In response to the latest point-in-time count of people experiencing homelessness in Douglas County, the City of Lawrence says employees are making individual connections with people, leading to “powerful milestones of impact.”
The latest count of people experiencing homelessness in Douglas County show a total just slightly higher than 2020, the previous record year.
“The point-in-time count represents real people, each with their own stories, struggles, and hopes,” the city said in a news release Thursday morning. “Through collaborative efforts with Douglas County, the Lawrence Community Shelter, and other dedicated service providers, the City is focused on knowing each person by name, face, and story, ensuring a personalized approach to care and support. This commitment to responsibly providing services has led to powerful milestones of impact, marking significant progress in addressing homelessness in Lawrence.”
Of 414 people experiencing homelessness in Douglas County on one day in January 2024, 137 were sheltered in transitional housing, 136 were in emergency shelter and 142 were unsheltered, according to data released Wednesday and the city’s news release.
“In the last year, the Homeless Response Team and community service providers have been focused on forging deep connections with every person experiencing homelessness,” Misty Bosch-Hastings, director of the city’s Homeless Solutions Division, said in the release. “Those individuals are beginning to see what’s possible when we continue to show up for them. Our outreach has reached new levels, meeting individuals where they are and continuously offering them the support and services they desperately need.”
Read more: 2024 PIT count
This year, the city has identified 212 chronically homeless individuals, “and they are at the heart of our mission,” Bosch-Hastings said in the release.
“Since the 2024 PIT count, City of Lawrence staff have formed a new multi-disciplinary Homeless Response Team that is focused on reaching people who are chronically homeless, which are the 212 people who said they have been in this episode of homelessness for more than one year,” according to the release. “The Homeless Response Team is working to reach these individuals so they can form relationships and connect them with resources they need to become sheltered. The team provides outreach and services three days a week for six hours a day.”
By knowing people’s names, faces and stories, “we are transforming the way we approach outreach,” Bosch-Hastings said in the release. “We refuse to shy away from the difficult realities these numbers often represent; instead, we embrace them as a call to action. Each individual matters, and their circumstances demand our attention and compassion.”
The point-in-time count is a count of people experiencing homelessness in a single day each January. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development mandates that each continuum of care nationwide conduct the count at least every other year.
Douglas County’s number represents an increase of 63 people from 2023’s count, equivalent to 18% increase over last year’s total of 351, or about a 1.5% increase — six people — over 2020’s count of 408. However, methodologies for data collection can vary from year to year based on many factors, and the data collection process is imperfect. People living outside have estimated recently that there are closer to 600 total people experiencing homelessness in Lawrence.
(The number of 70 children used for 2024 in this chart is an approximation based on a chart included in the PIT count data.)
Statewide, 2,815 total people comprising 2,271 total households were experiencing homelessness at the time of the survey. People in Douglas County make up about 14.7% of the total number of displaced people in Kansas. The 2,815 total includes 691 people in Wichita, 537 in Topeka, 250 in Johnson County and 248 in Wyandotte County, according to their respective point-in-time counts.
Bosch-Hastings said during a recent Lawrence Community Shelter board of directors meeting that the city is working on policies about what to do when people are coming to Lawrence from out of the area.
“That’s basically just giving them three days’ respite, if they need it, and working with their community of origin and getting them back to where they’re going,” Bosch-Hastings said during that meeting. “We’re not servicing individuals long term that cannot prove that they’re residents, and that’s going to start going into our contracts, because we just don’t have the bandwidth to do that already, so we definitely don’t want to encourage that.”
Whether the city maintains current funding levels for homelessness programs depends on what Lawrence city commissioners choose to do in their ongoing budget process, and potentially what Lawrence voters decide.
The city will no longer have federal COVID-19 relief funds, which have funded many city expenses related to homelessness over the last several years, in 2025.
City Manager Craig Owens’ proposed budget would fill a hole of about $1.52 million in the Homeless Solutions Division by doubling the existing .05% affordable housing sales tax to 0.1% to generate about $1.25 million in additional revenue. The sales tax revenue would be split 50-50 between affordable housing projects and homelessness initiatives.
But Lawrence voters would have to vote in favor of increasing the sales tax. The tax is currently 5 cents on every $100 spent in the city; that would increase to 10 cents per $100 spent.
The city’s Homeless Solutions Division’s budget for 2025, with an approved sales tax increase, would be $4.72 million, down from $5.26 million. Without the sales tax increase, its budget would be $3.52 million, and the city would have to determine whether to cut homelessness services or make cuts elsewhere to compensate.
The city and Douglas County commissions have approved the homelessness strategic plan, which put a price tag of $109 million on everything the plan aims to accomplish. The plan did not allot specific funding toward the efforts but is intended to guide the local governments’ approach going forward.
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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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