Johnson County churches want to shelter the homeless this winter. So why can’t they?
It’s 7 p.m., the temperature is dropping, and Tiffany Rangier has no place to sleep.
Rangier, 41, spent most of the day in a motel room in Olathe. But now it’s time to move on. She sits in the dark parking lot, mulling her few options. First, she’ll walk to Taco Bell. Then, she’ll ask to use the phone at the Salvation Army.
“Sometimes I’ll call a person that runs a church here in town. If it wasn’t for their understanding, sometimes I wonder what I’d be doing,” she says, sitting up taller, unflinching as the wind grows stronger. “I’m not sure how I actually luck out, but some good Samaritan will help transport me back to Lawrence where there’s a shelter. Or I’ll stay in a restaurant as long as I can.”
But more often than not — whether it’s 100 degrees in July or 10 degrees in November — she says, “I’m usually out in the elements.”
Like Rangier, a growing number of people in Johnson County every night are scrambling for food, water and a roof over their heads. As winter encroaches, they have no shelter to turn to.
Last winter, the nonprofit Project 1020 opened a temporary shelter in Olathe. Since then, multiple churches have stepped up to work with the group and offer more places to get the homeless out of the cold. But throughout Johnson County, cumbersome city regulations and neighborhood opposition have made that difficult, and in some cases, seemingly impossible.
While homeless families have a few places to go in Johnson County, only a handful of beds are available for single women. No shelter exists for homeless single men. Sometimes people can find transportation to make it to Kansas City or the Lawrence Community Shelter. But that shelter this fall cut its number of beds from 125 to 65 due to funding issues.
And the more time passes, the harsher the weather becomes, the crisis becomes increasingly urgent in Kansas’ wealthiest county.
“We have human beings who are in life-threatening and dangerous situations,” said Project 1020 founder Barb McEver. “People are sick and dying. And sometimes it seems just totally hopeless. I don’t know what our options are. But we can’t ignore this away.”
Homeless population is shifting
Without a place to shelter homeless adults this winter, McEver has often been reaching into her own wallet to pay for people to stay in motels. Sometimes, she’s able to make arrangements at nursing homes.
“There’s a huge and important need for a full-time facility for people in Johnson County,” she said. “But unfortunately right now, we don’t have the luxury of time. There’s an immediate need for people in Johnson County that are experiencing homelessness.”
For the past few winters, Project 1020 has set up temporary shelters in churches willing to provide a place for dozens of people to stay. The group has been filling a long-ignored gap in Johnson County’s homeless services: providing shelter to adults without children. And that need has grown in recent years.
The county has an emergency shelter at the Salvation Army for families with children, and it’s usually full. The Johnson County Interfaith Hospitality Network works with 40 congregations that either offer spaces for families and single women, or provide meals and other services. The network serves around 17 people on average each week, Executive Director Vicki Dercher said.
“But we have a gap in the community for adult-only households,” said Valorie Carson, director of United Community Services of Johnson County.
This year’s “point in time” count — a snapshot tally of the homeless population conducted by agencies across the country and locally — showed the number of individuals without stable housing in Johnson County has been steadily increasing in recent years.
One night in January, the report showed, 189 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.
But the count also shows Johnson County mirroring a national trend. Just as Johnson County’s senior population grows, so does its older homeless population. Now, more adults without children, or with children who are grown, are homeless, Carson said.
Around 39% of the people Project 1020 serves have jobs, McEver said. But the rising costs of living, rent and health care — along with the lack of affordable housing and the three-year-long waiting list for low-income housing in the county — are all contributing to the steady increase in homeless people.
“Because of the gap we have, and given the entire population is shifting older and people have fewer children, this need for crisis housing is becoming an incredible crunch,” Carson said. “And in the winter months, it’s not just a crunch. It becomes a public health and a danger issue. A night like the other night where it’s 10 degrees, that can lead to people dying and losing fingers and toes to frostbite.”
For the past several years, Project 1020 has largely been the only group sheltering these older individuals. But offering a place to survive through the winter is only “scratching the surface,” Carson said. And so far this year, Johnson County doesn’t even have that.
Churches wish they could help
Last winter, Rangier and around 240 other homeless individuals in Johnson County did have a place to go. Around 50 people each night would warm up, eat and sleep at The Branches Church in Olathe.
It was the first time the group could provide consistent shelter, every night for that many people.
“I’d be scared. I’d wonder if I’d be able to go back there the next night,” Rangier said. “But they had the most wonderful doughnuts in the morning, homemade apple spice.”
