Angie Bauer, the housing care coordinator for Tenants to Homeowners, isn’t an average 9-to-5 property manager — she’s just a call away for her tenants, day and night.
She spent Thanksgiving cooking a meal for residents at Sunrise House, one of the shared housing units she manages, near 23rd and Alabama streets.
Sunrise houses 11 people living communally, all receiving different levels of supportive assistance. Each person has their own room, with shared kitchens, bathrooms, chores and house rules.
“Many of them don’t have family, so, really, their family exists inside these walls,” she said. “And so it’s important to me that they have some traditions, just like the rest of us do.”
Tenants to Homeowners is a nonprofit that offers affordable housing options to renters and helps low- to moderate- income Lawrencians become homeowners, among other programs. Bauer manages 73 units throughout town, including accessible housing, senior housing, transitional housing and supportive housing.
Supportive housing is “affordable housing coupled with supportive services that enable residents to stay healthy and housed,” according to “A Place for Everyone,” a shared plan between Lawrence and Douglas County to end chronic homelessness in the area.
National data on housing trends shows that most Americans are one bad paycheck or one crisis away from losing their housing. TTH is one local safety net, alongside other supportive housing initiatives such as Artists Helping the Homeless and Bert Nash Community Mental Health Center.
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Bauer calls herself a “resource getter.” When a TTH resident has an emergency, she’s the first person to get called, “and it’s never between the hours of 9 and 5.”
In those twilight hours, Bauer is usually making calls to coordinate between these resource providers. She’s also responsible for conflict management when neighbors have disputes.
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“It’s all that extra kind of property management that has to be trauma-informed, because what we don’t want to do is just unhouse people because there’s conflict or because the services aren’t put into place,” she said.
Trauma-informed property management, or mission-based housing organizations like TTH, put residents and their well-being at the forefront.
In Bauer’s line of work, she considers how trauma or past, damaging experiences affect a person’s ability to maintain their housing. Then, she does everything in her power to help them build a foundation for success.
“When we’re talking about individuals who have experienced things like chronic homelessness, it’s not enough just to put them in a unit, because many times we’re dealing with individuals who don’t have the same functional daily living skills that you and I take for granted,” Bauer said.
For example, folks who haven’t been regularly housed may take time to develop habits like taking out the trash, running the garbage disposal or cleaning a shared common area. Trauma-informed practices paired with support services can provide structure so a landlord-tenant relationship doesn’t devolve or even result in eviction.
Depending on a person’s faceted needs, a support team might include a Bert Nash case manager, a Heartland Regional Alcohol & Drug Assessment Center recovery coach, a therapist from Minds Matter for folks with brain injuries, a support professional from from Cottonwood Inc. for people with disabilities or any manner of social service provider.
By coordinating with external care systems throughout Douglas County, TTH helps older people and people with disabilities stay independently housed.
Bauer also said that many of her residents are domestic violence survivors and their children, marginalized youth or kids coming out of the foster care system.
‘I don’t want to be the reason someone has to experience homelessness’
Bauer said corporate or private landlords could start to employ trauma-informed management techniques by learning what support services to call when a resident is in distress. Otherwise, she said landlords have to resort to calling the police or pursuing evictions, neither of which are usually trauma-informed.
In Kansas, evictions are notoriously swift and punishing for tenants, and they live on a person’s record permanently. This can make it difficult, if not impossible, to find good housing options later on.
As a Bert Nash case manager-turned-property manager, Teahl Peck knows the score.
She works at Tamarind Apartments, 1517 W. Ninth St. in Lawrence. Although the complex is corporately owned, Peck said they accept any type of housing voucher and eschew background checks.
Tamarind also does master leases with Bert Nash, where the center rents units and subleases them to clients. Peck estimated that 90% of Tamarind tenants are Bert Nash clients.
Peck takes on the typical responsibilities of a property manager, such as leasing and coordinating repairs, but she said it’s critical to build strong relationships with tenants and operate with empathy.
“If someone’s having a rough day, they just come into my office and I try to help them or get them the resources they need,” she said.
Unlike many corporate property managers, Peck can be more flexible with clients who struggle to meet rent.
“I’m always willing to work with any of my tenants, because I don’t want to have to evict someone,” she said. “I don’t want to be the reason someone has to experience homelessness.”
Bauer and Peck recognize that America is in the midst of a housing crisis. Rents are rising, but incomes aren’t getting matching increases.
Neither Peck nor Bauer hesitate to say that the city and county would need to increase funding to make more affordable and accessible housing a reality. For Bauer, that includes building more supportive housing units but also funding diverse support services, as no one organization can meet every person’s needs.
“I think as a community, what we can do is put our financial resources into building more housing that meets the needs of the population that we’re serving, which isn’t just supportive housing individuals,” she said.
“I mean, we’re talking teachers and social workers and even myself, I live in one of our affordable housing (units) because my income meets the criteria for me to live there. And I’m doing this work every single day.”
‘She sees me as a person’
Bella Katherinn, or Bella, is a Douglas County resident who was unhoused after fighting cancer and surviving domestic violence.
She recently moved into a TTH unit, where she’s been working in the garden and gradually decorating to make it feel like home.
She said it’s taking a while to get back to “normality,” as she adjusts to having amenities like water and a toilet again.
“This is amazing, the opportunity they’ve given me to (get back on) my feet this year, to figure out my life,” she said.
TTH maintains various properties so they can house folks like Bella.
In addition to communal housing options like Sunrise House, they have cottages and tiny homes outfitted with in-unit washer/dryers and solar panels that bring the cost of utilities down to about $20 per month.
Bella said that Bauer housed her after just one meeting.
For Bella, Bauer’s support was a recognition of her humanity that very few others had given her.
“In this community … I feel like it’s a lot of judgment … and they don’t see human beings,” Bella said. “She sees me as a person, which is the most important thing. I got so much to get to this community … and I’m gonna give that … I am very grateful, very grateful (to) have her, have this amazing human being and this kind of project that can allow me to be me again.”
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Wulfe Wulfemeyer (they/them), reporter and news editor, has worked with The Lawrence Times since May 2025. They can be reached at wulfe@lawrencekstimes.com.
Read their complete bio here. Read their work for the Times here.
Nathan Kramer (he/him), a multimedia student journalist for The Lawrence Times since August 2024, is a senior at Free State High School. He is also a news photo editor for Free State’s student publication, where he works as a videographer, photographer and motion designer. See more of his work for the Times here.
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