all over the state spoke to the committee, from Liberal to Wyandotte County. Though smaller communities will need less money for their projects than larger communities, their less resourced local governments may have additional barriers to proposing than more heavily staffed urban areas.
Committee-members considered earmarking a certain amount for more sparsely populated areas or allowing cities to bolster their applications with donations from nonprofits.
Is the bill enough to address homelessness in Kansas?
Some homeless service providers had quibbles with the bill, including the provisions on enforcing vagrancy laws, that the data collection doesn’t feed into other reports, that nonprofits should be able to apply for funds and including a severability clause that would ensure the program continues if parts of the legislation are struck down in court.
One conferee, though, sharply differed from the others in their rejection rejection of “housing-first” policies that offer transitional housing, pointing to increases in homeless populations in areas that adopted a housing-first approach.
“Obviously homelessness and there’s many factors, but we believe housing first is making the problem worse, it focuses dollars away from shelter and toward permanent supportive housing,” said Andrew Wiems, of Cicero Action, a group that last year advocated for legislation that would criminalize public homelessness.
House Bill 2723 had its hearing on March 5 and isn’t scheduled for debate on the House floor, but if passed could significantly impact the scope of homeless services in the state.
“From the conversations I’ve had with prospective bidders, communities that are considering applying for the funds, I feel like the $40 million, with the one-for-one match which would be $80 million, I think would be sufficient to address the chronically homeless population that we’re looking to target with our funds,” said Andrew Brown, deputy secretary for programs of the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services.
In the last four years, the University of Arkansas has gotten the better of the Kansas Jayhawks in postseason play.
In 2022, the Razorbacks defeated KU football 55-53 in a triple-overtime thriller in Memphis during the Liberty Bowl. A year later, No. 8 seed Arkansas upset No. 1 seed KU (and reigning college basketball champions) in the NCAA Tournament by a single point (72-71) to end Kansas basketball’s chances of a repeat. In 2025, Arkansas pulled off another upset in the Big Dance when the No. 10 seed Razorbacks defeated No. 7 KU 79-72 to advance to the Sweet 16.
Needless to say, there were plenty of Jayhawk fans hoping for revenge this weekend when Arkansas was announced as the No. 2 seed in the Lawrence Regional – and KU baseball delivered in a big way with a sweep over the Razorbacks to reach the program’s first-ever Super Regionals appearance.
KU came from behind in both games to earn a 5-3 victory on Saturday and a 13-10 win on Sunday night at Hoglund Ballpark.
On Saturday, Arkansas took an early 1-0 lead in the top of the second before a Tyson LeBlanc RBI tied things up in the bottom of the third. Each team scored two in the fifth and remained deadlocked until KU pulled away late with a Dairel Osoria run in the seventh and a solo home run by Augusto Mungarrieta in the eighth to seal the win.
After Arkansas beat Northeastern in a narrow 10-9 contest on Sunday afternoon, KU and Arkansas met again on Sunday evening in a highly anticipated matchup that saw a lot of offensive firepower on display.
The Razorbacks jumped out to a 5-0 lead through three innings before KU had a monster performance in the top of the fourth. Osoria led things off with a solo home run before Brady Ballinger hit an RBI single to score Jordan Bach and Max Soliz Jr. had an RBI single to score Dylan Schlotterback. Then LeBlanc showed his All-American talents once again in a big moment by hitting a three-run home run to deep center field to put the Jayhawks ahead 6-5.
From there, KU would never relinquish the lead after scoring two runs in the fifth inning and three in the sixth. The Jayhawks tacked on two more in the top of the eighth to give the team its 13th score of the game.
The Jayhawks are now 45-16 on the season – tied for the most wins in a season in program history with the 1993 team that reached the College World Series.
KU will now move on to the Super Regionals which start Friday, June 5. If Oklahoma beats Georgia Tech tomorrow, KU will get the chance to host as they did this week. If Georgia Tech wins, the Jayhawks will head to Atlanta with a spot in the College World Series on the line.
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KSHB 41 reporter Olivia Acree covers portions of Johnson County, Kansas, including Olathe and Lenexa. Share your story idea with Olivia.
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If the motto to live by is to get 1 hour of movement a day, the Parkinson’s community in Kansas City is exceeding it.
Bob Zipse has been fighting Parkinson’s for 10 years. He said the diagnosis hit him hard.
Leawood’s Parkinson’s Exercise and Wellness Center expands services as diagnoses climb
“I was super depressed. I mean, I was in a chair. Did you want to move? Look around, just horrible. Because there’s no resources. Where do I go with the time?”
Zipse said the disease can be an isolating experience.
KSHB
“Parkinson’s, I say, is a very lonely, lonely disease. Either people don’t want to deal with you, or you’re embarrassing.”
He found the Parkinson’s Exercise and Wellness Center at his lowest point. Now, he sees people around him pushing past their limits.
“You see people out here, they’re in the mid-70s, they’re doing push-ups, sit-ups, lifting weights. I mean, it’s amazing, really,” Zipse said. “In here, we’re all the same.”
Sarissa Curry founded the center after seeing the power of healing through exercise and recognizing that diagnosis rates were increasing. An aging population and younger diagnoses are among the biggest factors driving that trend.
Kansas consistently ranks as having one of the highest Parkinson’s disease diagnoses and mortality rates in the United States, second only to Nebraska. According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, an estimated 20,000 people in the Kansas City metro alone are living with the disease.
“You see your neurologist once every six months to a year, and you see a physical therapist maybe a couple of months out of the year. Community-based programs are here every day to support this community,” Curry said.
Curry said the warning signs of rising Parkinson’s rates have been visible for years.
“They have been predicting this increase in Parkinson’s for many years. They were able to see the writing on the wall, they were able to see how the population was aging, and they knew that this was coming. We paid attention.”
She expanded the center to serve as an all-encompassing resource for people like Zipse.
KSHB
“I’d hate to wager what I would have been like. Life would have stopped for me, I think. This at least gives me hope, gives me some work towards and see some benefit of it,” Zipse said.
The PEWC will host a ribbon cutting on Wednesday, June 3, at 3:30 p.m. The community is invited to attend to learn more about the center’s services and the disease as incidence rates continue to rise each year.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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