The church served as a temporary space after McEver unsuccessfully attempted to start a year-round, permanent shelter. McEver and her husband bought the former Masonic Lodge on Park Street in Olathe. Despite receiving initial assurance from the city allowing the shelter, McEver was told a special-use permit would be required.
That means holding neighborhood meetings and gaining support, winning committee approval, then receiving final approval by the City Council. Often, it requires that the applicant hire a lawyer. The process takes months.
In February, tensions became so high at the neighborhood meeting, with residents concerned about public safety and crime, the project came to a halt. McEver said she eventually sold the building.
Olathe churches, too, must apply for a special-use permit in order to act as a homeless shelter and house many individuals over a long period. Project 1020 and The Branches Church didn’t attempt to go through that process this time.
“The city has essentially shut down our ability to host a shelter again in time,” church secretary Elaine Davis said. “I think about how we’ve already had two snows; we’ve had bitter cold already. I just think about those people I met and wonder, where are they? What are they doing? How are they surviving?”
Another church, Shawnee Mission Unitarian Universalist Church, asked the city of Lenexa for permission to shelter 40 people each night through the winter. That request was denied.
City Manager Beccy Yocham said Lenexa does not have any specific code or ordinance setting out a clear path for churches or other buildings to become homeless shelters. But city staff decided based on the church’s location and how many people it wanted to house, it was not an approved use.
“Our code is really strict about using nonresidential buildings for sleeping or for residential purposes,” Yocham said.
Lenexa has amended its code in the past, she said, allowing managers of storage facilities or veterinarians to live at their workplaces. She said city staff is now considering amending the code to create clear guidelines for where and how a homeless shelter may be allowed. But that is another lengthy process.
Like Lenexa, other major cities in Johnson County have no written rules stating where or when homeless shelters might be permissible or prohibited. That’s made it especially difficult for Project 1020, as the group makes requests and cities turn them down.
“I think the struggle has been right now that even though we have churches that want to help, you run into problems because city codes may not allow the church to help,” said Kevin Moriarty, a former district judge. “Everybody knows there’s a problem. But I think it’s always difficult when it’s in their backyard.”
Moriarty said the county, cities and other stakeholders need to work together to find an emergency shelter right now for the long term.
“It’s everybody’s issue, from the neighborhoods, to the cities to the county,” said Sharon Rodriguez, an advocate for the homeless in Johnson County. “It’s going to take all of us. And the first thing is to get to know who we are talking about. When I hear ‘not in my backyard,’ they’re already in their backyard. They are here. They have just chosen to be invisible, and for good reason — for protection.”
‘The need was immediate yesterday’
While over the years churches have stepped up to shelter the homeless when no one else would, Moriarty said they can only do so much.
As a judge, he saw first-hand the large numbers of people who are homeless and who suffer from disabilities, mental illness or are recovering from abuse.
“Unfortunately some of these people end up in custody because they act out or something, then they’re arrested,” Moriarty said. “This isn’t a criminal problem.”
For the first time last month, Moriarty brought together county stakeholders to finally address Johnson County’s lack of a shelter for homeless adults. The county, cities, mental health advocates, faith groups, charities and other organizations all gathered at the same table.
“Johnson County has a lot of resources that are available. However, they are hard to access,” he said. “Transportation is a huge barrier. And a lot of times they don’t have documentation. So people are struggling.”
Moriarty is helping lead the effort to find a location and start a permanent shelter, with the goal of helping guests not only get a meal and escape the cold, but access needed services and eventually find housing. Like shelters in Lawrence and elsewhere, he hopes it would be funded through the county, cities, federal government and private donors.
But finding the right location, then securing city and neighborhood approval, and getting a building up to code will at least take several months. After the unsuccessful attempt in Olathe, it’s the first sign that a permanent shelter might finally be in the works.
But advocates are still scrambling to get people out of the cold right now.
“I think that’s great and I hope they succeed,” Rodriguez said. “But that doesn’t help the person out there tonight, or last night. The need was immediate yesterday, not in six months.”
McEver and others working with the homeless urge Johnson County and city governments to help find a solution and approve a temporary shelter for this winter.
“I don’t think it helps anything to create division, or to think as one group as good guys and one group as bad guys,” Carson said. “But I think it’s important that everyone tries to do what they can in their position. Sometimes that requires us to step outside our normal comfort zone and think about what we can do differently.”
For now, Rangier and others without housing in Johnson County are forced to live day by day, hour by hour, finding a bit of warmth and a meal wherever they can.
“It’s a vast mix of emotions. There’s the impulse to try harder, the impulse to shut down, move on, go this way, go that way,” Rangier said. “But I just have to take a deep breath and go in my mind and think of the good times, even if it was from a real long time ago.”
This story was originally published November 18, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
