TOPEKA — Around 2,600 Kansans are experiencing homelessness on any given day, one survey estimates. Lawmakers tasked with reducing this number will decide whether a $40 million fund is the best way to provide support for struggling local communities.
Andy Brown, deputy secretary for programs at the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, gave an overview of potential pathways to reduce homelessness in the state Thursday.
“The fact that we have a high percentage of unsheltered folks means that the visibility of homelessness is high,” Brown told lawmakers on the House Committee on Welfare Reform. “As we’re able to reduce the percentage of our homeless that are unsheltered, it will become something where it’s more difficult to see.”
The reform committee is tasked with tackling the state’s homelessness problem, but committee action has been slow to come. During last year’s session, committee lawmakers heard a bill criminalizing homeless people, which fizzled after public outcry.
This session, committee chairman Rep. Francis Awerkamp, a St. Marys Republican, characterized state homelessness as not “a massive issue,” but “certainly something we need to consider addressing.”
In earlier meetings this legislative session, the committee had a streak of seeking out-of-state guidance, listening to a national libertarian group CEO’s perspective on the growing statewide problem of homelessness, a Florida group’s support for prohibiting candy and soft drinks with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program dollars, as well as hearing a meeting on the dangers of “welfare fraud.”
During Thursday’s discussion, Brown pointed to a 2023 Point in Time Count, an annual survey of people experiencing homelessness, to give an overview of the state’s homelessness population. The survey counted 2, 636 people experiencing homelessness. An estimated 40% of those counted in the survey had some sort of disability. Of people counted, 21% of people reported living with serious mental illness. Around 16% of people surveyed reported dealing with a substance use disorder.
Homelessness has been exacerbated over the last three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, rising cost of living and other conditions. Around 29% of homeless people in the state are unsheltered, meaning these people are not accessing shelters or transitional housing programs. Instead, these residents are sleeping in encampments, in vehicles and other places not meant for habilitation.
About 17% of the state’s homeless population, 465 people, accounted for more than 50% of people utilizing shelter beds for the night in Kansas. Brown said emergency shelters end up full because people in the state are not moving from emergency shelters into other forms of shelters.
KDADS employees worked with Gov. Laura Kelly’s office on proposed legislation to remedy some of the local-level strain on communities.
House Bill 2723 would create a KDADS-administered program to address homelessness on the local level. The one-year allocation of $40 million in fiscal year 2025 would provide Kansas local governments with grants to build or improve shelters and homelessness services.
“The key takeaway there is this really is a problem that we can solve here in Kansas if we demonstrate the political will to do it and make sure we have adequate training and fidelity to evidence-based models,” Brown said.
The committee will hold a hearing on the bill March 5.
