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.
Kansas
Kansas City Symphony and Michelle Cann Perform Uplifting Concert Featuring a Variety of American Styles and Voices. – KC STUDIO
A rich variety of American musical composers and works graced the stage of Helzberg Hall Sat., June 20, as the Kansas City Symphony performed its season ending program. It was no surprise that an American-themed concert was planned a mere two weeks before the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. What was more surprising, yet very welcome, was the nature and diversity of the musical voices included on the program.
Guest conductor Peter Oundjian opened the evening with the music of Joan Tower, a Grammy Award winning contemporary composer whose music we don’t hear often enough in Kansas City. Her Suite from Concerto for Orchestra is a distillation of music from the larger Concerto for Orchestra and was commissioned by Oundjian and his Yale Philharmonia in 2025. It is a dramatic and technically challenging work with a complex harmonic language, at times tonal but with free use of dissonance.
The music was also intense and unrelenting in its pace and excitement. Oundjian had total control over the score, effectively cueing and expressively anticipating the powerful rhythmic content. Just when you thought the music couldn’t get any faster, louder and more intense, it did, driving to its exciting conclusion. The ensemble delivered a very convincing performance.
Florence Price is a 20th-century African American composer who earned significant regional attention during her lifetime but was not universally known. Her music is receiving much more attention in the 21st century since many unknown scores were discovered in the attic of her summer house in 2009. Scholars and performers are just now coming to grips with her work: the first scholarly biography was published in 2020 and a collection of scholarly essays on all aspects of her music was just released in March of this year.
Soloist Michelle Cann has been an active proponent of Price’s music for the past ten years. In a conversation a few days before the concert, I asked her what attracted her to the composer. She answered “Her musical language has such an amazing mix of styles that fit so well together. Also, there is something visceral and powerful in her music.”
Cann, in her Kansas City debut, compellingly demonstrated the power of Price’s music in a performance of the Concerto in One Movement for Piano and Orchestra. While the title says it is in a single movement, there were three sections that seemed like independent movements. From the outset Cann employed a warm legato tone. Technically adroit, she exhibited the chordal and dreamy passages, travelling up and down the keyboard. Oundjian maintained a good balance between orchestra and soloist. There were a few intonation problems in the upper strings near the end of the first section.
The second section was slow and lyrical. Cann played the music, which sounded like a spiritual, with a heartfelt sensuous tone. She was joined by oboist Kristina Fulton in a lovely duet throughout the movement. The exciting finale was based on an African American Juba dance, featuring strong syncopations and a rollicking sound. It is clear that Price’s music represents an important part of America’s musical legacy and deserves much more attention, and, of course, many more performances and recordings.
As a performer, Cann has it all: passion, expression, technique, sensitivity and extraordinary musicality. She demonstrated it next in George Gershwin’s audience favorite, the Rhapsody in Blue. Cann and the orchestra played with alternating bluesy fervor with free rhythm and technical precision, and the audience responded with an excited ovation. As an encore, she wowed the audience with a set of high-powered jazzy improvisations on Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor by African American pianist Hazel Scott.
The concert ended with Dvořák’s classic Symphony No. 9 in E Minor, “From the New World.” At the beginning of the concert, Oundjian assured the audience that this, too, is an American work, “since it was written on East 17th Street in Manhattan.” Conducting without a score, Oundjian elicited a dramatic reading of the composition in response to his impassioned direction. The opening movement featured a rich romantic sound, although occasional attention to detail seemed lacking, with some issues in synchronization, balance and transitions in tempo. The occasional slips were forgiven in the exquisite second movement. Matthew Lengas played the famous soulful English horn theme with supple grace and beauty.
This work is quite a showcase for an orchestra. All sections are featured throughout the composition; many soloists are highlighted and there are regular contrasts in mood and tempo. The performers responded persuasively, especially in the explosive finale.
There is one more performance of this program on Sun., June 21at 2 p.m. at the Kauffman Center. The Kansas City Symphony will also present a European Tour Send-Off Concert on Friday, August 21 at 7:00 p.m. Tickets and more information about these events and the 2026-27 season can be found at www.kcsymphony.org.
This concert was reviewed on Saturday, June 20, 2026.
Kansas
Salvador Perez attended the Ecaudor-Curaçao match at Arrowhead. So did other royals — from the Netherlands
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Royals captain Salvador Perez, along with teammates Starling Marte and Carter Jensen, attended Saturday evening’s World Cup match at Arrowhead Stadium.
So did some other royals!
King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands began Saturday by cheering the Dutch past Sweden in Houston.
The monarchs ended the day by watching Curacao make some history against Ecuador in Kansas City.
The small island nation of Curacao is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and that makes King Willem-Alexander and Queen Maxima the heads of state. So, after a quick flight north Saturday, the royal couple dutifully swapped out their bright orange scarves of Het Oranje Legioen they wore to their earlier match with bright blue ones for The Blue Wave.
Curacao, the smallest World Cup team in population and size, made its tournament debut last Sunday in a 7-1 loss to Germany. But it bounced back from that defeat to earn a 0-0 draw with La Tri and earn its first-ever point in the tournament.
“It is an extra-special World Cup because we have both the Netherlands and Curacao,” Willem-Alexander told RTL-TV. “So we have twice as many teams to cheer for. A great opportunity to cheer on both the Blues and the Oranges. All in all, it will be a special World Cup for me with two teams, and I naturally hope they go extremely far.”
The Netherlands moved one step closer to the World Cup knockout round after a 5-1 win over Sweden.
Brian Brobbey and Cody Gakpo scored two goals apiece to help coach Ronald Koeman’s team bounce back from a disappointing draw in its opener and move atop Group F. The Netherlands concludes group play against Tunisia on Thursday in Kansas City.
Curacao is still alive, too, after Eloy Room made 15 saves — one off the World Cup record — to earn a draw with Ecuador. It concludes Group E play on Thursday against the Ivory Coast in Philadelphia at the same time Ecuador is playing Germany in New York.
It is quite rare for sitting monarchs to come through the area. Queen Ann of Romania attended the dedication of the Liberty Memorial, which is where Kansas City is holding its World Cup FanFest, in the 1920s, while King Gustav XVI of Sweden made a stop in the small Kansas town of Lindsborg when he was passing through the Midwest in the 1970s.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Kansas
1 man dies after being shot June 9 in Kansas City, Missouri; police working to identify person of interest
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department is working to identify a person(s) of interest in a June 9 shooting that led to the death of one victim.
Police were called around 6 a.m. on June 9 to the area of Independence and Monroe avenues in Kansas City, Missouri.
Responding officers found an unresponsive man behind a residence in that area. He was transported to the hospital for life-threatening injuries, per KCPD.
Police were notified Friday night that the shooting victim died.
KCPD said Saturday “detectives have made headway identifying subject(s) of interest.”
Anyone with information on the incident is encouraged to call KCPD Homicide detectives directly at 816-234-5043 or the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers Tips Hotline at 816-474-8477.
—
If you have any information about a crime, you may contact your local police department directly. But if you want or need to remain anonymous, you should contact the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers Tips Hotline by calling 816-474-TIPS (8477), submitting the tip online or through the free mobile app at P3Tips.com. Depending on your tip, Crime Stoppers could offer you a cash reward.
Annual homicide details and data for the Kansas City area are available through the KSHB 41 News Homicide Tracker, which was launched in 2015. Read the KSHB 41 News Mug Shot Policy.
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