Community leaders hope for new homeless shelter

The two homeless shelters in Lawrence are joining forces to more adequately serve the city's homeless.

The Lawrence Community Shelter and the Lawrence Salvation Army are the only two emergency shelters in Lawrence. As they prepare for the holiday season, shelter officials are working together in hope of building a single, adequate facility in years to come.

"We believe working together, we can serve the community and homeless population more effectively than we are currently able to do," said Wesley Dahlberg, Salvation Army lieutenant. "No one can do this alone."

Community members assembled at 7 p.m. Tuesday to give a voice to the homeless in Lawrence. Among the leaders of the meeting were Dahlberg and Loring Henderson, LCS executive director. The main item on the agenda was discussion of the plan to make LCS the only shelter in Lawrence and re-directing the Salvation Army's efforts to transitional housing. Also in attendance was Jeanette Collier, EKCAN director, who noted the progress the city has made in raising homeless awareness.

"Four years ago, this community didn't recognize that there were homeless families," Collier said.

Margene Swarts, city liaison for the Community Commission on Homelessness, agrees. In 2006, the City of Lawrence sent outreach case workers into the community. This increased the appreciation for the number of homeless families, Swarts said.

"Most people think of homeless and they think of single males between 18 and 45 who are just homeless. They're hanging out," Swarts said. "We also have a component of families, either single-parent and sometimes two-parent families."

On Jan. 30 of this year, the CCH conducted a Homeless Point-In-Time Count, surveying all the homeless in Lawrence during a 24-hour period. The survey found 75 homeless families in Lawrence and 103 homeless children. The total count of individuals was 318. Increased awareness of homeless families has prompted the need for a more adequate shelter.

"We have two emergency shelters, neither one adequate to meet our need for
 emergency sheltering in this community," Swarts said.

The CCH defines emergency shelter as "a short-term (90-120 days) facility designed to assist people to move off the street in order to stabilize for movement to better housing options." Together, the Salvation Army and LCS provide sleeping accommodation for 85 people each night. Henderson, along with other community leaders, envisions a facility that will sleep more than 100 people in 15,000 square feet, which is twice the size of the current building. Plans are in the works for a capital campaign to fund the project.


"We get some city money and we get some federal money," Henderson said. "But 80 percent comes from the general public."

If all goes as planned, a capital campaign will pay for the building. Henderson said the shelter is in the process of looking for an empty lot or a building to renovate. Plans include separate facilities for single adults and families.

"We need to have a space for families," Henderson said. "We are an open shelter, which means people will be drunk. We can't have them mixed."

Representing homeless families at Tuesday's meeting was Stacy Raffner and her three children. Stacy described her difficulties raising a family in a shelter.

"The biggest aspect of homelessness for me is trying to keep a family structure in the structure of the shelter, which is nearly impossible," Raffner said. "You can be seen as uncompliant if the kids don't follow the same rules, and usually in homelessness the kids don't want to follow the same rules because they're in crisis."

Raffner is not the only one struggling with this problem. Swarts said that homeless families do not do well in homeless shelters because it's a "totally different culture."

"Emergency shelter is good and is necessary, but not everyone fits into that neat little package," Swarts said.


The Salvation Army hopes to narrow its focus to transitional housing, which is more appropriate for families. Transitional housing serves as a bridging program between the shelters and permanent housing. While it will serve fewer people, it will be more effective than giving people a meal and a place to sleep, Dahlberg said. The Salvation Army has applied for a grant to start the project, which will include a facility with eight family units and seven individual units. Dahlberg said that each tenant would have "intense case management" and someone checking in with them regularly to ensure progress. Dahlberg is waiting for the new shelter to be constructed to move ahead with the project.

"We feel like we work together hand in glove, and that's really what we want," Dahlberg said. "We want to provide the community with a seamless service to the homeless population."