Frank Williams center in KCK will reopen drop-in services for homeless

The news in the middle of February that homeless people were losing vital comforts and services was hard for many to bear.

Thanks to a wave of donors and partners, the Frank Williams Housing Resource Center in Kansas City, Kan., is reopening Tuesday, its operator, Wyandot Inc., announced.

That means the roughly 100 clients a day who had been dropping in to get showers, receive mail, wash laundry, make phone calls, work on a computer or just enjoy a cup of coffee will do so again.

The center at 1201 N. Seventh St., which had continued to provide housing services to regular clients, had closed its drop-in services Feb. 12.

“The article (in The Star) spoke to a service that was making a difference in people’s lives when they were going through their hardest times,” said Peter Mallouk of Leawood, founder of the wealth management company Creative Planning Inc. Mallouk and his wife, Veronica, led the donation effort.

“I was surprised to hear this was happening in our city.”

The Frank Williams drop-in services did not have its own funding source, said Wyandot Inc. president and CEO Randy Callstrom. Its services relied on revenue generated from other Wyandot Inc. programs. When the state earlier this year announced cuts in funds to some of those programs, Callstrom said, Wyandot made “a difficult and painful decision” to end the drop-in services.

The news of the closing, and the spoken fears of many who were homeless and who did not know where they would go, prompted a generous wave of support to restore the services, Callstrom said.

In addition to the Mallouks, donors included the Catherine E. Carney Memorial Foundation and Swope Health Services, which is making a donation and providing coffee to the center’s clients, Wyandot reported.

“We gratefully acknowledge the collective generosity of these donors and friends,” Callstrom said in a written statement. “We will rely on the continued goodwill of benefactors and foundations to help us keep Frank’s open,” he said.

The annual budget for the Frank Williams center is about $136,500, Callstrom said. The new donations will sustain the center through early 2017, he said. Wyandot’s staff is developing grants and funding requests to continue the services into the future.

This story was originally published March 30, 2016 at 11:42 AM with the headline "Frank Williams center in KCK will reopen drop-in services for homeless."