Kansas City homeless evicted again while city’s plan for tiny shelters is delayed
Jessica Marroquin fought back tears as she cuddled her 7-month-old daughter and said how scared she is of losing her child to the state if she ends up again having to live on the streets of Kansas City.
That’s a fear that no 25-year-old working mother who is struggling to feed, diaper and protect her baby should have to worry about, but it’s exactly the situation Marroquin may find herself in, in a few days.
The young mother is one of about 400 Kansas City residents who have temporarily been staying in hotels around the city. Now about 200 of them face living back on the streets, under bridges or in the woods since the city’s 90-day initiative to house them ended.
Wednesday night was their last one in hotel rooms paid for by the city. Marroquin has saved enough to pay her own way, maybe until Tuesday. If she doesn’t find a really cheap apartment by then, she and baby Jazmine are at the mercy of friends with couch or floor space. Otherwise, it’s the streets.
Kansas City says that, through partnerships with social service groups, it has already helped more than a couple hundred other unhoused people over the last three months — about 120 people got first-time benefits like Social Security, 200 received medical assistance, 20 got lifesaving treatment and one baby, not Jazmine, was born while its mother was living in one of the hotels, says John Baccala, a city spokesman.
The city set aside $3 million to pay for hotel rooms. That hasn’t all been spent, but officials say that for now they have done what they can.
It certainly seems the city did what it intended, and that is to get the homeless who in March pitched encampments of dozens of tents on the south lawn of City Hall and at a major intersection in Westport, out of sight. Where do you suppose all these poor people without homes will go now? Does the city even care, as long as they’re not in its front yard?
These citizens are pleading to city leaders to extend their hotel stay. The initiative was initially set to end July 7, the city stretched it a week more to July 15.
“Three months is just not enough time,” said Anton Washington, a community activist who’s been helping people like Marroquin navigate the complex system of services. And of course that’s not enough time.
Imagine having nothing. How long might it take to find a job, in your free time locate housing that’s affordable on a minimum wage, and get approval to move in? Keep in mind, you don’t have transportation and maybe not even the appropriate documents needed to satisfy an employer or landlord.
Still, many did manage to find work while in hotels, Washington said, adding that it helps to have an actual door to knock on and phone number that employers and social service groups can call.
Single mother works two jobs for less than $500 a week
Everyone who has relied on hotel housing has a different set of circumstances. “Ask 10 people you will hear 10 different stories,” Washington said.
Marroquin has been working two jobs from noon until 2 a.m. most days and earns less than $500 a week. Diapers and formula are expensive. Many others told me that because of some previous criminal conviction or mental and health issues, they have found no path to getting a more permanent place to stay.
A plan the city announced two months ago to create a small village of tiny individual home-style housing units for residents experiencing homelessness was delayed a second time Wednesday when the City Council tabled it until next week, with no sense of urgency for the lives depending on it. The city ordinance would allow $2.7 million to be spent for about a 200-bed village.
In April, City Manager Brian Platt said the aim was to establish the first pilot community with about a dozen units within a few weeks. That hasn’t happened. Neither has there been a location marked for it.
This is a citywide problem, said James Shelby, who goes by the name “Qadhafi.” He emerged as a spokesperson for Kansas City’s unhoused after hundreds in March were moved out of a temporary shelter in Bartle Hall following a particularly cold part of the winter.
Qadhafi, who has met regularly with Mayor Quinton Lucas, in seeking help for his community, is angry that Kansas City has shuffled homeless around “like cattle.”
“These are people,” he said Wednesday. “They said this would not happen. They promised me. And I promised people that. They said no one who went into this initiative would go back on the street. But everything that got said was a lie.”
The homeless situation is complex, here, in other cities, and for all those in the throes of it. A long-term solution will likely cost many millions and take years. Certainly it will take a commitment to doing more than temporary fixes every few months.
Qadhafi is right. These Kansas City residents are those of us with the least. Some are sick, emotionally and mentally unhealthy. Others are just down on their luck, and too many may never have had much of a chance at all. But it is a citywide issue and will require a city-involved solution.
