The City of Lawrence and Douglas County are looking to establish a shelter for families experiencing homelessness, and they’ll be one step closer to that goal if a $750,000 budget request gets approved.
A dedicated emergency shelter for families would help fill one of the biggest needs that housing advocates pinpointed in the city and county’s joint homelessness strategic plan.
The Lawrence Community Shelter stopped offering shelter for families around the beginning of the pandemic and now only shelters adults. Some nonprofits in town, such as Family Promise, offer programs for families in housing crises, but none offer emergency shelter. Lots of families with children end up unsheltered with nowhere to go.
Assistant Douglas County Administrator Jill Jolicoeur has said in discussions of the proposal this week that the city is asking the county for $750,000 in one-time funds to purchase and remodel a building to house the family shelter. The city would pay for continued operating costs.
The location of the building has not yet been publicly disclosed other than that it is within Lawrence city limits. The city is leading conversations to purchase the property.
Jolicoeur estimated that getting the shelter operational would be about two years out.
According to the budget proposal, the city and county would work collaboratively to find a community service provider to serve as the contracted operator for the shelter.
The Lawrence Community Shelter wants to reestablish shelter for families, its executive director, James Chiselom, told the LCS board of directors Thursday evening.
But Chiselom said he thinks there needs to be a separate location for a family shelter rather than trying to bring families back into the LCS building.
“Having a low-barrier shelter puts families at risk because of what happens in the other parts of the building, and keeping programs separate is good until it’s not,” he said.
“And the environs are just not appropriate,” Jolicoeur added.
She said the city and county would likely put out a request for proposals to find a provider to run the family shelter, though that could end up being LCS. She said she thinks it “would look a lot like what happened with Pallet,” referencing the process to find an operator for the community of 50 cabin-like shelters for people experiencing homelessness that the city constructed on North Michigan Street.
“But it’ll be a little bit longer of a process, unfortunately,” Jolicoeur said during the shelter board’s meeting. “But I appreciate that it’s an important thing for the organization.”
The city struggled to find an operator for the Pallet shelter village site but ultimately ended up giving LCS the funding to manage it.
The $750,000 in one-time costs to purchase the building is included in the county administrator’s recommended 2025 budget.
“It’s going to be an interesting process, an important process, to figure out how will it be operated, how will we fund it sustainably, and how will the community participate in funding the operation of that community resource,” Jolicoeur told the LCS board Thursday.
The Douglas County Commission will begin budget deliberations at 9 a.m. Friday, July 12 at the Public Works building, 3755 E. 25th St.
The meeting will be livestreamed over Zoom; click here for the Zoom link. Commissioners do not take public comment during deliberations, but there will be multiple budget hearings in the coming weeks. People can also send written public comment to publiccomment@douglascountyks.org.
Read more about the county’s proposed 2025 budget in this article.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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