Kansas City proposals on tent camps, loitering aren’t bad. They also aren’t useful

A proposed Kansas City ordinance requiring the city to give adequate notice to people living in tent encampments before they are disassembled is intended to “extend dignity to the homeless,” according to city officials.

Giving notice before tearing down tents is better than giving no notice. Offering people a place to store their stuff is better than not doing that.

But it doesn’t move us any closer to addressing a problem that, to be fair, no city in the country has come close to solving, because it’s not one problem, but a constellation of issues that the trauma of living on the street only compounds.

The ordinance says that “no person shall put or keep and maintain or occupy any tent, lean-to, tarpaulin or other structure for purposes of habitation or place of living or lodging, either temporarily or otherwise, upon any privately-owned grounds within the city.” As tents aren’t allowed on any public property, either, where are people with nowhere to go supposed to sleep?

Another proposed ordinance would make it “unlawful for any person, either alone or in concert with another or others, to stand or otherwise position themselves in any public place in a way that obstructs or impedes street traffic.” City Manager Brian Platt says both proposals apply only to the homeless population.

Platt said neither ordinance is totally new. What has been added is that encampments would not be destroyed without the city first posting signs. Also added is a time range for when disassembling would happen, and instructions for how people can store personal belongings and find off-the-street shelter along with other services.

Neither ordinance, Platt said, is intended to criminalize homelessness. “We are just saying we have a process,” he said. “We hope the Kansas City Police Department is never even involved with this unless they are present for security reasons.”

He said city homeless outreach workers would be the ones dismantling encampments and tapping folks sleeping on the streets, in doorways, under bridges, to say “you can’t sleep here.” And then, at least in theory, helping them find a place where they can do that.

But while the city and shelter providers, like James Kohoutek at Shelter KC, say they don’t want to make it easy or comfortable for people to live on the street where it isn’t safe or healthy, “If overnight suddenly every homeless person on the street were to come inside would there be enough beds to instantly house every one of them? I don’t think so.”

Last year, Mayor Quinton Lucas and the City Council fast-tracked a temporary arrangement that moved hundreds of homeless people from encampments on the lawn at City Hall and in Westport into area hotels. It cost the city several million dollars.

In the weeks that followed, Lucas and Platt said the city was developing plans that would include building pallet homes to temporarily house homeless people, buying a hotel to use as housing and working with the community to help homeless families transition to permanent homes. So far, Platt said, one hotel has been renovated and is housing people and a second is in negotiations.

A new homeless prevention coordinator, Josh Henges, has been hired. “A lot of the public has a misconception that the way to help those living in encampments is to just leave them alone,” he said.

He’s right about that: Most people don’t choose to be homeless. “We don’t think that living in tent encampments is dignified humane treatment and we need to get them in a place,” Henges said. “And the longer a person stays in an encampment, the harder it is to house them.”

Also true. But as well-intentioned as the city’s plans are, the housing options and services remain too few, and community opposition to some proposed interim solutions, like the pallet homes, remains too strong. We can’t both complain about encampments and then refuse to support alternatives, can we?