Beds, blankets, hot food: KC-area homeless advocates ready for ‘snow apocalypse’
It doesn’t take much to imagine the trial of being homeless, living outside in the snow and sub-freezing temperatures predicted to descend on Kansas City beginning this weekend.
“I’m not sure how much a human being can handle,” Josh Henges, the houseless prevention coordinator for the city, said Friday, “but what it feels like is that we’re looking at the upper limits of what humans can really take.”
Weather forecasters have warned of ice, sleet and as much as 13 inches of snow falling between Saturday night and Monday. Homeless advocates say they are prepared.
“I will say, I have been through two of these, what I call snow apocalypses,” said Terri Megli, chief executive officer of City Union Mission, whose separate overnight shelters for men and women house up to 200 people. “We’re ready for snow apocalypse 2025.”
‘Stay inside’
Among preparations: 100 extra low-barrier beds are being set up at area shelters, raising the number of such beds from 300 to 400. “Low-barrier” shelters waive requirements for entry, such as sobriety or rules concerning pets.
At City Union Mission, extra food has already been stocked. Cooks, who typically go home at night, have agreed to bed down at their shelters Saturday and Sunday nights so they can be on hand to cook breakfast in the event that roads are blocked by snow. If nearby roads become impassable, the mission has its own plow.
City Union Mission has activated its winter protocol.
“If it is 32 degrees wind chill or actual temperature, we don’t ask people to leave (in the morning). We really want people to stay inside,” Megli said.
Henges said that he and his team, in contact with homeless people in close to 200 encampments around the city, are advising people seeking overnight shelter not to simply show up. They instead want them to go to one of three navigation centers, where they will be assigned a shelter.
They are the Hope Faith Homeless Assistance Campus, 705 Virginia Ave., Hopecity KC, 5101 E. 24th St., and Unity Southeast, 3421 E. Meyer Blvd.
The United Way, through its 2-1-1 call center and online at 211kc.org, also offers a list of shelters by ZIP code throughout the Kansas City area, along with a long list of warming shelters.
Homeless advocates plan all year for events such as the one anticipated this weekend.
“We spend 12 months every year planning for cold-weather shelters,“ Henges said. Each Wednesday morning, the area’s Emergency Cold Weather Planning Committee meets at Hope Faith for that purpose.
A blanket for her dog
Jaynell “KK” Assmann, a nurse practitioner and founder of Care Beyond the Boulevard, said the group’s staff and volunteers began passing out extra cold-weather gear at area homeless camps before the new year.
“Our team went out Tuesday night,” Assmann said, “because we knew this was coming.”
Care Beyond the Boulevard is a nonprofit that provides mobile and on-site medical and mental health care to homeless and other vulnerable people. The effects of the storm, she said, are unlikely to be seen immediately. Cold-weather injuries, such as frostbite, tend to appear in the subsequent days and weeks, she said.
“Sometimes, when you have these super, super cold snaps,” she said, it offers an opportunity. “You can get in touch with people who haven’t sought services before.” The storms allow advocates to help people who might not have previously sought help.
As much as advocates urge people to seek shelter, Assmann said, some still decide to stay in the cold — not because they don’t want to take shelter, but because they feel they can’t.
For some people dealing with mental illness, tight crowds of people inside shelters or warming centers can be triggering. Also, most shelters and warming centers don’t allow pets.
“People stay out,” Assmann said. “Some people feel they don’t have a choice. Our patients don’t often have a lot of connections. And their pets are their connections.”
Last year, during a bitter cold week, Assmann said, she and her husband went around the homeless camps passing out blankets and offering rides to shelters and warming centers. A woman turned her down, but made a request.
“She asked for an extra blanket,” Assmann said. But it wasn’t to keep herself warm, she said.
“It was for her dog.”
