Commissioners approve $3.15M contract with Lawrence Community Shelter
A shelter for families experiencing homelessness in Lawrence will not come to fruition because of a lack of funding, a city staff member told the Lawrence City Commission Tuesday evening.
A dedicated emergency shelter for families would have helped to fill one of the biggest needs that housing advocates pinpointed in the city and county’s joint homelessness strategic plan.
The Lawrence Community Shelter has not served families for the past several years. Some nonprofits in town offer programs for families in housing crises, but none offer them emergency shelter.
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Douglas County commissioners had approved a one-time expense in their 2025 budget in order to help the city purchase and remodel a building that would have fulfilled that purpose. But early into the city’s 2026 budget cycle, the city was grappling with a multimillion-dollar budget deficit.
“Because of the city budget, we just could not come up with operational expenses,” Misty Bosch-Hastings, director of the city’s homeless solutions division, told the city commissioners in an overview of homelessness programs Tuesday. “The county was going to provide $750,000 toward a building, and we were going to try to operate it, but we just could not get the funding for that.”
Bosch-Hastings said the city has a family homelessness response instead of a family emergency shelter.
“So we in the division ensure that families with children are prioritized for safe shelter and stabilization and are not forced to navigate the system that is here, which is primarily for single adults,” Bosch-Hastings said.
The city’s capital improvement plan for the next five years had included a family shelter project estimated to cost $1.5 million, but it was not funded.
Lawrence Community Shelter agreement decreases funding, as planned
Commissioners approved a $3.15 million contract with the Lawrence Community Shelter, which will constitute about 75% of the shelter’s 2026 budget. LCS serves adults experiencing homelessness.
The agreement is for 10% less than the $3.5 million the city provided last year. Recent years’ agreements have included language stating that the shelter must reduce its reliance on city funding over time.
“I really can see a change in this community,” Commissioner Mike Dever told Bosch-Hastings and James Chiselom, executive director of LCS. “… I was committed to lowering the amount of money we put into this, as you know, and we’ve done that.”
Of this year’s city funds to the shelter, $1.26 million will come from the city’s affordable housing and homelessness sales tax fund; $1.25 million will come from the city’s general fund; and $640,000 will come from the city’s special alcohol fund.
Lawrence voters in November 2024 approved doubling the affordable housing sales tax to one penny for every $20 spent in town. Revenue from the sales tax supports homelessness services and affordable housing projects.
This year’s agreement states that the city will reduce the 2027 contract by an additional 10% to about $2.8 million.
See the complete agreement at this link. Find more coverage of LCS at this link.
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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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